Honda changed my mind

We had two 24" snows during the Winter of 2009. And this is really unusual for Central Virginia.

What you see in the Explorer picture is days later after half of it had melted.
 
I actually like some of the older Hondas. Nothing in the current line up appeals to me at all. They are decent cars though. Good luck anyway.
 
I owned quite a few Hondas.
I left them over a stupid consumer relations snafu.
My wife was driving an Element, it was her second. She loved the dam thing, I of course had multiple coats of Zaino on it after my normal 2 day polishing technique.
After a year and 13000 miles from new the clearcoat began failing on the wheels.
I took it to the dealer and they said they would have to talk to their rep, they took pictures and said they would get back with me, the rep said no way I must have used a harsh cleaner on them.:mad:
I made an appointment to meet with the regional rep and showed him the entire car. It was cleaner than the new ones on the lot and way shinier.
He looked at it and agreed that I was smart enough to not use harsh cleaners on a clearcoated wheel but that maybe the selling dealer could have done it before I bought it.
I said great let's get that dealer to step up. He said the dealer was out of business and suggested I contact Honda Consumer Affairs.

Honda in no uncertain terms said I lied, that I had used the incorrect cleaners and i could pound sand over $1200 worth of mass produced wheels. :mad2:

Sold the POS and bought her a FORD!!
 
boatmangc said:
I owned quite a few Hondas.
I left them over a stupid consumer relations snafu.
My wife was driving an Element, it was her second. She loved the dam thing, I of course had multiple coats of Zaino on it after my normal 2 day polishing technique.
After a year and 13000 miles from new the clearcoat began failing on the wheels.
I took it to the dealer and they said they would have to talk to their rep, they took pictures and said they would get back with me, the rep said no way I must have used a harsh cleaner on them.:mad:
I made an appointment to meet with the regional rep and showed him the entire car. It was cleaner than the new ones on the lot and way shinier.
He looked at it and agreed that I was smart enough to not use harsh cleaners on a clearcoated wheel but that maybe the selling dealer could have done it before I bought it.
I said great let's get that dealer to step up. He said the dealer was out of business and suggested I contact Honda Consumer Affairs.

Honda in no uncertain terms said I lied, that I had used the incorrect cleaners and i could pound sand over $1200 worth of mass produced wheels. :mad2:

Sold the POS and bought her a FORD!!
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Now that they have been enjoying such great success over the last 30 years, Honda and Toyota dealerships are acting just like the domestic auto dealerships did for too long.

It's interesting and enjoyable to see how the tables have turned!
 
tbone said:
What is a "window tint exemption"?
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In Virginia you can only tint your front windows to 50%. And the rear to 35%. But with a medical waiver you can take the front down to 35% to match the rear windows. The Virginia State Police used to administer the program when I got my medical waiver. But they have since turned it over to Virginia DMV. (a local county cop confiscated my Virginia State Police exemption one evening and called it a forgery -- dayum rookies -- egg on face obviously)

I qualified for a medical exemption after I developed photophobia at work. The city put dark tint on our sheriff's cars so people could not see the prisoners we might be hauling.

One of the best ways to explain tint is like this.... 50% lets 50% of the light through. 35% lets 35% of the light through. 5% is what you usually see on the long wheelbase limos.

All of the above changes with SUVs and special purpose vehicles. You can have anything from the front doors back. I put 5% on all of my trucks, vans and SUVs.
 
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Marauderman said:
Speaking of colors-why do you post your comments in blue?
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In the scheme displayed here on MM.net on my monitor, it's easier to read in my opinion.

I don't even know, is there a choice of color schemes here? Is it
messing up anybody else as far as ease in reading it? :confused:
 
SHERIFF said:
In the scheme displayed here on MM.net on my monitor, it's easier to read in my opinion.

I don't even know, is there a choice of color schemes here? Is it
messing up anybody else as far as ease in reading it? :confused:
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I have to "hightlight" your post in order to read them--thus my question- Blue is difficult to read if a member has selected a different screenchoice from the main menue--in my case its black I believe, making blue letters a bit plurrrred.....oh well... not a big deal--just curious... thanskfor replying...sure others were thinking the same--- OBTW-- My daughter bought an '07 Civic like your new '11 same color and traded for '09 Accord new for large space--She is happy and keepng it--nothing wrong with the '07---they are good little cars.....
 
massacre said:
^^^ Same here. Can't stand foreign-named cars and won't own one. I actually own all FoMoCo products, always have except for a '79 Nova and a '80 Volvo I had once.

Glad to see that I'm not the only one who feels this way.
I had a buddy say to me once,
"Foreign cars are better than American cars".
I said, "Why"?
He said, "They just are".

Obviously I flipped out because he had absolutely no information or proof to back up that ridiculous claim.
But I'm afraid that for some reason a lot of the population holds this exact opinion, and I for the life of me can't understand why.

Hey it's your car, and if your daughter is happy with it, then cool.
Personally I would have gone with a Ford vehicle.

Car looks better with the tint BTW
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I can answer this real easy, look at domestic VS foreign built quality starting in the mid 70's, and look at the 80's for an even better example. the 80's brought us gems like Dodge's K car, and plymouth Aries, and a rebadged Cavalier that Cadillac called a Cimarron, Pontiac fiero, and let us not forget the craptacular Merkur Xr4ti. Bland and ugly Citations and chevettes and Pintos. Look at today's cars, if you want an AWD 4 door car thats fun to drive, what domestic car are you buying? Hell if you want ANY kind of 4 cyl fun car what domestic are you buying? Chevy tried a cobalt SS which is a piece of crap, dodge tried caliber and neon SRT 4 both of them are junk, and the last 4 cyl ford that was fun was the SVO Mustang, unless you count the SVT contour which was a V6.
 
There's just so many cars out there now to choose from. If I was in the market for a new car,
I would have to spend 3 months deciding between a Camaro SS, Challenger R/T or a Mustang GT.

Just like Dodge made the new Challenger look like the older models from the
seventies, I would buy a new Superbird tomorrow if they did the same thing. :)
 
Amigrad said:
I can answer this real easy, look at domestic VS foreign built quality starting in the mid 70's, and look at the 80's for an even better example. the 80's brought us gems like Dodge's K car, and plymouth Aries, and a rebadged Cavalier that Cadillac called a Cimarron, Pontiac fiero, and let us not forget the craptacular Merkur Xr4ti. Bland and ugly Citations and chevettes and Pintos. Look at today's cars, if you want an AWD 4 door car thats fun to drive, what domestic car are you buying? Hell if you want ANY kind of 4 cyl fun car what domestic are you buying? Chevy tried a cobalt SS which is a piece of crap, dodge tried caliber and neon SRT 4 both of them are junk, and the last 4 cyl ford that was fun was the SVO Mustang, unless you count the SVT contour which was a V6.
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It's real funny how people seem to have selective memory about Japanese cars from the 70's, 80's, and 90's. I spent much of the late 90's doing only engine replacements. The bulk of those were in Japanese cars or at least Japanese built engines. Before that doing head gaskets on Hondas was quite profitable. Honda distributors in the 90's were also very prone to imploding and their ign systems weren't too reliable in general often frying the ign control module. Then there is the faulty main power relays that left many a motorist stranded, yet they used that same relay for over a decade w/o changing it.

If you want to talk about recent fun to drive Ford 4cyls you left out the Focus SVT and it's dual lay-shaft 6-speed.
 
EMAS said:
It's real funny how people seem to have selective memory about Japanese cars from the 70's, 80's, and 90's. I spent much of the late 90's doing only engine replacements. The bulk of those were in Japanese cars or at least Japanese built engines. Before that doing head gaskets on Hondas was quite profitable. Honda distributors in the 90's were also very prone to imploding and their ign systems weren't too reliable in general often frying the ign control module. Then there is the faulty main power relays that left many a motorist stranded, yet they used that same relay for over a decade w/o changing it.

If you want to talk about recent fun to drive Ford 4cyls you left out the Focus SVT and it's dual lay-shaft 6-speed.
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I watched my mother put 225K miles on an 81 honda accord, 214K miles on a 87 Nissan Maxima, and then 230K miles on a 97 Maxima. None of these had any issues other than routine stuff. We have a 2003 GMC Envoy and at 44K miles the rear end had to be completely rebuilt, the key switch which controls the instument cluster took a dump, gas tank strap broke, door panel fell off, and the AWD 4 wheel drive switch failed. We also had a 99 Ford F250 super duty with a V10 and it ate through ball joints at an alarming rate, split a Torque converter in half and had to have all 10 coil packs replaced, and we hardly ever used it for towing or hauling heavy loads. BTW the ONLY focus worth driving was a Saleen N20, but unlike a WRX it isn't AWD, or turbo.
 
For an 81 Accord to make it over 200K w/o at least 1 head gasket or engine replacement is quite a feat, never seen one personally. With over 200K it would also likely be on it's 3rd set of axles and 3rd or 4th water pump. A 87 Maxima with more than a 100K that didn't burn oil like crazy is also quite unusual. The 97 Maxima I'll believe as by then they were pretty good cars. 99 Envoy with those problems isn't surprising at all. The SD eating ball joints is unusual though if the replacements were cheap aftermarket stuff then yeah they aren't going to last, the first set could have been a case of someone padding their bottom line. The torque converter splitting is quite rare and the only reason it got all 10 coil packs replaced is someone decided to punt or was just another case of padding their bottom line. I'm not saying the COPs haven't had their problems but I don't buy all 10 went bad.

Facts are as a pro mechanic the Japanese stuff from the 70's to early 90's were very profitable. If it weren't for Hondas in that era I'd have starved.
 
SHERIFF said:
My daughter won't keep this long enough to have major problems anyway. She wants a premium Mustang GT, perhaps a GT-CS.

With a $35,000 price tag, that will happen after she has a full time job and paying her own insurance in a couple of years. :)
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Good for her! I hope she makes that happen. :2thumbs:
 
Allow me to clarify another users comments about the car being one of the most popular stolen cars. I've been a Auto Theft Detective for the past five years, and have just been promoted to Sergeant. We have roughly 1,500 cars stolen in our city a year, down from 2,500 when I first started. I was also detached with the CT State Police Regional Auto Theft Task Force where I worked daily with the NICB. (National Insurance Crime Bureau.) The older Civics and Intgras had a very popular B16 and B18 series engine. They had crappy soft metal ignition tumblers that could be defeated with a pair of thin scissors or knife. They were aluminum head DOHC quick little cars. The Honda hatch models all came with a POS boat anchor D16. Si Civics and Integra's were stolen at an alarming rate due to the PRECISE swap, even down to the motor mounts. All the ricers would put these B series engines in their Hondas then add turbos and/or nitrous. Sometimes even a K20 from an RSX or a H20 from a Prelude. We started popping hoods on these cars and ran the engine stamp numbers which come back to the VIN that they belonged to, cross referenced them, and checked the theft history which revealed that the cars they belonged in were stolen and recovered, stripped of their engine. Ultimately we seized these legitimately registered and insured cars and crushed them.

http://www.wfsb.com/news/20169967/detail.html

Your new Civic has nothing to worry about in regards to theft. It has hardened steel tumblers, a coded PASSkey system, and can't be "hot wired" due to a mercury switch in the column.
Enjoy the car.
 
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