Think 4-5 faults for a new car is pretty bad? try TWENTY-SEVEN

[chylld]

Since delivery, my 2006 Honda Civic has been a ridiculously problematic example of quality control gone wrong, topped with the worst service I have ever seen.

At the time of delivery, there were only 3 problems, however by the first 1000km service there were 9 in total. By the 1 year service, this number had increased to 20, and unbelievably, since then (barely over a month ago) it has increased to 27.

Some of the faults include a faulty engine mount, a rattling passenger's airbag, and an unstable / rattling front passenger's seat. I have also had parts fall off the car onto the road on numerous occasions.

I sought the services of two dealers, the one from which I purchased the vehicle (Hornsby Honda), and another one which is the supposed to be one of the best Honda dealers in Sydney (Scott's Honda Artarmon). After hopelessly dealing with a number of lower-ranked incompetent members of Honda service staff, I've worked my way up to one of the 3 district managers currently managing in Sydney (Tony Martin).

Advice from friends in a different forum said that the best way to initiate action is to get the state/region manager involved. In my case, this was hardly true at all. Not only was he extremely rude and disrespectful, but he also interrupted me several times, refusing to listen to what I had to say on each of the 27 problems I had in my car. He gave a large impression that he was short on time, which is funny because I was made to wait for over an hour after arriving at the dealer at the confirmed meeting time.

I also attempted to show him the results of the research I did, showing how american customers and their dealers have fixed the same problems with their civics. This would have been at least a little helpful (it was in a step by step format, published by Honda America) but he fobbed me off, stating that they were irrelevant.

Here is a list of the problems with the car:

At delivery:
• Creaking boot lid
• Grease stain on rear seat
• Driver’s door reluctant to close

By first 1000km service:
• Brake pedal noise
• Rattles from both front doors
• Rattle from sunroof when closed from tilt position
• Metallic rattling sound from NSF
• 1 exhaust finisher fell off
• Rattle from instrument cluster

By 1 year service:
• Rattle from centre console rear storage box
• Centre console rubber stopper discovered missing
• Plastic wrap material protruding from sides of doors
• Plastic packaging string found loosely attached to undersides of front seats
• 2 exhaust finishers fell off
• Boot lid trim recall item
• Discovered rust and sound protection not applied to front wheel wells as advertised at time of sale
• Loud 19th-century kettle whistling noise from front demister
• High-pitched whirring noise from engine bay
• Metal clanging sound from right hand side of engine bay
• Hard tapping sound from front passenger’s seat
• Rattle from passenger-side front airbag

Since 1 year service (6 weeks ago!):
• Air vent control coming apart
• Loud rattle from front-left of cabin
• Passenger’s front door sill trim separating at the rear
• Thumping noises from rear shock absorbers at low speeds
• Ticking noise from front passenger seat
• Centre console storage box lid rattling
• Wind noise form gap in both front weather-strips

What kind of joke is this, seriously? I know for a value-oriented car, some problems are to be expected, but this is off the chart. I dare not even touch the window controls because I know other forum members have had problems with the windows literally popping out of the car.

At the moment the car is in for service at Scott's Honda Artarmon under supervision of the service manager Jason Caswell. I will be highly interested in the outcome of this service.

[creativepunka]

Get a bmw. If you buy a top of the line $$$ car then you expect it to be right. You got a civic expecting it to be of a bmw standard. some of the above problems are just petty imo.

[shadou]

the civics do have a few issues but not that many! Yeah a couple things are pretty petty like the boot lid recall ? Are you complaining about getting a boot lid carpet fitted? And the plastic shit is easy fix. Good luck fixing all of those problems.

[m3ntAL_l2]

holy crap heard fd's had problems but didnt know was this bad.. bl man
complain to the dealer, tell em u want to swap a car lol??

[godamit]

a large % of your grievances are related to sound.

1.) considering that you took apart your car to sound proof it, is it possible that some of the problems could be related/caused by that process?

2.) is there a possibility that your sound proofing could have magnified the drone/rattle which would not be apparent or is acceptable in a normal vehicle?

3.) do u think u have a higher than average standard as compared to others?
are you being pedantic over minor issues which are not predominantly safety related?

4.) how high is the mileage n has the car been driven on normal roads? coz mileage and the way you drive/conditions you put the car through is a bigger factor than how old the car is in relation to the problems.

just my humble opinions. no beef with you nor an ardent supporter of honda.

[chylld]

i'll be honest, one thing that i'm tired of is people telling me that i shouldn't expect bmw/lexus/mercedes standard quality from my car. I'M NOT. the standard i'm expecting is in line with a hyundai getz, holden astra, and toyota corolla, all of which i've previously owned. all of those cars were cheaper than this one, and didn't have anywhere near as many problems.

problems being petty or not is irrelevant. the reason i bought a new car is so that i didn't have any problems, major or minor. as a buyer of a new car i have a right to expect that the car i receive is of satisfactory quality, and if there are any problems, for them to be fixed under warranty service. for me at least, honda has come through on neither of these fronts.

godamit: i appreciate ur opinions. answers to your questions...

1) No. all of the problems are coming from areas i haven't touched. the only correlation would be the door rattles and centre console rattles, both of which i was able to fix with foam/dynamat.

2) i've used 2 types of soundproofing, dynamat and foam. the foam wouldn't have magnified any rattles, but there is a small possibility the dynamat could have lowered the resonant frequencies of all the panels to the same low frequency, possibly causing some kind of rattle... however i sincerely doubt that this is the case. (interesting concept though; is there any way to test this?)

3) no. i expect the standard of a hyundai getz (my previous car.) this car doesn't even come close to that standard. re being pedantic, i have every right to be pedantic, as does every other new car owner.

4) the mileage is under 18k km's, and the daily drive is the usual slow bumper-to-bumper crawl on typical sydney metro roads. i don't drive fast, and like my car to be as quiet and as comfortable as it can be.

[Shimian]

Damn, thats not a lemon, its a rotten lemon. The only problem I had was the drivers window wouldnt auto close occasionally. Luck of the draw or the QA management at the factory were half asleep

[steve88]

me my bro and sis have all had hondas between us, never ever had any problems with them (but we all have had EK, EG, EM's). guess the new ones are shithouse, i feel for ya

[aaronng]

Weren't you the one who pulled off every panel to dynamat your Civic? If so, then all the loose trim/rattles at the areas that you removed could have been caused by that.

BTW, warranty doesn't cover rattles.

[chylld]

Weren't you the one who pulled off every panel to dynamat your Civic? If so, then all the loose trim/rattles at the areas that you removed could have been caused by that.

i've already answered this above; the answer is no, the current rattles were not caused by me.

BTW, warranty doesn't cover rattles.

both dealers i've been to treat them as warranty issues; perhaps this is their goodwill at work? mind you they rarely actually do anything about them.

[Vinnie]

u got screwed over badly mate, jus unfortunate that that particular car and they way honda dealt with it has been so poor.

jus get rid of it and go buy a mazda or sumthin with better build quality

[aaronng]

both dealers i've been to treat them as warranty issues; perhaps this is their goodwill at work? mind you they rarely actually do anything about them.

It's goodwill. In your servicing and warranty booklet, it's stated explicitly that the warranty does not cover rattles. So any repairs that are carried out by your dealer with regards to rattles are not reimbursed by Honda Australia.
I went through my booklets and I can't find where it said, so eventhough I remember reading it somewhere. Well, for now I retract my statement until I can find where I read that rattles were not covered.

BTW, my friend's Civic Sport doesn't have the rattles that you describe, hasn't lost any trim parts and the driver door closes fine. If you have a lemon, then it is not representative that the made in Thailand Civic is inferior in quality (build quality and quality control). You need high number of failures across a large number of owners before you the model will be considered by HA to have a legitimate problem. Even the very common engine block problems in the SS blocks in the VX gen was not acknowledged by Holden as a legitimate defect.