Sir. I may look at Edmunds, KBB, and some other places, however as to
the other sources, I USED to be a member of Consum Rpts until I received
their detailed auto survey. I had an automobile that had some real
design issues and I discovered that the questions in their survey were
so poorly written that the various issues which my car had would be
diluted over a number of categories depending upon how I or others felt
they were best categorized.

In addition, it never hurts to have additional data points. I was not
trolling this group by asking my question. I genuinely was hoping for
additional anecdotal information in hopes that I might confirm that the
issues I was observing were in fact indicative of a previous generation
of Hondas but that they had been remedied in subsequent ones. Yes one
has to sift through the results but some trends might have emerged which
I could then try to correlate against either the aforementioned media
sources or directly with a service writer friend at a dealership.

Oh well, happy new year!

On 12/31/2012 9:01 AM, Douglas C. Neidermeyer wrote:
> On 12/31/12 9:31 AM, KWW wrote:
>> Fellow newsgroup citizens, we used to be a (nearly) all Honda family - 3
>> Hondas and 1 classic VW Beetle (1965). On our earlier Hondas I replaced
>> timing belts, entire engines, and some other parts myself. Now, however,
>> the 2 remaining Honda cars I and my in-laws have seem to reflect a
>> company that has lost its way. Since these are 2002 and 2003 Models
>> (Civic and Accord, respectively) I wanted to get some feedback as to
>> whether things have gotten back on track. Here are my observations
>> based on the 2 Hondas we have:
>>
>> 1) there seem to be some design weaknesses which are common across the
>> platforms. Maybe while trying to be light weight (and less expensive?)
>> they made things less durable. One example is the steering rack. Both
>> cars had to have the rack replaced (Accord at 90k miles and Civic and
>> 134k miles). Both developed oil leaks that took about $600 to track
>> down/fix - oil pump seals, oil pan seal, and some things on top of the
>> motor even though when the timing belt was replaced all seals, including
>> valve cover seal were replace by the dealer.
>>
>> 2) The Hondas are even less easy to work on yourself. The oil filter is
>> very hard to reach. On Civics there is very little room for standard
>> wrenches if you want to do engine work. I compared that with Hyundai
>> cars where the Hyundai frames even have indentations which coincide with
>> where your hand would travel when turning a wrench when replacing a
>> timing belt, oil filter is down low where it is easy to reach, etc.
>>
>> 3) The parts are expensive and the engineering is a bit too complex (so
>> more things to go wrong).
>>
>> From what I have heard from some Toyota owners that brand seems to have
>> also lost its way and has been cutting corners on part/design quality to
>> keep costs down. So do you folks think that the current (newer) crop of
>> Hondas have found their stride and are again great cars or are they not
>> as great as they used to be in the '80's and '90's?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>
>
> Yes, that's definitely a good way to determine what's really going on!!
>
> Just go ahead and ask the 35-40 or so folks who post here for their
> opinion-- rather that look at the Consumer Reports detailed automotive
> reliability survey with hundreds of thousands of responses classified
> and analyzed by professional statisticians.
>
> Yup, good post dude.
>
>


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