Faults:

Nothing ever went wrong with the car mechanically when I had it, even though I bought it at almost 20 years old.

The rear wheel arches were really rusted.

The 3 speed Civic was dark red wine, so it did match with the rusted metal.

General Comments:

The car's performance was terribly slow; usually people driving behind get tired and pass me. One must not have an ego to drive this car nowadays.

Actually I never locked the car, because I know no one wants to steal that metal cabin on wheels. The car is so easy to work on. Once it was like -30 Celsius, dead cold outside, and the car would not start. Put in some start up spray with Ether in it. Still didn't start. I put a lot of the can in the intake, the car started and stayed at max RPM at the red line. After 30 seconds I found out I could just pull the key out of the starter. No engine damage whatsoever at all. Any German car would have blown up.

Faults:

The engine doesn't run well when the outside temperature goes below zero. (it's a carb thing)

The timing can be rough when the distributor wears out.

General Comments:

This car is amazing, it just keeps on going no matter where I drive it.

My wife bought the Civic new from the dealer with her fathers help (good job). I was on a fishing trip when she bought it.

I did all the maintenance myself.

I changed the oil regularly, and I hardly revved it over 3 thousand rpms.

The car is quite peppy, and it's easy to drive for long distances.

I can shift from 1st up to 5th, and back down again, without using the clutch.

In fact, since I have crawled inside and out of this car since new, I now know this car as well as I know my wife.

I changed the clutch once, 300 000 km.

Replaced 1 diff. bearing, all wheel bearings, carb, distributor once. I still drive it 160 kms a day to work.

Faults:

I bought this car a week ago. It ran great. Now, I have got a chu-chu-chu sound from the joints, and engine makes a huge noise. Once the accelerator is pushed in and left, it keeps going unless the brakes are pushed down. Looks like is running with cruise control mode.

General Comments:

Car is great.

Faults:

Nothing really went wrong with this car; we had the car as a second car for 16 years and it always work. In 16 years some things do go wrong like the following: The battery was replace twice, tyres replaced twice, front window replaced once, exhaust, clutch, radiator, brakes, light bulbs, oil and water. The car also had a small accident on the front whereby, this was partly replaced. For the rest the car did not have regular maintenance, only when something was broken it was taken to the garage. In 16 years it was probably in the garage 10 times.

General Comments:

It was a great car, we had taken the car to Portugal when we moved to this country in 1991, we had just owned it for 1 year and were planning to stay in Portugal for two. Plans changed and we stayed in Portugal until 2006. All this time the Honda Civic Shuttle was with us, and always worked.

I must say the car was neglected as it was always parked outside and only used to drive short distances within the city. After some years the roof started rusting and with heavy rain it got wet inside the car, but this was not a reason to stop driving it.

As the car was never imported into Portugal we drove around on foreign registration plates for 15 years and luckily were never caught as this is not allowed. The added advantage was that we stopped paying road-tax back home as this was not needed and did not have to pay in Portugal, also the yearly MOT was skipped. The annual fixed cost of this car was extremely low, only paying insurance and NEVER having mechanical problems.

When we moved back home we drove to the airport with the Honda, stopped at a car junkyard to drop of the car and catch a flight. The last week we had the car it drove 900 km and was in good working order, a strange thing to do drive to a car junkyard with a good 19 year old working car.