Is a Honda Civic Mk 9 a good choice?

We’ve got a 2016 Civic (1.8 Se Nav+) and we’re very happy with it, had an Accord for 13 years before that. You get used to the rear window pretty quickly.

 

These are all very encouraging features!

 

Budget?

 

One of the oldest vids on YouTube...

 

Apart from being a dull drive, I'm happy with my 1.8 mk9 Civic. Not sure I would if it didn't have the reversing camera though.

The premium sound system is terrible, and really needs to be upgraded if you like music in your car.

 

Too true! The Ford became so unreliable that I disposed of it via Webuyanycar. After starting it and looking it over the chap attempted to unlock it again to check the handbook was in the car. It wouldn't let him in. I mumbled something about the 'key battery needing to be replaced' and agreed the quickest possible payment option. The Honda, by contrast, has been totally reliable.

 

Can’t go wrong with a Honda, find one of the spec you want & buy.

 

No it's not. If you are going to go through all that, do it for yourself and keep it for a while. Otherwise, take the money and run.

 

My wife is now very keen on the EX version. Looks like the touchscreen and heated seats are good extras.

Can I ask any Civic owners. Does the USB input work for playing music from an iPhone? That's a key issue for me.

Sad to hear Fatmarley's assesment of the sound system. That's very disappointing. I find the sound on my 2005 Jazz quite acceptable, though very modest. But I might just not be expecting much. I know that when I was testing cars back in around 2010, others had much worse: the Golfs I tried had terrible stereos.

 

The other big question for me is what mileage is acceptable when buying a used car nowadays. Most of these 2013 models we're looking at have done about 80,000, maybe 90. It feels like a lot of miles to be throwing 8-9K on a car.

I'm also being told that the chip crisis is over so used prices will come down, which makes me wonder if this is a bad time to buy. In which case fixing the Jazz for a short while may be an option. Hmmmmm.

 

If you have the premium sound system you have full Bluetooth connectivity so you can just play music that way.m from your phone. That’s how I do it and it works just fine. The premium sound system is OK in my opinion but I’m never that hung up on sound in cars as it’s a crap environment for the last word in quality and I find the Honda system perfectly adequate. Others may see it differently of course but I don’t find it any worse than the Bose system I had in my Merc.

 

I've always been a Honda fan and owned two Civics in the past. In 2020 I bought a 2016 Mazda 3 and it has been just superb. Preferred the drive and build quality to the latest gen Civic which we were very tempted by. The 2 litre petrol engine is amazing - plenty of power but gives me around 50mpg combined. The only thing I can mark it down on is a very mediocre sound system.

 

The Premium sound system is okay and you get the reversing camera as well. Bluetooth is excellent. Ownership should be painless if it's serviced and looked after. The diesel is good but increasingly unloved so the 1.8 is probably the best option. It's no ball of fire but has still has a bit of character.

 

We were close to buying a Civic (circa 2013 or 2014) recently and took one out for a drive. We had also tried an earlier version a few years back. I really like Honda's having had two Accords in the past. The automatic Civics though are a bit laggy when pressing down the accerlator, this happened in the two we tried. I also felt a bit closed in on the driver's side and as previous posts have mentioned, the rear window isn't something that my wife felt she could get on with. We ended up going with another Golf after getting rid of an Audi A3 diesel due to the city restrictions coming to diesels here. The price of 2nd hand cars is incredible, this is the most we paid for a 2nd hand vehicle. Good luck with the search, there are plenty of automatic Civics out there.

 

More automatic Civics than, say, auto Focuses, perhaps, but I'm still finding they are thin on the ground. And as you say, I just can't believe the prices for 10 year old cars. I'm finding it a bit hard to stomach.

Did you hear a funny high pitched sound with the gear changes when you tried the 2013 Civic? I need to try another one because that put me off. My Jazz CVT was so smooth (before I forgot to get it oiled and it started grumbling).

 

Yes definitely wouldn't say no to a Mazda 3, though I suspect they're a bit out of price range.

 

It's below average miles for a 10 year old car, where you might expect 10k a year. It sticks in the throat because car prices right now are insane. Mine has done 195k miles in 13 years. Still going well, the only repairs in 2 years have been a heater blower motor, a faulty lock, and a faulty (seized) rear brake caliper that took out the pads and discs.

Mazdas from the noughties suffer corrosion more than most. Maybe they are now better, and maybe you don't intend to keep the thing over 10 years, but it's worth considering. The scandis and Germans are generally better, now that the awful run of dismal Mercedes paint quality circa 2000 has now seen those cars off.

 

I have casually observed that elderly Mazdas seem to start showing their age more quickly than Hondas or Toyotas.

 

You should not get any whine from the auto-box, mine doesn't whine at all. It should be noted that the auto box in the Mk9 is a conventional torque converter set up and not a continuously variable transmission such as the i-shift used in the Mk8 before Honda abandoned it two years prior to the end of the Mk8's run. As for it being sluggish it is an auto box wedded to a relatively small engine, it can't really be anything else, but I just use the paddles which even if you have it in D (Drive) can with a quick flick of the finger force the engine to drop a gear or two and then you can mash your foot to the floor and it picks up very well. Personally if I want to press on I drive it in S mode and use the paddles, but for normal tooling around D is fine and, as said, you can still use the paddles to force a better kickdown response, when you ease off it goes back to D mode automatically. It's quite sell sorted on that front, Honda have done a good job.

 

Very useful, thanks. And you've answered the reservations that pawnshop has voiced above, though I suspect for me they would be less of a concern. However he has got me thinking that I should try a Golf Mk7 before I make a decision. The reviews are so gushing, especially about the smooth ride.

Increasingly I find London driving dispiriting, and after the crash a week ago, minor though it was, I'm more anxious, conscious of the astounding number of idiots, and the thick energy of impatience in the air on certain roads. So I'm keen to make the experience smoother.

The Civic's 'fit like a glove' feeling would certainly help, though I suspect the Golf's drive would be much easier on speed bumps and have better visibility. On the other hand, there is Honda's reliability. So it's a tricky one to weigh up. I'll get some more test drives first.