I have owned numerous cars, including 3 Toyotas. I have always wanted to own a Honda, but never seemed to get around to buying one until the Hybrid came along. Being a renewable energy fan and watching gas prices skyrocket, I decided to get the Civic Hybrid. Hey-- 50 mpg! Save the planet! It's a Civic!

It's been a year, and I must say the shine has worn off somewhat. First, I never hit 50 mpg, not even downhill with a tailwind. I was fascinated by the mileage readouts, and being a geek I wanted to verify the awesome 49 average mpg that the display was indicating. Over the course of a month I kept careful track of gas purchases and mileage. Driving included long freeway road trips, though most of it was my local commute on rural roads where I had to hit stop signs every mile.

My actual mileage, based on odometer versus the gas receipts, worked out to about 36 mpg—Compared to the Civic’s display, which told me I was averaging 46 – 49 mpg. Being a software developer, I was really annoyed that Honda’s code was providing inaccurate results. They need to fix some bugs in the mileage computer.

OK, At least I was still better off than those SUVs sitting next to me at the stop light. The auto stop feature works great, seamlessly starting the car back up when your foot goes off the brake. However I do have two complaints. First, why did Honda feel compelled to put a blinkie on the dashboard when the auto-stop is engaged? A simple LED would have sufficed. The blinkie is annoying.

More serious: The A/C system shuts off if you are (a) in economy mode, and (b) the A/C is set for automatic, when auto-stop happens. This is OK, all according to plan. However, when the engine restarts, the A/C goes nuts trying to stabilize the temperature at the correct set point. So if you have the A/C on automatic mode, every time you pull away from a stop light, the A/C fan goes to the Fricassee setting and blasts you with noise and cold air, even though it may have been gently purring before you stopped. Very annoying. If the temperature control was happy when the car stopped, does it really need to go nuclear when the car restarts? How about you restart the fan at the prior setting, and gradually ramp it up if the temperature has exceeded the set point? Don’t automatically assume that you need to create a blizzard in the car just because the auto-stop has engaged. Again, another example of poor software, in my geek opinion.

If you manually set the fan speed, everything works fine. When the engine restarts, the fan is still humming along at the setting you made. Proof that humans are smarter than computers, I suppose. At least smarter than Honda’s computers.

The A/C has another personality defect. I live in Arizona, which means that most of the year we need to blast the A/C to cool the interior lest we melt like crayons. In cooling mode, the automatic temp control works pretty well—It eventually stabilizes at the appropriate set point and is mostly transparent. This is true even if the A/C is set on full automatic. The fan will run high until the temp gets to the set point, then will magically reduce its speed to keep the temp at the set point. Unless, that is, the auto-stop engages, as detailed above. When you’re not auto-stopping, things settle down nicely and the A/C works great.

However, on the 2 or 3 days when heat is required, the automatic temp control seems to become confused. Even after the interior of the car is at a comfortable temperature, the A/C system keeps trying to send warm air through the vents. This means that you get unwelcome warm air, regardless of the set point. More bad software.

I don’t use the automatic setting for the A/C anymore. I manually set the fan speed and temp.

Moving right along, shortly after I got the car it developed what is easily the most horrific rattle I have ever had in any of my 13 cars somewhere deep inside the passenger side dash. I have stuffed foam in every accessible crevice back there and it still rattles—But not always. Sometimes it rattles, sometimes it doesn’t. It rattles on some roads, not on others. It drives me nuts. Now, one thing I always took for granted in my years of Honda Lust was their purported quality. That means they don’t have rattles. None of my friend’s Hondas ever showed any sign of a rattle, let alone the poltergeist I have in my car. Now I don’t think Honda is so great anymore, quality-wise.

Next, the dome light has gone off its medication. Shortly after I got the car, the dome light stopped working. I was annoyed, but put off getting a replacement bulb for it. Months later, the dome light mysteriously started working again. Now it randomly works or doesn’t work, depending on perhaps the phase of moon, or stock prices, I can’t tell. It seems to be loosely coupled to whether you lock the doors while driving, or not, but not always. Yet another example of bad software, or possibly a mundane electrical glitch. Considering the rest of the malfunctions in this car, my vote is for software. Or maybe the Devil pas possessed my Civic.

I don’t know if this next item is Honda’s fault, per se, or the Honda dealership that sold me the car’s fault. There is a security system coupled to the car’s remote entry system. When you lock the doors, it beeps the car horn once. When you unlock, it beeps twice. Very loud, very annoying. Scares the crap out of my wife and our cats. BEEP! Dad’s home. Wake up, neighbors! BEEP BEEP! Off to work we go! Come on, Honda. You could have provided a less annoying sound, like, say, Toyota’s. It is to the point where I will disconnect the car’s horn, if I can find the damn thing.

But wait. It gets better. If you push any of the buttons on the remote too many times (what counts as too many times seems to be a random number), the car goes berserk and the alarm (horn) commences honking until you can silence it by pressing more buttons. A panic feature, I suppose, but very foolish. What’s really fun about this is if you lock the doors, WHILE DRIVING THE CAR, too many times, the alarm goes off. So you are now tooling down the neighborhood with the alarm blasting. All together now: BAD SOFTWARE! Hello Honda, I should be able to lock or unlock the doors as many times as I bleeping want to, especially if I’m driving down the road.

This morning on my way to work, I was accelerating at full throttle. The engine, instead of winding smoothly up as the car accelerated, spasmodically surged up to redline. Shortly afterwards, the Check Engine light came on. This has happened on a couple of prior occasions, though this is the first time the Check Engine light has come on. Can you say Bad Software? Something obviously confuses the engine computer(s), and instead of the usual smooth operation, it goes all catawampus. Alarming on several levels.

Mechanically, the car seems sound and well-built, this morning's Check Engine adventure notwithstanding. Other than the software glitches, it has not given me any trouble.









Amount Paid (US$): 18,765
Condition: New
Model Year: 2003
Model and Options: CVT transmission