Ok, so you're out car shopping. Well, maybe you're not, but just for the sake of argument, let's just say you are. No? Fine. Just forget the whole thing. I went car buying. Here's what I got and what happened and what they said.
First off, don't get me wrong. I have a Honda now and it I think it's the best small car you can buy today. I just bought it for the wrong reasons. The long and the short of it is, "Don't buy a Honda with a VTEC-E engine if you're expecting great gas mileage." Other cars get good gas mileage, too. In 1994, the Honda Civic VX had the highest EPA estimated mileage of any car, but the actual mileage may vary. Significantly. Down.
I'm sure Honda doesn't want you to hear this, but they lied. Flat out. No "white lie." No "little lie." They just lied. Overblown EPA estimates or not, it was wrong to say the EPA numbers were accurate, realistic, or a little low. I wanted to make sure people know about this, and WWW is a pretty good medium for it.
Here's the deal: I shopped around for a while in the summer of '94 for a new car. I looked at the Dodge Neon (which is what I thought I wanted), the Plymouth Sundance (no longer in production), the Geo Metro, the Geo Prism, the Subaru Loyale (no longer in production), the Toyota Tercel, the Saturn SL-1, the Saturn SL-2, and the Honda Civic. At first, I wanted 4 wheel drive in a car, but the dealers didn't want to cater to me for that. Then I found a couple of cars on the market that got really good gas mileage. That became the primary buying motivation, along with my insistence on a good quality hatchback without a lot of crap like air conditioning (in Rochester, NY it's necessary about three months of the year), automatic transmission, power steering, power locks, power windows, etc.
I didn't even bother with the Geo Metro, since it had some features I didn't want and the low price worried me about safety, handling, etc. I was surprised to find that I hated the Neon -- the window crank was inaccessable with the seat forward, the GM-based steering offered little road feel, the car had a lot of power, but was difficult to keep at a constant speed on slight downgrades (it accelerated and decelerated annoyingly, instead), the road noise was intolerable at high speeds, and my worn out '85 Escort felt safer at 85mph than the Neon. The Honda Civic, in contrast, was quite nice.
To its credit, Honda's four wheel double wishbone suspension gave a solid feel. The control layout was efficient and appealing. The interior room seemed immense compared to my Escort. Best of all, it was a hatchback, and I could get a basic model without feeling like I was driving a soapbox racer. I drove the Civic CX, but its 70 horsepower engine was as sluggish as my Escort. The Civic VX was perfect by comparison, or so I thought. The 92hp engine was not only faster, it also got 15% BETTER gas mileage. The 1994 Civic Coupe & Hatchback book says the EPA estimated mileage is 47 miles per gallon in the city and 56 miles per gallon on the highway. The engine, the tachometer, a chin spoiler, alloy wheels, and $2000 distinguish it from the Civic CX. The salesman, John Sargent of John Holtz Honda, 3955 West Henrietta Road, Rochester, NY 14623, told me the mileage is "just an estimate, although most people get at least 60 miles per gallon." He relayed a story about driving south out of state (Virginia, I believe) where he attained over 60 mpg in his own Civic VX.
I ended up getting a Honda Civic VX in June of 1994. It was exciting having a new car for the first time (although the realization of debt countered my elation). I drove very conservatively for the first 500 miles, then gradually returned to my normal driving habits by 1500 miles. I always keep track of gas mileage in a log book, a habit I picked up with the Escort. I was getting around 38/47, which was worse than a Civic CX. This was very discouraging. On the second checkup, I mentioned this and the response was "VEHICLE WORKS AS DESIGNED."
Since that early checkup, I have always mentioned the low mileage at scheduled maintenance visits. John Holtz Honda has never fixed it. They have never given me advice on driving technique that would help improve mileage. In fact, they claim the vehicle takes about 20,000 to 30,000 miles to break in completely, at which point the gas mileage will miraculously increase.
Well, it's now been over two years, and I've got almost 27,000 miles on the car.
At the 20,000 mile checkup, I made a list of the minor quirks the car has, hoping to help the technicians find whatever is causing my mileage problem. Of the nine items I had, I was told these were "normal:"
Two items were actually fixed:
In the 1995/1996 winter, I hit a record low of 24 miles per gallon which is almost HALF the expected city mileage. Even though I was riding on steel rims and snow tires, this is extraordinarily low.
Late this spring, I discovered Holtz Honda neglected to tell me they were selling me the California emissions car back in 1994. In 1994, New York state adopted the same emissions standards as California. In 1995, after much balking by auto manufacturers, the rules were revoked to be reinstated in 1996. Honda led me to believe I was getting a 49-state model that got 47 city/56 highway, rather than the 44 city/51 highway of the CA car. The latter figures, you'll note, are much closer to my actual mileage. The tip-off I got was that there was no shift indicator light. According to the EPA (I've extracted the important pieces of text from the 1994 data), the downrated California car has no shift indicator light, while the 49-state model does.
Since the winter, my average mileage is about 41 city/50 highway using 93 octane. I did manage to hit the 56 mile per gallon highway mileage once by using every efficiency trick I could, but I shouldn't have to do that.
After 27,000 miles on the stock Dunlop SP-23j tires, they were pretty much worn out. I have always been concerned with the dangerous wet traction of these tires, so I decided to switch to higher performance tires. Cornering, wet traction, dry traction, and braking have all been enhanced since I switched to Bridgestone Potenza RE-92 175/70HR13 (yes, that is a 130 mph H-speed rating) for only $50 each.
The only downside I see is the difference in rolling resistance. I did a test to see how well the stock tires rolled by coasting from 35 mph in a local park (on the road) for about a quarter mile. The end speed with the stock tires was consistently 28 miles per hour. I gained only a mile per hour by pulling in the mirrors, putting down the antenna, and closing the windows. With the new tires, the final speed was 23. I figure my mileage will drop because of this, but that's yet to be determined.
I advise the following to anyone looking for a new car, new Honda, or any high efficiency car in general:
A lot of the same points have come up during e-mail and talking with people about this, so I made a FAQ of sorts. I even tried to address some of those "Dear Crackpot," letters.
I hope this helps you on your own car buying experience. Send any comments and suggestions to jayce@beowulf.roc.servtech.com.
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Updated 1996-Oct-10
jayce@beowulf.roc.servtech.com