Mid-Year Upgrade - 2012 Civic

Jim, I'm not sure I agree with this above but I admit this comes from my gut nothing else. Now me personally, I don't need wow or innovation. I just want a car that works well. I don't care how boring it is. Now I'm not against incremental improvement of course as long as it works well.

Reply to
Doug
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nah, inferior performance is programmed into the engine management system on purpose. honda's mba's don't want the accord to "perform" and thus impinge on acura sales.

that's a whole different issue. i'm pretty sure honda moved to a cheaper gear manufacturing route. regardless, the result is that the cogs spall, the swarf plugs filters and coolers, and the lube system fails. and i guarantee you it was a tested and known result before manufacture. mba "strategy".

roughly, yes.

Reply to
jim beam

in finance, that kind of "forward looking" statement has to be legally disclaimed with the words: "historic performance is no guarantee of future performance". there are no such restrictions on the "analysts" that simply regurgitate auto company press releases. they don't do long term testing and they /certainly/ never do failure analysis.

Reply to
jim beam

we're both on the same page.

as i said, if you have a car like the civic, and it has wishbones, moving to macpherson is not an "improvement" by any measure other than the financial savings for the manufacturer. [they certainly didn't pass on any savings to the consumer.]

if you have a car like the vw gti, and you give it multi-link rear suspension, that /is/ improvement by any measure /except/ the financial. and even then, having looked at it, the incremental cost is probably less than $200 in the kinds of quantities vw move. and if any manufacturer finds themselves in the situation where a mere $200 is a significant financial issue on their production costs, then they should shut shop and go home because they're fundamentally in the wrong business.

Reply to
jim beam

Not trying to start a Christmas day fight here-- but it seems that most of the free world considers Honda autos to be safe, reliable, well-engineered, well-manufactured, fine-performing cars that are at least satisfying, if not fun, to drive. And they buy lots of them.

So how is it that the folks in this NG have an opposite view? Are they keen minded and perceptive automotive analysts whose penetrating assessments and specialized knowledge/experience reveal things the rest of us mortals miss? Or are they just a bunch of nay-saying bomb-throwers?

Reply to
tww1491

Not to worry--the cheap Chinese steel they're moving to, as delivered directly to the factories in China, will rust away 1000 pounds between years 3 and 4.

Reply to
Elmo P. Shagnasty

That's called Honda's "reputation". It was built honestly by the sweat of a firm that listened to its engineers.

Reputation is a bank account, and Honda is depleting its account ever more rapidly every year.

Remember, at one point the customers bought GM cars hand over fist.

Reply to
Elmo P. Shagnasty

And in the meantime, the competition has gotten LESS boring.

Ergo, the distance between Honda and the competition is RAPIDLY increasing.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with boring--as long as the car satisfies *other* needs, like reliability and fuel mileage. Whoops--sorry, Civic Hybrid, you can go home now. The traction batteries are shit, so much so that even Honda acknowledge it--and created a factory recall that kept the batteries technically "alive" for the purposes of warranty, but made them practically useless in daily driving. Civic Hybrid owners are experiencing mileage figures that are no better than Civic LX owners, who paid thousands of dollars *less* for their non-Hybrid cars.

Kia is busy putting their money where their mouth is, while at the same time Honda is spending its reputation like a drunken sailor at a whorehouse by bringing out crap like the 2011 Civic and crappy transmissions while simultaneously dropping its customer goodwill program like a hot rock.

Have the two things crossed yet? Maybe. In five years, will Honda be wistfully looking at Kia sales and remembering the good old days? Quite likely, if Kia continues to put effort into things.

Everything that made people loyal Honda owners between 1972 and 1999, Honda is happy to eliminate as quickly as is practical for the sole purpose of short-term financial gain.

When Kia comes out with the next 1999 Honda Odyssey, which spent five years (!) at the top of the market selling for list plus, I'll laugh my ass off.

Reply to
Elmo P. Shagnasty

jim beam wrote in news:jd81nf$rca$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

IMO,excessive weight is one of the biggest problems with today's cars. they just keep on getting bigger and heavier.

If a car maker(and the public) wants a bigger car,bring out a new model. don't ruin the proven winners by "improving"/upsizing them.

WRT cars,fat is not where it's at.

Reply to
Jim Yanik

"Elmo P. Shagnasty" wrote in news:elmop- snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

I want an aluminum car. the motor's already AL,so's the radiator,the tranny casting is AL,the wheels,brake calipers and MCs,might as well make the whole car out of AL.

ISTR Audi makes one.....

Reply to
Jim Yanik

"Elmo P. Shagnasty" wrote in news:elmop- snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

I want an aluminum car. the motor's already AL,so's the radiator,the tranny casting is AL,the wheels,brake calipers and MCs,might as well make the whole car out of AL.

Back in the in 1966 I had a used 64 Jaguar XKE roadster 3.8 -- the curb weight on that car was right around 2500 lbs. Of course, no power anything, a/c, safety devices etc. That car could really handle and run (most of the time). Poor electrics and it would tend to overheat in Texas when in town. We have come a long way I suppose when a Civic weighs several hundred lbs more.

Reply to
tww1491

I owned a 62 E-Type, drove it around Europe and had to sell it when I got o= rders to Vietnam. I should have stored it. Maintenance costs were immense= , and the Lucas (the Prince of Darkness) electrical s were primitive, but i= t was supposed to be the road version of the D-Type racing Jaguar, so no co= nsideration to creature comfort. Connolly leather, sure, but on a fixed bu= cket seat with only one adjustment, fore and aft. My Honda Prelude was muc= h better, but in my heart of hearts I really miss that Jaguar. I never mis= sed the Prelude. No heart.

Reply to
billzz

indeed. but that's the political genius of "safety" mandated weight increases. if you can tag weight as "increasing safety", then nobody can be seen arguing against it without risking career suicide.

Reply to
jim beam

My guess is that it's not so much the safety as the repairability.

Even if you want to pay for composite materials, and they fail to the point of passenger injury at 200% of the point that steel fails, the problem is that small dings that you can fix or ignore in steel might cause a hidden failure in the composite causing it to become much less safe. Aluminum is like that too - even with greater strength and safety, the repairability is majorly less than steel, and small damages hard to judge.

OTOH these tiny cars like Smart cars or Fiat 500 or new Scion IQ, OMG how "safe" can those things be, whatever they're made of? No crush room ahead of passengers, has to damage the suspension if you have a

5mph collision in the parking lot.

J.

Reply to
JRStern

My military operations research/systems analysis background validates that = in terms of both army tank and navy aircraft carrier design. Proponents of= "bigger is best" argue that there is inherent safety in a larger design. = And it is true. There was some dozen design criteria, like maneuverability= , reaction time, whatever, but when push came to shove the cheapest surviva= bility criteria was size.

Reply to
billzz

is this stuff something you've "heard" from others? stuff you've made up? seriously, where does it come from?

i ask because i'm a materials guy - i know a thing or two about steel, aluminum, and composites.

again, where do you get this stuff? why do people that know nothing about anything always have opinions that they feel qualified to "share"? and why would an underinformed personal fear even classified as an opinion?

in the mean time, you need to read up on this:

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Reply to
jim beam

that in terms of both army tank and navy aircraft carrier design. Pro

ponents of "bigger is best" argue that there is inherent safety in a la

rger design. And it is true. There was some dozen design criteria, li

ke maneuverability, reaction time, whatever, but when push came to shov

e the cheapest survivability criteria was size.

if bigger is safer, will an osprey loaded with marines kill fewer on impact with the ground than an f16 doing the same thing? how about a 747?

it's not size, it's deceleration rate. a mass with large inertia decelerates more slowly when impacting lighter objects than a light one. but that's what crumple zones are for. and a crown vic hitting a bridge pillar at 90 will kill you just as effectively as a mini hitting it at 90. an exploder rolling because it's inherently unstable, and having its roof pillars collapse doesn't help its occupants survive, a mini in the exact same situation wouldn't roll in the first place, and if it did the cabin wouldn't crush.

i'll take maneuverability and good design over cheap and dumb heavy any day. the dirty little secret of the modern "safer" car is that their increased weight has a significant negative impact on braking distances and maneuverability. this /increases/ their propensity to get involved in an impact.

Reply to
jim beam

I agree with everything you have to say. If you can maneuver (and I drove = an XK-140 at Laguna Seca) then you avoid the premise of the study. The stu= dy was that if an impact is unavoidable then the bigger the better. Large = tanks survive better than small tanks. Sure small tanks are more maneuvera= ble. But, over time, in any computer simulation, or historical analyses, b= igger tanks do better. "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battl= e to the strong, but that's the way to bet. - Damon Runyon"

Reply to
billzz

I owned a 62 E-Type, drove it around Europe and had to sell it when I got orders to Vietnam. I should have stored it. Maintenance costs were immense, and the Lucas (the Prince of Darkness) electrical s were primitive, but it was supposed to be the road version of the D-Type racing Jaguar, so no consideration to creature comfort. Connolly leather, sure, but on a fixed bucket seat with only one adjustment, fore and aft. My Honda Prelude was much better, but in my heart of hearts I really miss that Jaguar. I never missed the Prelude. No heart.

USAF 64 - 93. Had a Prelude as well and agree it did not have the heart the Jag had. But, reliable. The "gods" sent me to Japan rather than Vietnam -- bought a Honda CL 77 scrambler which was the only way to see the country. The Jag saved my life one night around Laredo TX. I was motoring around 100 mph when an ancient truck with no lights emerged in front of me. Only had time to cut the wheel -- skidded and recovered -- perhaps it was the Goodyear blue streaks and the Jags handling.

Reply to
tww1491

...and train the hell out of the driver.

Got any ideas of where to send teenagers to learn how to *drive*?

Reply to
Elmo P. Shagnasty

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