2009 Honda Civic Coupe User Reviews

Pros

Too numerous - you've seen them all before. The car can be "just a Civic" or a whole lot more.

Cons

yes, there are a few

Purchased As New

Have had this Civic now for 6 months. The car has so much going for it, I'm continually impressed. How really nice and un-Detroit that the low end Honda model is so very nicely done. It's a "qualified" 5 stars for this car.

A friend recently mentioned to me that he always reads negative reviews first; sometimes they're just rants, but usually there's some thought in them. I need not add to the huge and accumulating pile of positives, so let's just skip to the other side, in order of offence.

The automatic's downshifts are a problem when you want to apply power hard and quickly. The situation where this comes into play is a common one: the merge onto interstate. It shifts down too low too readily. Scare you to death at first; the engine's overreving and you're not accelerating. I learned quickly to take it easy. Also, I worked out that it's helpful to manually shift to D3 when you need power - lets you regulate the gas pedal pretty effectively. Only 4 stars for "Performance" because of this; otherwise, it's really excellent.

Communication. You never see this aspect in car ratings. I mentioned the transmission issue to the dealer service writer on first check up. Response? a) yes, they all do it, b) there's no adjustment, c) that's the way 4-cyls are (certainly, that is not true). Might as well have been talking to the wall. I consider it an important matter and the topic went nowhere; they'll happily install accessories for you though. You get lots of Honda 'customer opinion' polls coming in, but not one has a box for actually writing in something that matters to you.

The headlights are barely adequate in a thick fog situation. Yes, this is typical in a very low car such as the coupe. There is a fog light kit in the acccessory catalog; when I priced it interest faded. Many other cars have them standard.

The front seats could use a touch of lumbar support or a lumbar adjustability feature. They're pretty darned good seats, but it gets to be an issue on long trips. Maybe it's just me, but, minus 1 star for "Comfort".

The trunk latch hangs invisibly down from the lid, and I usually bump my forehead on it when reaching in there. I'm learning.

I find the tiered dash works well for me, it's not a big deal at all. The issue? Cruise control indicators should be in the upper tier where the speedometer reading is. And, who needs that giant tach?

Audio system is a dream, with one exception - fm sensitivity is weak.

Well, that's my bad list.

With such a short a service history, I cannot rate "Reliability".