I bought this car back in January 2004. The car I had owned at the time was Chevy Lumina that I had had for a year. The car I had before that was a 1990 Honda Accord. The had 235,000 miles on it when the valves fried. I believe the root cause of the valves frying was when some crappy local shop replaced the timing belt, but not the not water pump. The water pump failed about a month later and the engine over heated. After that it began to burn oil. Anyway, when the valves fried, I didn’t want to put the money into it. I traded it plus $1000 to the mechanic for the Chevy Lumina. The Lumina only had like 100,000 miles. I put a little money into it to fix the AC and stuff. But after a year or so, I blew the head gasket. The car died when I was on the way to the airport. When I got home from my trip, I rented a car, and shopped around. By shopped around, I mean I went to my favorite Honda dealership. I ended up buying my 2000 Honda Civic VP for around $11,000.  The VP is a value package of the DX. The main difference I can see if that it has manual windows instead of power windows, and was about $1000-$2000 cheaper.
I love my Civic! I have pretty much given up on ever buying an American car again. I have had nothing but bad luck with them. About a month after my Chevy Lumina died, my wife’s Pontiac also blew a head gasket. We bought her a 2000 Honda Civic VP too.
My car is green, and my wife’s car is silver. This is actually the third green car I have owned. My first car was a green 1974 Ford Mustang II. My second car was a green 1967 Mustang coupe. It’s not like I have a thing for the color green. It’s just that I got great deals on them.
But besides being green in color, my Honda Civic gets great gas mileage! I used to drive fairly agressively, and managed to get about 28-32mpg. I have since taken up using hypermiling techniques and get about 40mpg in the Summer and about 32 in the Winter.
I am guessing my next car will be a Honda too. But my current Civic has only about 152,000 miles on it and it going great. It may be a while before I need a new car. I have been told that these new engines will get about 500,000 miles!

Posted by Rob in My Car on May 3rd, 2009 | No Comments