The D15B7 engine that Honda installed in my beater/daily-driver ’92 Civic DX was rated at 102 horsepower. Car and Driver managed to get the ’92 DX down the quarter-mile in 16.7 seconds… but that was at sea level, in a brand-new car. With its tired 200,000-mile engine gasping for air at 5,280 feet up, my Civic is definitely short on power in its new Colorado home. The good news is that I have an Integra GS-R B18C1 engine in the garage, and it’s getting swapped into my Civic very soon. That means I needed some “before” dragstrip numbers, so I can see just how much improvement the new engine will bring. Time to visit Bandimere Raceway for Test-&-Tune night! (Read More…)

My 2012 Honda Civic review concluded that “the design is clunky, the materials are cut-rate, and the driving experience is so dreadfully dull that even a Toyota Prius is a blast in comparison.” Could this car have inspired the owner evangelism that made Honda a major industry player? Highly unlikely. Though most commenters shared my severe disappointment with the car, at least one found the “bashing” to be “amusing.” Perhaps Honda similarly shrugged off my critique. Some of the big car mags have ranked the new Civic fairly high in recent comparos, so by picking and choosing who they pay attention to Honda’s leaders might maintain the illusion that they aren’t hopelessly off course.

Well, if a TTAC review didn’t provide them with a strong enough dose of reality, perhaps this will: as recounted in the September 2011 issue, the new Civic tested so low in Consumer Report’s road test that they won’t recommend it. Among other things, they note that the redesigned car’s interior is cheap, the steering is devoid of feedback, and the ride feels unsettled. They also note that “the Civic’s sporty character is gone.”

A Civic that Consumer Reports cannot recommend? If this doesn’t provide Honda with a clue, I don’t know what will.

[UPDATE: Hit the jump for CR’s press release]
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Today was a long, grueling day of racing at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, with the occasional break for lightning storms and cleanup of oil from multiple catastrophic engine nukings. (Read More…)

When the new Honda Civic GX will be available in the U.S., it will come with an option that allows you to bypass all gas stations and to fuel at home. No, it won’t be electric. It will be powered by compressed natural gas (CNG). (Read More…)

Honda has never paid too much attention to how other car makers do things. In the past this led to many highly successful innovations. Today…well today we have the ninth-generation Civic, recently launched as an early 2012 model.

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Those of you who follow 24 Hours of LeMons racing know the tale of the One Lap Integra, an Integra GS-R that got knocked down to LeMons price range because it had been rolled into a ball by a leadfooted previous owner. The car was hopeless, but the 170-horse B18C1 engine and transmission are in good shape… and now I’ve bought them for my beater ’92 Civic DX. (Read More…)

What does it take to win the Heroic Fix trophy at the heroism-heavy Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons? Frantic engine swaps are a dime a dozen in LeMons racing, but what happens when the replacement engine goes bad? (Read More…)

Having earned its place in the American market by launching focused products at its biggest segments, Honda’s 2010 sales performance proved the danger of chasing niches. In his remarks at the North American International Auto Show, Honda’s John Mendel insisted that

sales of the sporty and stylish CR-Z are also exceeding our expectations with sales of more than 5-thousand vehicles in the first four months. It’s great to see our customers embrace this vehicle … and our effort to push hybrid technology in a sporty direction

but besides proving that expectations for the CR-Z were extremely low, it’s hard to see what he meant. Expectations for the 2012 Honda Civic, on the other hand, are considerably higher.

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Some folks will tell you that you need a big ol’ truck to haul a grimy cast-iron V8, but those folks are wrong! My beater ’92 Civic, which stood up well when compared to the Audi R8, not only sports a trailer hitch (no doubt suitable for hauling popcorn carts weighing up to several hundred pounds) but the cargo-area capacity to take a disassembled Chrysler LA engine. (Read More…)

Yesterday’s piece  about Honda’s slippage left little doubt that its mojo ain’t quite what it used to be. But there was a time when Honda was on fire, and could do (almost) no wrong. The gen 1 Civic was like a little cherry bomb lobbed into a Weight-Watcher’s convention. Tiny, tinny, rude and crude as it was, the first Civic already embodied the unique qualities, if in somewhat embryonic form, that would revolutionize the American small car market and establish Honda’s meteoric rise. And this gen2 Civic was huge step forward; now instead of wearing a Civic like a badge of honor, one could now actually step into it and think of it as a legitimate car. How civil and civic-minded. But the best was yet to come. (Read More…)

The Wall Street Journal [sub] reports that, after selling a mere 9,000 units last year, the Honda Civic will be retired from the Japanese market. For perspective, the Civic sold 609,000 units worldwide last year. According to the report

Sales of the Civic in Japan reached their largest annual volume of 177,000 vehicles in 1975, accounting for 71% of the company’s overall domestic sales that year.

What happened to the Civic? For one thing, it got bigger… and Japan didn’t. The 2011 Civic is 32 inches longer than the big-in-Japan 1975 model and weighs nearly twice as much (1,495 lbs in 1975, 2,630-2,830 lbs today). And by the looks of things (above), the forthcoming Civic refresh isn’t going to bring a whole lot to the table either, besides a corporate grille. There’s been a lot of chatter of late about Honda and its loss of “mojo”… the fact that the Civic has lost relevance in the Japanese market shows just how far Honda has come from its roots. No wonder a little mojo was lost along the way.

Because we are halfway through the year, we’re mixing things up a little by comparing June sales to six-month totals instead of to June 2009 sales.

Toyota takes the C-Segment crown with the one-two punch of its mixed Corolla/Matrix sales. A breakout here would be nice, but since Toyota’s not offering, we’ve included the HHR with Cobalt and the Jetta with Golf to even things up a little. Credit the Focus for selling with the best of them without a hatchback platform-mate, and note that the Elantra’s monthly number has improved considerably relative to its six-month average.

Honda hasn’t always replaced its bread-and-butter compact, the Civic, every five years. The Mk.1 Civic soldiered from 1972 until 1979. The second through fifth generations were replaced on a regular four-year schedule, before Honda settled into a five-year product cadence with the sixth generation (1996-2000). If it were to keep with that cadence, we’d be seeing a ninth-generation Civic sometime this year, replacing the Mk.VIII, which debuted in late 2005. According to Automotive News [sub], however, Honda is holding off on releasing a new Civic until 2011. What gives?

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In 2007, over 120,000 Civic Hybrid owners had a beef with Honda. So much so, in fact, that they sued the Japanese company. What do you reckon the reason could be? Unsafe cars? Think again. Poor build quality? No, they sued Honda because their Civic Hybrids didn’t get the stated fuel mileage. New York Times’ Wheels Blog reports that 2 plantiffs, John True of Ontario, California, and Gonzalo Delgado of Chino Hills California along with 120,000 other Honda Civic Hybrid owners argued in the United States District Court for the Central District of California that they were only getting 31 mpg instead of the advertised 49mpg in the city and 51 mpg on the highway. The plaintiffs believe that Honda’s advertising led them to believe that the Civic Hybrid would get better fuel economy than is likely in real world driving. Needless to say, the plaintiffs weren’t challenging the EPA methods of predicting mileage, just that Honda, allegedly, deceived customers by not making it clear that they were unlikely to achieve the EPA figures. Honda, naturally, have a different take.
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