Mid-Year Upgrade - 2012 Civic

"tww1491" wrote in news:pyaJq.37232$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe15.iad:

Wouldn't surprise me; the 2012 has engendered lots of criticism. Plus Hyundai is carving slices out of Honda's turkey, so they have to do /something/.

Me, I'd like to see some of Mr. Honda's spirit back in the cars. Honda needs to get off the green-and-safety bandwagon and start making cars people get excited about, like they used to.

It works both ways. Anybody who bought an Accord before '99 got a reliable automatic tranny. The ones after that...

I got lucky with my Integra. The '90s had igniter problems, and the '92s had distributor-bearing problems. I have a '91, and escaped both of those issues.

I don't know if wow = innnovative but in my opinion they need to at least show more innovations.

Not just the interior--the whole damn thing.

Panic has ensued, because Honda got caught being asshats. They forgot that the buyer holds the ultimate trump card: his feet.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. Honda wanted to sell a $12,000 car for $20,000. They figured their reputation would allow that to happen.

The absolute arrogance of it all. Not to mention that they've plainly lost touch with what people want to buy.

Honda is the Asian GM.

In other news, Kia *has* created cars people want to buy--a whole lineup of them. The've spent the last 30 months bringing out fresh designs that work. And any mechanical issues, or NVH issues, or whatever are slight enough that people are willing to overlook them--because the buyer gets a car he wants to buy, one which isn't saddled with $10,000 of reputation snob pricing that the machinery itself can't back up.

Kia is halfway there with their designs.

And now Honda stumbles.

This could be enough for Hyundai/Kia to invest some very serious effort in down to earth engineering, to mimic what Honda did back in the 70s and 80s. Combined with their serious attack on the design front, that would be the end of Honda's reputation for a long, long time.

Can you imagine the current Kia designs with bulletproof 4 cylinder/manual trans drivelines and proper suspensions?

"tww1491" wrote in news:pyaJq.37232$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe15.iad:

Wouldn't surprise me; the 2012 has engendered lots of criticism. Plus Hyundai is carving slices out of Honda's turkey, so they have to do /something/.

Me, I'd like to see some of Mr. Honda's spirit back in the cars. Honda needs to get off the green-and-safety bandwagon and start making cars people get excited about, like they used to.

It works both ways. Anybody who bought an Accord before '99 got a reliable automatic tranny. The ones after that...

I got lucky with my Integra. The '90s had igniter problems, and the '92s had distributor-bearing problems. I have a '91, and escaped both of those issues.

I had a 90 Integra RS (base version) years ago. Great car -- lousy dealer.

Not just the interior--the whole damn thing.

Panic has ensued, because Honda got caught being asshats. They forgot that the buyer holds the ultimate trump card: his feet.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. Honda wanted to sell a $12,000 car for $20,000. They figured their reputation would allow that to happen.

The absolute arrogance of it all. Not to mention that they've plainly lost touch with what people want to buy.

Honda is the Asian GM.

gIn other news, Kia *has* created cars people want to buy--a whole lineup of them. The've spent the last 30 months bringing out fresh designs that work. And any mechanical issues, or NVH issues, or whatever are slight enough that people are willing to overlook them--because the buyer gets a car he wants to buy, one which isn't saddled with $10,000 of reputation snob pricing that the machinery itself can't back up.

I have had great service out of my 06 Accord I4 coupe EX. No problems so far with 90k miles. The design is (in my opinion) one of the better coupes Honda has produced. The current version simply is big and ungainly. I thought about Kia but am leery of the long-term quality and reliability. Their option package leaves me cold. If you want a sunroof you have to take a $2,900 option that gets you navigation and other gimmicks I don't want or need. The Kia appears to be a badge engineered Hyundai, which I suppose is OK. In sum, I think I will just drive my Accord another several years and play a waiting game.

"innovation" for the sake of it is marketing/mba retardation, not what consumers want in their cars. what people want is incremental improvement. exploding transmissions, macpherson suspension and gutless underperformance are neither incremental nor improvement.

to put it another way, the vw gti has been the same basic configuration for over three decades. incremental improvement to the motor, transmission and rear suspension have made a decent-ish car pretty good, for the money. porsche 911 is another example of enduring design with incremental improvements making it great.

compare that with the polar opposite starting points and directions of the civic/gti. the ef civic/crx was simply awesome, and a great starting point for further improvement. [wishbone suspension, room for performance bolt-in motors, and built-in capacity for 4wd for example.] but that platform was steadily neutered. now, the civic platform is nothing but a capon - fat sterile, and it can hardly even walk, let alone fly.

especially if they offered one in evo/subie-killer format. [they've been rallying them in europe i believe.]

it's also worth noting that kia have a small pickup they sell in other markets. if they sold that here, that would be a real challenge to the sensibilities of the great american rural "joe/jolene sixpack"'s who have been ignoring kia thus far.

i'm hanging on to my 89 civic hatch. light, relatively fast, handles great. simple interior but excellent ergonomics. got to spend loadsa dough to beat that thing - its closest updated competitor right now is the current vw gti. and don't even /think/ of a honda competitor to the wrx or evo. pathetic.

That's the ticket.

My aunt bought an 87 Civic sedan brand new, and over 10 or 12 years drove it for a TOTAL of 2500 miles--while changing the oil four times a year. Then she gave it all up and went into a senior center.

Base base BASE model, auto trans, dealer-installed Honda crappy A/C and radio. Roll up windows.

My sister in law bought that car for $2500. She drives it about the same; mostly it sits in the garage, and when it's out it goes only a few miles here and there.

I don't know how many miles are on it now, but I'm going to acquire that car in a few years. I have plans for it. They involve it being driven...

i'm not so keen on the 87's suspension, but they're a still a zippy reliable little car.

there's a couple of points to keeping old cars on the road. if you do an accounting for the energy for the materials for producing a new car, the materials recycled for an old car, and the difference in fuel consumption, for a lot of cars, you need to do a lot of miles per year to make the new car balance. that's environmentally too, not just fuel costs.

furthermore, if you drive an old car like my civic which will do up to

42mpg freeway and is a solid 34+mpg overall average lifetime, and net it against the inferior gas consumption of a modern civic, the modern vehicle will /never/ come out ahead! thus, all we're told about buying modern cars to save the environment has to be carefully viewed, and is frequently misrepresented. so for as long as i'm able to source parts and don't crash it, i'm going to keep the 89 on the road, even as a second/third vehicle. [with chicks, old cars are great gold-digger filters too.]

"Doug" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

"Wow" means making buyers think they're getting something special. For years, "special" meant advanced technology. Honda pushed hard with engineering and racing. Honda was also known for their motorcycles, which added another convincing dimension to the engineering aspect. That made the cars seem special to buyers, who liked to think that they were getting something really advanced, refined, youthful, and sporty.

Plus, since Honda did not have Toyota's stodgy image, they could use their marketing-pitch to successfully contrast themselves against Toyota.

Nowadays? If you ever hang around malls with your wife, go check out "The Body Shop", and "Bath and Bodyworks". From the outside, I mean. You don't actually need to go in the store.

Which one has more women in it?

What's wrong with Honda is what's wrong with "The Body Shop". What's right with Hyundai is what's right with "Bath and Body Works".

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

Then Honda would be even closer to being the next RIM, another company that appears to have lost its way.

Ooooo, good analogy.

That should scare the piss out of them, if they had the brains to acknowledge it.

rim: started by techies, taken over by mba's. honda: started by techies, taken over by mba's.

can you spot the performance/trajectory correlation?

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?

Just an a-men here.

Still driving new Accords every three years, but since I traded an '87 for the Acura CL back in 99, none of the new models has the responsiveness of the old one. The *engineering* is terrific, but obviously the design target is as Elmo says, neo-GM.

Honda needs to peel 500 pounds gross weight off the Accord, and 1000 pounds off the Civic. And my Accords, at least, have never been very pedal-responsive, they all have to spool up slowly so as to not emit another gram of NOx or something, or so as not to stress the automatic transmissions which maybe Honda is still not entirely on top of.

Wasn't the gross weight of 1980s Civics about 1,000 pounds less than today's?

J.

"Douglas C. Niedermeyer" wrote in news:jd7nvk$9ro$ snipped-for-privacy@news.albasani.net:

the people here have a LOT of experience with Hondas of all ages. With that experience,you can make a better judgement,and these folks also don't have any vested interests in promoting Hondas.

IMO,Hondas have gotten BORING. No Prelude,no CRX.