The 1991 Civic DX has been an OK car. For a 1.5L engine it does have a surprising amount of low end torque, but not enough power to do much more than maintain speed on the highway or climb hills. For a basic commuter car, it's near perfect. I've had the car for 5 years and the AC had already failed when I bought it, but I didn't care. Bought the car with 79,000 miles and it now has 143,000 with no "major" mechanical failures. Had the timing belt fail while I was driving, and the associated valve strike that was not nice, but belts fail over time and I think it was the original belt. The lite machine screw holding the distributor rotor worked loose and allowed the rotor to spin off 3 times while I was driving, essentially shutting down the engine. $25 for a new distributor rotor (& set screw) and new distributor cap fixed that problem. Had the radiator crack right near the hot return hose at about 120,000 miles, but swapping out radiators wasn't hard at all. Other than that it's just been the regular tires, exhaust and struts for stuff beyond the normal oil and spark plug stuff. The 5spd manual is great to have on it. I seriously think an automatic transmission would have over-stressed and killed my engine by now.

It's a small car, but bigger people can fit in it. I'm 6'3" and while it's a bit cramped I can still easily drive the car.