Faults:

Fan belt was squeaky for a while. Eventually it worked itself off the runner. My Honda dealer was absolutely brilliant. They towed it to the workshop, gave me a free courtesy car, and fixed it under warranty.

My Honda dealer did a number of "big" maintenance jobs in pre-delivery service e.g. suspension bushings, and cam belt.

Original tyres needed replacing. Quite reasonably priced.

General Comments:

Perfect balance of Honda personality, performance and economy, Japanese reliability, AWD safety, SUV height. Plus all the usual creature comforts. And the added bonus of being intimidating to the majority of UK traffic.

From experience, a well maintained Honda will go forever.

I prefer this model to newer ones, even though it's 8 years old.

Faults:

Until know, some water leaking (car was previously painted) on front windshield, sun-roof working badly, cardan maintenance, steering wheel seems to be 30 year old.

General Comments:

It has been only three months that I own this car, and in this time it has been working nice. Preventive maintenance has been done, with front paliers, hoses, brake pads and cardan.

My upgrade is from a 1.3 l to this nice 2.0 l engine, and it performs very nice up here in the Andes and with the same gas mileage.

Slippery surfaces are this SUV's habitat, real-time 4wd works perfect.

Faults:

So far, nothing has gone wrong with this car. Please note that I am a freak for preventive maintenance.

General Comments:

This little SUV is tops. It’s good on gas and roomy. It’s not a hot rod, but, suits my needs perfectly.

When I first bought the car I thought I had been taken. The 99 CRV has “Grade Logic” transmission. So, the computer decides when to shift up and down. This is for gas mileage and to assist the real time four wheel drive. So, the result is that when you slow, but, do not stop, then accelerate the car seems to jump into first gear. I thought there was something wrong with the car. I took it to Honda and they looked it over, serviced it, and said it was fine, and it has been fine. Now I don’t even notice it.

The CR-V is a fantastic all around car. I had to get from North Carolina to Tennessee in a virtual blizzard. I was a bit worried about it. The real time 4 wheel drive got me there when most vehicles, and all of the semi-trucks were on the shoulder of the road.

Real time 4 wheel drive is not designed for crawling through ponds of mud or climbing rocks. It will cut through snow, mountain dirt paths, and ford light duty streams. So, for nearly every member of the population it is perfect. If you want to cross the Sahara then you need something else.