What amount of miles makes a Honda civic start to show it's age? Also what is the most important info to ask for about?

[coolred]

As I am sure most of you know by now, I am thinking of buying a civic. I have a budget of around 200.00 a month, but putting full coverage on this car will add about 90 bucks a month to my insurance, so i would need something for under 125.00 a month. I think that puts me at 5,000.00 or under. I have found some deals in that range on autotrader. On the cars I have found they start at about 75,000 miles and go up, some don't list the number of miles though. I know civics are pretty reliable, so I was wondering, assuming routine maintainence was done on schedule and the car was not used as a race car then on average how many miles can you put on a civic before it starts nickel and dimeing you? I mean a repair here and a repair there i can handle, but when it starts costing me more a month then what i am paying for the car, then i don't want it. I know you can probablly easily put 200,000 miles on a civic and i hope i get one that can do that and then some, but you never can tell. I mean obviously every car can have a problem, but how many miles do you guys think are too many. Most of the cars I am looking at are '95-'96


I now have another question, I found some cars i like and i will be calling about them as soon as I get off here as most don't have a whole lot listed. So what all should i ask about. Obviously the year if for some odd reason it wasn't posted, but in this case they all have the year. Miles is another obvious one. There are a few others I can think of, but what do you guys suggest?

 

[Pepsi90919]

depends on a lot of things.

 

[yakko]

It depends on how you treat it. My friends S-10 pick up looked like sh!t with less than 17,000 miles on it because he didn't take care of it.

 

[gopunk]

dunno, but if it's any help, i have an 88 civic hatchback that runs just fine, except that it takes 5 minutes to warm up every morning.

 

[DaiShan]

yes, it depends, I can't speak for civics, but I know personally of 2 4th generation accords with more than 200k on them, no real work been done to them either, air conditioning work on one, something minor on the other too, very well made cars, great for the daily commute.

 

[N8Magic]

Eleventy billion.

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah, Honda Civics are practically indestructible. IF the car was maintained correctly, it would still be in good shape after 80,000 miles. After that, though, the repair bills start getting expensive.

 

[notfred]

my girlfriend's 86 CRX has 175k on it, and uh, it's a POS. Still gets her around, though.

 

[CraigRT]

they age rather well for a somewhat cheap car...
i wouldn't be hesitant to drive one with over 200,000 kms.

 

[Eli]

A good friend of mine just bought a '97 Civic EX 4 door with 90,000 highway miles on it for about $7500 after tradein..

Did she get a good deal? lol...

I don't really know much about it yet. 1.6L engine, 5 speed manual..

I'll assume that it's not V-Tec..

But yeah, well maintained.. they should go for a few hundred thousand miles.

 

[monk3y]

My Civic has over 110,000 miles... I'd say it started having problems at around 85,000 miles. Haven't really had any MAJOR ($$$) problems yet, but I'm hoping to get another car before I do get one.

 

[coolred]

I should have been more clear, by saying that it wasn't used as a racecar, I meant that is wasn't abused.

 

[coolred]

Bump for the addition of the second question

 

[Thegonagle]

As far as the original question, read my posts to Vi's thread about the 97 Accord. Just about everything I said there applies to the Civic as well. It's easy to put 200,000 miles on any car if you nip small problems in the bud immediately, do all the planned maintenance plus change the oil every 3000-4000 miles (religiously) and always fix everything that breaks.

Personally, I'm concerned for you however. You're in a different position than Vi, meaning he can (I assume, based on other posts by him) afford to pay cash for a used car (and smartly, doesn't want to spend a lot), and repair stuff as it becomes necessary. You, OTOH, want to get a car that you can "afford" to make the payments on, but stuff comes up on a car, any car, new or used, Honda, Toyota, Volvo, Lexus, Mercedes, or VW. Some of it is several-hundred-dollars kind of stuff. Stuff comes up in your life, too. Just make sure you will have enough money available to keep the car running in order to get to work, and feed and clothe your little one.

 

[Thegonagle]

Originally posted by: Eli
A good friend of mine just bought a '97 Civic EX 4 door with 90,000 highway miles on it for about $7500 after tradein..

Did she get a good deal? lol...

I don't really know much about it yet. 1.6L engine, 5 speed manual..

I'll assume that it's not V-Tec..

But yeah, well maintained.. they should go for a few hundred thousand miles.

That's a V-Tec.

 

[GrumpyMan]

Can't talk about the newer Civics but I had an '86 model that I put 176,000 miles on it. Sold it to my brother who put 50,000 more miles on it and then he sold it to some guy around town here. I still see it driven dailey ( I had it painted yellow so it's easy to see). I don't know how many miles on it now but with good upkeep they last forever.

 

[Nutdotnet]

Hmm. Are you sure that you can actually afford a car?

Think about it man. You are only able to afford $200 including insurance. A $5,000 WILL need repairs eventually. They may be major, they may be minor, but a $5,000 car will need repairs. Are you going to be able to afford when you need to get the brakes replaced? Or when you need to get new tires?

The best advice that I can give is to pay cash for a car in that price range.

 

[coolred]

No you guys are all right I can't really afford to fix a 5,000.00 car every time it breaks down. But I really really can't afford to fix a 1,000.00 dollar car at best and another 200.00 dollar car if were lucky, and thats what i am doing right now. I know that any car can have a problem. I just want something that will cost me less then what mine are now.

 

[coolred]

I mean I have 2 cars and both are in need of repair right now. And no I don't drive them hard. They are just old.

 

[blahblah99]

read my post on my accord. search for "another car problem" post in off topic.

Granted, its an 87 accord, but still belongs in the same family. It has 160k miles and every possible problems you can imagine.

I despise hondas!

 

[coolred]

I just found a 1994 Honda civic coupe, 5 speed, air, alloy wheels, AM/FM/cass, with 115,000 miles selling for $2995.00

 

[coolred]

Also, are the extended warranties a good investment. I quoted one off edmunds site. For 4 years it was something like 1600.00 witha 50.00 dollar deductible. Would that be a good idea to get?

 

[coolred]

Garfang, I checked out Vi's thread and what you posted. How much of that would apply to a '94 civic with 115,000 miles. I posted in here about it earlier, it is at a dealership a couple hours away, I think i will give it a test drive this weekend. The dealership is near a university, so I bet this is a car that college student drove till they graduated, then sold it to get something newer. I do not know about any maintainence that was done to it. I will call later and find out if they have any records.

 

[Thegonagle]

Like I said, pretty much everything applies. A Civic is built very much like a smaller scale Accord.

It could be a good deal, but bring it to a dealership (that's not selling it) for a used car inspection. (Yes, they'll balk, but they will let you. If not, trust me, they're not worth doing business with.) Basically, you want the mechanic to tell you whether he'd buy the car or not, and then tell you what could go wrong. The Honda mechanics there have probably seen 115,000 mile civics that look like they're "straight from the showroom" all the way down to "ready for the junkyard." No mechanic would buy any car ready for the junkyard for $3000.

Also, is it a new Honda dealership that the car is at? If so, that could be good, since a new car dealership most likely wholesales higher mileage cars with poorer maintenance.

 

[wyvrn]

I agree on getting it checked out at a mechanic. I did this on a Civic CRX and was able to put 100k miles on it in college before I resold the car. The only repairs I made to it were to fix dings due to parking in the dorm parking lots.

Also, I wouldn't buy the extended warranty. We bought one on the Infiniti and it was basically a wasted $1000. The warranty ran out before the real problems started. Extended warranties are like insurance, the seller knows what price they have to sell out to cover any repairs they actually might get, plus an extra fat % for profit. I doubt you would ever user your warranty's worth, especially on a Honda.