Moving up from a 1998 to 2012 Civic

C

CTGull

Active Member
20
13
Connecticut
In 2 days I pick up a 2012 Civic LX with 8,400 miles to replace my 1998 Civic DX with 218,000 miles. It is being handed down to our 17 year old son. The paint is shot, blistered and cracking, but it runs great.

This will be our 7th Honda (wife and I) and my first newish car in 15 years. They've all lasted 11 years or more, except for that crappy 1978 Accord. I want to be still driving this car in 10 years. I bought the Honda Care warrantee, yea it's expensive, but I'm covered for the next 7 years.

I'm not a big fan of all the new technology, more stuff to break. But I'm looking forward to using and learning from it to average 40 MPG since 80% of my commute is highway.

The 2012 Civic has only had the oil changed once at 4,900 miles, 13 months ago. I asked the dealer to change it before I pick it up.

Saturday morning can't come soon enough!
 
Congrats and welcome to the site. I'll be interested to see if you can get 40mpg on your highway commute. I'm not saying it'll be impossible, but I've not really seen many get results that high. Some have reported into the 40's off the imid on short trips though. There tends to be a handful of complaints over city driving where people are in the low/mid 20's instead of 30's.
 
Welcome!
As for saving gas and new technology, the best setting is to not use the TC, and to use the CC. Correct tyre pressure is very important.
For safety reasons when raining, do use TC, and don't use CC.
(Traction control/cruise control).

I have a 2012, And the best highway mileage I've clocked is 48.9, and the normal is 38 to 43.
As for combo city/highway about 33 mpg.
 
webby said:
Congrats and welcome to the site. I'll be interested to see if you can get 40mpg on your highway commute. I'm not saying it'll be impossible, but I've not really seen many get results that high. Some have reported into the 40's off the imid on short trips though. There tends to be a handful of complaints over city driving where people are in the low/mid 20's instead of 30's.
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As for how well ppl do on getting high mileage, there is a lot of technique and patience required. As @webby said a lot of ppl don't work at getting better mileage. Of course it helps to be retired and not in a hurry, but I do stay with-in the speed limit or 5 above.
 
My 1998 Civic still gets 35 MPG (calculated). If I can get 35 with that I'm sure I can average near 40 with the 2012 Civic. The winter gas and cold temps kill the mileage. I get about 28 MPG in the winter.

I normally drive like an old lady so I'll probably use the Econ mode on the highway and turn it off in the city (mostly back roads). When I test drove the car I made a comment that my old car had better throttle response. He noticed the Econ mode was on. I turned it off and the car felt better. It's going to take some time to learn about the car.

I have snow tires on my 1998 Civic. It's fun to drive in the snow, and we've had a lot of it in CT this year. I'm hoping we don't get much in the next few weeks. I'm not buying snow tires for the 2012 Civic until next winter.
 
I forgot to mention. We had a 1992 Civic that we picked up the day after we got married and drove 1500 miles on our honeymoon. Got 49MPG on the first tank!! It averaged in the 40's for the next 10 years until we had to sell it to buy the 2002 Odyssey after having the 3rd kid. 3 car seats don't fit in the back of a 92 Civic or a 87 Prelude. Yea I've had a lot of Hondas!
 
webby said:
Some results posted here
http://9thcivic.com/forum/threads/2012-civic-mpg-share-your-current-gas-mileage.2690/

Just know the imid is not accurate. I've seen plus or minus 10% compared to hand calculating at the pump.
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I don't know the percentages, but I've been use a hand calculator to get my mpg and writing down the results since buying my car new....... and cross check it with my cars imid, and it's very seldom a variance that is more than a one mile difference........
There's always the possibility that my car is exceptional, but at least the numbers don't lie.
 
Did you get an auto or a manual transmission?
 
webby said:
Did you get an auto or a manual transmission?
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Auto. I had a stick with the 87 Prelude and 92 Civic, but my wife has had some injuries that would have driving a stick annoying. We're early 50's, I'm not sure how I'll be doing in 10 years driving 40 miles per day with a stick. The manual transmission is very hard to find in CT. It makes it harder to steal!!
 
Monk said:
I don't know the percentages, but I've been use a hand calculator to get my mpg and writing down the results since buying my car new....... and cross check it with my cars imid, and it's very seldom a variance that is more than a one mile difference........
There's always the possibility that my car is exceptional, but at least the numbers don't lie.
Click to expand...

Up until a few years ago I recorded miles & gallons for years. Now I just do it once in a while to check.
 
webby said:
Some results posted here
http://9thcivic.com/forum/threads/2012-civic-mpg-share-your-current-gas-mileage.2690/

Just know the imid is not accurate. I've seen plus or minus 10% compared to hand calculating at the pump.
Click to expand...

I found a thread like that in another Civic forum. Interesting reading with some people never getting out of the 20's and others sometimes getting 50's. It makes it sound like some cars are defective but it's probably all the fault of the driver. My wife is on and off the gas peddle every couple of seconds. She doesn't listen to anyone but herself, so the Odyssey gets 16MPG when it should be 18-20.
 
I bought the car yesterday. The final cost was a bit more than I expected. Every little thing adds up.

I had originally gotten the HondaCare 7 year/100k mile warrantee but the salesman (who we bought the 2010 Odyssey from 1.5 years ago) said I could up it to 120k miles for a bit more. 100k/7 years equals about 14k miles per year. I normally drive about 13k/year but we will be using this car most of the time and only use the Odyssey for my wife to go to work and when we need the higher capacity. 120k/year is about 17k/year, closer to what I will probably be doing. The 2010 Odyssey already has 73k miles on it, she bought it at 43k and has put 30k on it in 1.5 years, a lot higher than we expected. I'm hoping it lasts long enough to fully pay it off. Off track. The business manager said the extra 20k miles would be $354 more which I went back and forth on. Then he lowered it to $200, making it a no brainer. I also got GAP insurance, just in case the car gets wrecked. The insurance will only pay what it is worth, much less than the loan with all of the extras. The GAP insurance will pay the difference, which could be many thousands of dollars. Just in case.

I had gotten a loan pre-approved rate of 3.49% from my Credit Union before we went to the dealer. They ended up getting a rate of 2.54% from a different local Credit Union. The savings almost covered the extra 20k miles on the warrantee and the GAP insurance.

I saw on the dealers web site that they had another 2012 Civic LX with 8200 miles (mine had 8400) for $1100 more. More the going rate for a car with this low mileage. I never asked why. I found out why AFTER I bought it and walked out to leave. There is a dent in the A pillar on the passenger side. I somehow never saw that corner when looking at the car. It's not a big deal to me, I'll never see that side and I'm only looking for reliable transportation.

The trip odometers and mileage had never been reset since the car was built, both matching the main odometer. Which means the MPG was never reset since it was new. It read 23.8. A lot lower than I expected. Again, I never noticed it until I was leaving. I all city stop and go traffic (lights), in 40 miles, I'm getting 22.6 MPG so who ever owned it rarely got on the highway. I'm amazed how sitting at all the lights kills the mileage! Quickly, when you only have 20-30 miles on it. I can't wait to get it up on the highway and bring that average up in the 30's! I can forget about averaging 40, that's never going to happen unless I do 95% highway. It'll probably be more like 60-70%.

With the more aerodynamic shape the rear visibility is much worse than the 98 Civic. Visibility with the mirrors is good, it's when turning my head and looking backwards when backing up in a parking lot that it's much worse. The rear pillars block everything. My one neurotic fear is that I'm going to back into a car when backing out of a parking space. Of course in 33 years of driving I've never done it.

We're expecting 3-6 inches of snow tonight so I may end up taking the 98 Civic tomorrow, it has snow tires. We're expecting snow 3 days this week. WHY???!!! I want to drive my car!!! I knew not trading in the old Civic to give to our son would be a good idea but I don't want to drive it much in the future.

After driving 10 miles I hit the ECON button and plan on leaving it on. After hitting it the mileage almost instantly went up 2 points. I normally drive slow anyway, it fits me perfect. I'm having fun watching all the MPG gages. And sometimes the road.

I'm a bit surprised to not find the outside temp reading on the iMID, an EX only feature. I found a DIY to add it but it involves taking most of the dash apart to add the wires to the tach connector. Not something I'm going to do in the near future. But maybe!

I was also shocked to find the controls on the left side of the steering wheel don't control the stereo volume and the CD/AUX tracks. I haven't done the research yet but maybe that's another feature they withheld for the EX only. I can live with hitting the buttons on the dash.

The dealer had a Dyno Blue EX on their lot for $100 less than this car. I would have rather had that color and some of the features, but it has 28k miles more than mine. That's 2 years of driving. I plan on keeping this car for at least 10 years. I'd rather have the extra 2 years of miles left in it than a few fancy features.

Overall I'm very happy with the car.
 
I wouldn't be concerned about the mpg on that car since it's probably gone though a lot of idling while ppl are talking to the sales ppl., and other things similar.
 
Your steering wheel controls aren't working for audio?
 
CTGull said:
No. Is that an EX option? I was just about to do a search.
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I did some reading on the Honda website. The LX has audio controls on the left side of the steering wheel. Mine don't work for the audio only, they work fine for the iMID. I saw there was a recall for something like this for the Hybrid only, a software patch. Maybe it applied to the LX in some cases. If I have time I'll stop at the dealer after work.
 
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