Have I bought a "lemon"? Advice needed.
Discussion
Well, after 2 years of driving old sheds, I finally treated myself to a new (to me) car, an 18 month old Honda Civic.
So far, I'm mostly pleased. I think it looks very smart, it has all the features that I wanted and drives like a new car. The engine performs well and is very smooth (no misfiring). My only issue is the fuel consumption. Granted, it's pretty cold at the moment and I have the heater and heated seats on a lot but 30mpg is still pretty poor and way short of what Honda claim (50mpg). My car has the 1.8 petrol and the 5-speed manual. I realise that manufacturers figures are crazily optimistic but my wife has a Toyota that we bought new last year (so only a third of the mileage of this one) with a 1.8 petrol and an automatic (not a hybrid) and under the same conditions it consistently does 40mpg. I should also point out that I bought the car from somewhere 3 hours drive away, so it has had a decent highway run since I took ownership. Having owned a WRX and a 4.0 Jeep, I am no stranger to sub-30mpg but these vehicles had other advantages and I intended to keeps this car as a commuter for the next 4-5 years, so good fuel economy is important to me. The car does have an Econ button, which I haven't used as of yet (but part of the reason I like the car is its responsiveness and using this feature would detract from that), do you think using this will give me the kind of fuel consumption that I am expecting or have I just bought a lemon?
The car is still under warranty but what is the precedence on this? If the fuel consumption continues to be crap, can I reject the car? I don't see my local dealership being much help because the sales guys are upset that I didn't buy a new Civic from them (didn't want to spend an extra $30/month and they didn't have any suitable used ones) and a simple enquiry to the service department regarding warranty and roadside assistance cover was dealt with pretty poorly and the guy never did call me back. I actually bought the car from a Ford dealership, so I don't really see them being much help either.
What are my options?
1) Keep the car because in all other respects, I like it and it's exactly what I wanted and put up with the crappy fuel consumption (ironically, my previous car, an 11 year old Chrysler with a 2.7 V6 and 4-speed torque converter automatic did 35mpg on a run);
2) Take my issue up with Honda and see if they can resolve it;
3) Level with the (Ford) dealership that sold it to me and see if they can get me into something of similar age and mileage for a similar payment (my second choice would have been a Ford Focus) but a new one was too much and there weren't any suitable used ones in my preferred spec (Titanium) at the time of purchase.
This is my 14th car and overall I've been pretty lucky with previous purchases. The only other "lemon" that I bought was a 7 year old Golf but that was only a 4 grand car, this one is considerably more and I'm also paying 6% interest on my loan and I would have expected an 18 month old Honda to be a pretty "safe" buy! Any advice would be gratefully received.
So far, I'm mostly pleased. I think it looks very smart, it has all the features that I wanted and drives like a new car. The engine performs well and is very smooth (no misfiring). My only issue is the fuel consumption. Granted, it's pretty cold at the moment and I have the heater and heated seats on a lot but 30mpg is still pretty poor and way short of what Honda claim (50mpg). My car has the 1.8 petrol and the 5-speed manual. I realise that manufacturers figures are crazily optimistic but my wife has a Toyota that we bought new last year (so only a third of the mileage of this one) with a 1.8 petrol and an automatic (not a hybrid) and under the same conditions it consistently does 40mpg. I should also point out that I bought the car from somewhere 3 hours drive away, so it has had a decent highway run since I took ownership. Having owned a WRX and a 4.0 Jeep, I am no stranger to sub-30mpg but these vehicles had other advantages and I intended to keeps this car as a commuter for the next 4-5 years, so good fuel economy is important to me. The car does have an Econ button, which I haven't used as of yet (but part of the reason I like the car is its responsiveness and using this feature would detract from that), do you think using this will give me the kind of fuel consumption that I am expecting or have I just bought a lemon?
The car is still under warranty but what is the precedence on this? If the fuel consumption continues to be crap, can I reject the car? I don't see my local dealership being much help because the sales guys are upset that I didn't buy a new Civic from them (didn't want to spend an extra $30/month and they didn't have any suitable used ones) and a simple enquiry to the service department regarding warranty and roadside assistance cover was dealt with pretty poorly and the guy never did call me back. I actually bought the car from a Ford dealership, so I don't really see them being much help either.
What are my options?
1) Keep the car because in all other respects, I like it and it's exactly what I wanted and put up with the crappy fuel consumption (ironically, my previous car, an 11 year old Chrysler with a 2.7 V6 and 4-speed torque converter automatic did 35mpg on a run);
2) Take my issue up with Honda and see if they can resolve it;
3) Level with the (Ford) dealership that sold it to me and see if they can get me into something of similar age and mileage for a similar payment (my second choice would have been a Ford Focus) but a new one was too much and there weren't any suitable used ones in my preferred spec (Titanium) at the time of purchase.
This is my 14th car and overall I've been pretty lucky with previous purchases. The only other "lemon" that I bought was a 7 year old Golf but that was only a 4 grand car, this one is considerably more and I'm also paying 6% interest on my loan and I would have expected an 18 month old Honda to be a pretty "safe" buy! Any advice would be gratefully received.
AdeTuono said:
I would try the Econ button before getting arsey with the dealer.
I'll certainly try this out next time I take it on a decent run. Yes, I would expect the fuel consumption to drop to 30mpg if I was winging it down B-roads but I live in Canada, so most of my driving is on straight roads at constant speed with little or no traffic. I know that manufacturers figures are rarely achieved in the real world but the Toyota seems like a fair comparison and with me driving, I average 38-40mpg in the Toyota (the Civic so far has been about 30% worse)! I tested another competitor product with a 2.0 engine and 6-speed auto for 24 hours and I was getting 35-36mpg even in that!
ecsrobin said:
My UK spec 1.8 petrol 6 speed civic gets the manufacturers claimed MPG of 51mpg however I choose not to allow it get to that figure on a regular basis if I'm between 38-45mpg then I'm happy.
Didn't realise that the UK-spec car was 6-speed. I would be pretty happy with 38-45mpg. It does feel like it could do with a 6th gear (at 70mph, it's doing 3000rpm) but only the sporty Si version with a 2.4 litre engine has a 6-speed box. Thanks, I feel a bit more reassured that my car isn't a lemon but hope that my fuel consumption improves with the warmer weather and having initially been a bit disappointed with fuel consumption on my wife's Toyota, I now find it all the more impressive! It's true, I filled the Civic up for $40 on Friday for $40 (about 20 English pounds), so I guess it's not the end of the world. I just thought that petrol engine efficiency had come a bit further than that and the Civic has an excellent reputation for fuel economy here. Perhaps not a fair comparison but my wife's Fiat 500 1.2 used to do 50mpg consistently and last time when I was in England after being initially annoyed with the car hire company for giving me a petrol rather than the diesel that I booked, I was very impressed with the fuel economy of the VW Golf 1.2 TSI that they gave me. It averaged 45mpg and I did 1000 miles on two tanks of fuel! Yes, I could own a V8 pickup/SUV and fill it up for about the same price as my WRX in the UK but they're still expensive to buy and I still earn in $, so it's still painful to spend $100 to fill it up and the reality is that anyone with a reasonably lengthy commute still uses a normal car or small SUV for this reason.Incidentally, would using higher grade fuel benefit fuel economy potentially? They don't specify that you use a particular fuel (regular here is 87 Octane) but higher octanes are available.
Just a quick update. I filled it up on Saturday and did my own calculations. The trip computer was weirdly being a bit pessimistic, my actual average mpg was more like 32 or 33mpg rather than 30mpg (I should check this out on my wife`s Toyota too, as maybe her trip computer is overly optimistic)! Still a bit disappointing though. I`m going to run it in Eco mode this week and see if that helps. So far no difference mpg-wise (and a negligible difference to performance actually), the only thing that happened was that it dropped the climate control temperature from 25C to 22C. Would higher Octane fuel help (regular fuel, which I was told would be fine here is 87 Octane).
austinsmirk said:
If I paid the pittance that the U.S. or Canada does for petrol id be driving anything with a minimum of 12 cylinders.
Not chugging about in my diesel !
Fair enough. Big country means big distances though. If I leave town, I can pretty much drive for 3 hours in any direction before I reach another city and there can be a fair shortage of petrol stations on the way (in my old job, I frequently had to turn around and go back to town for petrol because the next petrol station was an hour away and I wouldn`t have made it)! I will do the proper thing and add a V8 pickup or muscle car to the white goodman fleet in the next couple of years though.Not chugging about in my diesel !
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