I found this article to be very interesting. Apparently Honda went whole-hog on the Civic refresh. Powertrain, interior, and even exterior are all getting updated. Might be a 10th gen already? That shows just how bad the current 9th gen is...
I found this article to be very interesting. Apparently Honda went whole-hog on the Civic refresh. Powertrain, interior, and even exterior are all getting updated. Might be a 10th gen already? That shows just how bad the current 9th gen is...
Go to your local Honda dealer and low-ball like crazy. They are bound to bite.
I wouldn't even go that far for the berkeleyers 
I could settle with all the shortcomings if I could find an Si for the price of a Fit. 8)
PHeller wrote: Go to your local Honda dealer and low-ball like crazy. They are bound to bite.
Why? It's a crappy car. Just because it's perceptually cheaper doesn't justify it's shortcomings. Would you buy a defective helmet just because they went on lay-away?
It's a crappy car that despite what everyone on here seems to think about it (myself included) is still selling like hotcakes.
If i were Honda, i wouldn't have done this. Let the idiots eat cake.
In reply to 92CelicaHalfTrac:
Honda though has realized that those sales will very, very quickly die out once people see how bad the car is. They don't want to pull a GM or a Toyota. The new Accord is really good, and if this 9.5 Civic does what they say, then they will have weathered the storm.
One batch of bad cars can ruin a company for a long, long, loooooong time.
Javelin wrote: In reply to 92CelicaHalfTrac: Honda though has realized that those sales will very, very quickly die out once people see how bad the car is. They don't want to pull a GM or a Toyota. The new Accord is really good, and if this 9.5 Civic does what they say, then they will have weathered the storm. One batch of bad cars can ruin a company for a long, long, loooooong time.
It's been about a year... sales aren't slowing down. I think we've just reached the point where CR is at a huge point above your average buyer. Sad for the world.
In reply to 92CelicaHalfTrac:
It usually takes about 2 years for the word to spread. Sales are up big time compared to the 2011 Civic, but in the toilet as far as Honda's marketshare would have been based upon past new-gen launches. Basically, on the surface sales are good and money is rolling, but if you look deeper, they could have been making a lot more, hence the comprehensive re-do after just one model year.
Fair enough. 
The larger question is... have any of US cared about the Civic since 2000?
The Civic died after 2000.
Edit: Damn you Ben, Beat me to it.
So what's so bad about this Civic?
I really like the 7th-gen Si as a street car, and would love to find one to DD when the prices come down a bit. They seems like a nice combination of power/economy/traction/comfort for a DD.
Civics suck these days. Fit is slow. S2k is gone. No more fun across the board.
That said. I do love my fit. Closest thing to a 95 civic that is brand new that you can buy. Only thing lacking is aftermarket support and power. Haha.
I've always judged an entity not as much the mistakes it makes, but by how it responds to it's mistakes, and if this Civic is the improvement it needs to be, Honda will have earned more respect from me.
stroker wrote: So what's so bad about this Civic?
Basically everything. They aren't built as well, the quality of the materials is lower, the cheaper suspension gives a harsher ride and louder road noise, etc, etc. Reviewers have basically compared it to a Korean import from 15 years ago, or a Chinese import now.
In reply to Javelin:
that's amazing, for Honda. Not much excuse to do something like that for a company like them. Compared to my '96 Sidekick it would still probably be a step up, though.
People are actually buying the big fat bloated pig they are calling the Civic? I never see on on the street.
carguy123 wrote: People are actually buying the big fat bloated pig they are calling the Civic? I never see on on the street.
I see them all the time and shake my head.
93EXCivic wrote:carguy123 wrote: People are actually buying the big fat bloated pig they are calling the Civic? I never see on on the street.I see them all the time and shake my head.
Maybe I just don't see them anymore. Maybe they just don't exist for me. I "see" the occassional CR-Z? thing but not often.
And then again maybe no one is buying them near me.
There's tons around my area. Doesn't make them a good car. Lol.
From what I've read, the 12 civic was designed with cheaper materials and lower weight, and designed for a economy that was in the dumps. So they designed a better mpg, lighter, cheaper car for that economy. A swing and a miss on Hondas part.
I'm amazed that the redesign was so quick, and hope its on par with the 2013 accord. That thing is pretty sweet.
I don't think this kind of refresh is unprecedented, necessarily. Look at the 2008 WRX. On paper, it's actually a better car in most respects than the outgoing 2007 model (same power, multilink rear suspension, more features, more rear legroom, better ride), but it was seen as a major failure for the "enthusiasts" and seen as a watered-down "appeal to the masses" model (which it didn't either). Plus it looked boring, like a Corolla.
Subaru jumped on it quick, and in 2009 the "refresh" got 40 more horses, a bigger turbo, better seats, gunmetal wheels that looked sportier, better performance OEM tires, stiffer springs, bigger sways, nicer interior look (though not much actual change), and a few tweaks to the styling.
While people still complained that it looked boring, the 2009-2011 WRX was a massive step-up from the previous model in performance and most other non-subjective categories. Hell, it was as fast as an STI in the 1/4. The body was still a bit boring (personally, I love the low-key look and have no intention of getting the widebody out now), but overall Subaru quickly addressed almost all of the enthusiasts complaints, aside from a major sheetmetal redesign (which came a couple years later to make it look like an STi).
And sales were much better in 2009 than in 2008, as I recall.
Goes to show that car companies can pull off the quick refresh, but it requires a massive backlash from the consumer.....sub-par reviews from publications that usually praise the product.... and bad initial sales.
Let's hope Honda gets it right like Subaru did.
I ditched my 2012 Si after just 3 months with it, that's how bad it was. I am missing my 2009 Si very much so right now, I loved that car. The WRX is awesome because it's like a hatch back with LT1 power, but I might hand it off to the wife because she was wanting one for a long time and pick myself up a 06-11 Si again. Hopefully the new one is good but I'm going 8th gen again.
As I understand it, most of the mis-steps Honda made on the 2012 Civic were forced on them by mis-calculations on the dollar-yen ratio....same thing (supposedly) happened to VW about the time the 3rd gen. Golf hit European showrooms. Honda (and VW) were forced to cut corners on a car that already had / has a thin profit margin. The 2013 "re-fresh", probably would have been made in 2014 or 2015, at the middle of this generation of Civic's model life.
When they were new, I saw some CR-Zs and 1 or 2 2012 Civics....but they aren't really selling all that well in my area. Or maybe since they look so much like the old Civic they don't register as newer cars?
BTW, C&D tested the Accord against some of it's mid-sized rivals in the recent issue, the Accord beat the new Fusion, and the previous "mid-sized champ", the Passat, came in LAST.
This new Fusion would have to be leaps and bounds better than the outgoing generation. I had a rental fusion for a week and it was the most mind numbingly boring car that I've ever driven. GM W-bodies were a blast to drive compared to those things.
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