Honda’s single greatest moment ever? The fall of 1983, when it rocked the world, releasing a whole family of new Civics. As in four discrete cars, all with different bodies, something no one had done before: a four-door sedan, the hatchback, the outrageous little CRX, and the brilliant tall-boy wagon. The CRX and wagon were the standouts, both of them original and downright revolutionary. Ever since, I’ve debated endlessly which was the more brilliant of the two. Today, I will debate on behalf of the wagon; another day, it may well be CRX. I may never fully decide. Just as well.
With today’s high-tech based development capabilities, Honda’s Civic foursome would not be quite the big deal it was then. Manufacturers spin platform variations by the dozens. But in 1983, what Honda did was unprecedented and momentous. And not just because there were four of them, but also because each one was so superb: the best in class, four times over.
The tall boy wagon, marketed as the Shuttle outside of the US and as the WagoVan during some of those years in the US, was a marvel of space utilization. It was the second Honda tall boy, after the City/Jazz of 1981. And where did the inspiration come from?
I wasn’t there, but as best as I can piece together, the Japanese tall boy school started with Giorgetto Giugiaro’s 1978 Lancia Megagamma concept. And Honda wasn’t the only one looking at it.
The 1981 Nissan Stanza Wagon/Prairie (CC here) appeared the same year as the Honda City. And it clearly shows the styling direction that the Civic wagon would also adopt. The Stanza wagon/Prairie was perhaps as equally brilliant in its clever use of space as the Civic, but it was also one size larger. And it wasn’t nearly as much fun to drive.
To put the Civic wagon in perspective, both size and otherwise, its instructive to note that the prior-generation Fit/Jazz are very similarly sized as the Civic wagon, starting with the same 96.5″ wheelbase and 157″ length. And they both have 1.5 L fours, although the power for the Fit is naturally up substantially from the 76 hp in the still-carburated 1.5 four of the Civic. But then the Civic wagon was some 500 lbs lighter. A good idea is worthy of repetition.
The interior space of the 1984 Civic wagon was simply a revelation at the time. Small cars were really small then; tiny, cramped, and their rear seats were a place to just avoid, if at all possibles. I’m not speaking in abstractions either: we had a gen2 Civic wagon, like this one here, and then got one of the brand new gen 3 wagons in the fall of 1983. The difference was just startling all the way round, but no more so than the rear seat. Wow; practically a limousine! A place to enjoy, not endure, should the need or desire arise. And it did; every so often on a road trip, I’d pull over, have Stephanie drive, and I’d plant myself between our two kids in the back, then about two and four. Quality time, in the Civic wagon.
When I can happily hop in the back seat of a car, and have truly unencumbered leg space, I really take note. And this was in a car 157″ long; a tall boy for a tall boy indeed. And it quite explains why I now have a gen1 Xb, perhaps the ultimate successor to the Civic Wagon. Once a tall boy lover…
Our Civic wagon was Stephanie’s car, which meant an automatic was mandatory. Probably just as well, or I might have just co-opted it altogether. I was driving a T-Bird Turbo Coupe at the time, and we used that on some of our many road trips due to it’s ability to gobble up the Mojave Desert with a hearty appetite. But despite the modest power and automatic, the Honda was always a blast to drive, if serious speed was not on the to-do list. I have very happy memories indeed of carving up and down Topanga Canyon with the Civic. And its stellar visibility made it an unbeatable city car for squirting in and out of LA traffic. All it needed was a stick and an extra 25 hp or so, and it could have been the world’s greatest car ever.
Ours was a first-year fwd version. But Honda soon upped the ante with 4WD. This necessitated a stick, so it wouldn’t have been kosher in our household anyway. Honda even made it semi-off road capable by blessing it with a sixth gear, a “Super-low” granny first. Through the 1986 model year, the rear axle was engaged via push button. But for 1987, Honda added a viscous differential and made it full-time AWD, now called Real Time 4WD. The Honda wagon was now the spiritual predecessor to the CRV.
I can’t properly explain it, but vehicle packaging is a peculiar and intense obsession of mine. Maybe it’s something about coming from a mountainous region, where folks need to be efficient with resources. How else to explain the Swiss Army knife? And the Civic Wagon was the automotive equivalent of that device. Able to do almost any automotive job one could ask of it, especially with 4WD: leap tall buildings… and get 35 mpg in the doing.
Maybe I’m losing my objectivity here, but if someone were to ask me what the ultimate automotive jack-of-all-trades was, I just don’t know what else I could come up with. Help me out here…how could literally every automotive quality be better rolled up into one small bundle? The rear legroom of a long-wheelbase Town Car, off-road capable, sports car handling, reliability, efficiency…enough already. It must have had some vices.
I wasn’t too wild about the checked upholstery. And the front seat cushion was a bit too short for my long thighs. The luggage space was a bit short, due to that rear-seat leg room; that’s what racks were invented for. I’m running out of gripes. Oh, right; it probably rusted like mad in the Salt Belt. Nobody’s perfect, but some sure come mighty close.
My grandfather owned two in a row of the 2nd generation Civic Wagons. It was called the Civic Shuttle over here. Both were 4wd and with the 125 hp 1.6. If I could only find one that wasn’t rusted to death now
. I now own a 2nd gen CR-V, and even if it’s grown out of it’s original proportions (though not too much, compared to other cars growth in the same 20 years) it’s still a very nicely packaged car for it’s external size 
Of these, I liked the Corolla wagons best, probably because a friend owned one and I rode in it regularly.
At the time though, I was into K-Cars and ignored almost everything else.
@Zackman: Think about all of the variations of just the K-car that were produced. Not H-bodies or T vans, just the K-car. 2 door coupe, 4 door sedan, a four door wagon, and a convertible.
This is where Honda and Chrysler were (probably unwittingly) working along the same lines. For probably the same reason. I don’t know if Honda had any idea that the Yen would appreciate immensely in the 80′s & 90′s, but it made sense to rationalize a platform and all that goes along with it (engines, transmissions, bodies, etc.).
FWIW, Lido was in a bind. He had taken all of that government secured, but privately sourced bank money and had to make something, anything work out of it. He went back to the basics, as all car companies did the same thing at one time. Develop a chassis, and put several bodies on it and amortize the “black parts” as quickly as possible. Hence, the K-car in all its K-variations, plus the Laser/Daytona, the Lancer/LeBaron and the minivans.
But here’s where the story differs. The Civic line of 1984 was absolutely brilliant in a conventional way. No doubt about it, they had done an excellent job of putting these tiny cars together into a coherent package, the way they wish they could do today. These cars solidified Honda’s reputation as a car manufacturer worldwide and set the stage for their future successes. Recently they seem to be rudderless and I wonder how long an independent entity like Honda will remain that way.
Chrysler, also had some brilliant ideas and vehicles back in the day, but lost their way much sooner, They’ve found a rescuer in FIAT, but like Honda, I fear for the independent spirit that once occupied Auburn Hills.
Who could have imagined this in the Reagan years?
Wow, Geo, you just proved how dumb I am in the depth of car history! I’m not sure if any OEM could do what Chrysler and Honda did 30 years ago today, as it is a much more regulated auto world, but I agree with you that the Asian OEMs had it over the domestics in ingenuity. I hated the “foreign” cars back then, not in any sense of nationalism, but just supporting domestic-built stuff. The Asian offerings, while “tinny” in some aspects, had “something” no domestic had – a finesse in the details in how well they ran, quietness and fit and finish.
Whatever Lido did to Chrysler – he had “something” too – which is why I drove Chrysler products exclusively for over 20 years, head gasket issues notwithstanding! Maybe I was just a sucker, as I could have bought a nice, used Impala RWD coupe B body like I secretly desired all along!
Oh well…
Love the way the alloys on the wagon aren’t pointing in the same direction.
I think someone lifted the suspension of this one, moving it through its travel to places it was never supposed to be on a straight and level road.
Look at the spokes on the wheels – presumably they went to the trouble to make LH & RH versions
What does it mean that I noticed the toe on the back wheel and didn’t notice the spokes of the wheels? It could be related to the filter I need to be able to stand seeing aftermarket wheels on quality cars.
Some family friends had two of these in a row when I was growing up. Actually, they had them at the same time, and may have had another one later as well. They also had a Toyota Van in their collection.
Two different inlaws had a matching pair of these when new. They were good, good little cars. I drove one of them once (a stick) and I remember it as not that powerful, but really fun to zip around with. One brother in law is 6’5″ and was very comfy in his Civic. In fact, he had trouble finding another car that fit him as well.
Since buying my 07 Honda Fit, I have considered it the spiritual successor to that Civic wagon, but I had no idea that the dimensions were so similar.
There is a slightly newer one of these down the street from me. It was owned by an elderly retired electrical engineer who has since passed away. His widow keeps it in the garage, but it is virtually never driven. It will make a great car for someone someday.
Love these little cars, and I’d be at the dealer tomorrow if the Fit had 4×4 as the Civic Wagon did. I never got to own one of these, and all the ones I’ve found here in the NE have too many rust issues. I did own an ’83 predecessor wagon, and that was also a surprisingly good little car. What it lacked in style it made up for in space for three friends and their junk, and cruising happily at 85 all day while getting low-mid 30′s on the Texas plains. It was a sewing machine for an engine, but it was smooth, reliable, and with the 5 speed, tons of fun to rev up.
These Hondas were brilliant designs but I would like to make a couple of points for conversations sake. In 1983, the Yen was at 360 to the dollar so Honda could afford to do four different body styles and still make fat profits on the cars, which were never really cheap. In fact, in real terms a Civic is much cheaper now than in was in 1983 and the Fit is a screaming deal. I doubt Honda makes anything on base Fits since the US dollar is at Y75 now.
In 1983, Honda was heads above their competition. There was simply nothing to compete with them. Now there is loads of competition.
I have a Gen 1 Fit and it is a brilliant package for around the city. It is mostly used as a light delivery vehicle and for that, it is perfect. It is not, however, the kind of car I want to take on a long trip. The ride is too hard and the noise levels too high but for scooting around town the car is an absolute scream to drive. So it doesn’t have 300 hp, it is the smile factor is what counts. It city traffic, it is more entertaining than my Acura. That said, I don’t drive it that much because my Acura TL is better for long days in the car and presents to clients better.
Honda bashing is de rigeur in the car rags these days but I still swear by their products. They have never let me down and I am always amazed how cleverly they are engineered. Driving anything else in their price class just shows how good they are. In a way Honda has grown up with its target market. I would have loved a CRX in 1985 but as a late boomer, I am not going to buy one now. I would buy a loaded Civic, though.
I prefer the next generation of the wagon. It looks much cleaner — still surprisingly contemporary. We’ve held onto a 1991 because we’ve never been able to find another vehicle that does so well what this one does.
The Fit is plausible but it doesn’t have quite as much interior room, the gas mileage is mediocre and the styling is overdone. Honda has jumped the shark.
I’ve yet to see a comparison test where the Fit doesn’t either return the best mileage in its class or come up one mpg short while having better performance in other objective measures than whatever beat it. It doesn’t have an advertiser friendly EPA score because it is geared for the real world instead of a dyno test. You can drive one like you stole it and still get 32 mpg. Many ’40 MPG!’ cars can’t even come close to that. I’m concerned that Honda is caving to the ignorance of the market and preparing direct injected CVT cars that will have the why-tech features people are lauding in cars that don’t perform as well and won’t last as long.
The tall Civic wagons were great, but they weren’t strong sellers in the US. I worked at a Honda dealer in 1989, and we barely stocked them. There was a back lot holding dozens and dozens of new Civic sedans, and none of them spent much time there. Honda would send a few Real-Time 4wd wagons right before the first snow, and they’d be sold for whatever the dealer asked. The rest of the time they weren’t to be seen, and nobody asked about them. Somehow the appeal of an SUV-styled CR-V is year round, so that’s the form the Civic wagon takes to this day.
These Civics really were 4 different cars. Something as simple as the brakes were a nightmare. Every version had different brake components and even within a particular version there may be 2 choices for front brake pads depending on what calipers Honda had in-stock when that particular car was built.
The “real-time” 4wd is a bad joke. You would think it was designed by Germans considering how mechanically complex they made a system that would have been cheaper, easier, more durable, and much safer to do with some simple electronics.
It is not a viscous coupling but a hydraulically controlled clutch. There are pumps connected to the input and output shafts of the clutch assembly. The output of the front pump feeds the input of the rear pump and vice versa. Connected to those passages between the pumps is a servo that engages the clutch. When everything is turning at the same speed no pressure is built up between the pumps. When one shaft spins faster than the other pressure builds to the point where it engages the clutch via the servo. So a little slip and the clutch only partially engages. Once wheel speeds have equalized for an amount of time the pressure in the system bleeds back to zero and the clutch disengages. So in slippery conditions the system is constantly in and out of 4wd wearing out the clutch and making for a car that doesn’t handle consistently. Granted many electronically controlled 4wd systems will do the same in and out of 4wd in a similar manner, though some do have a switch to put it in 4wd vs Auto 4wd.
That troublesome clutch and pump system (along with crappy water pumps) was what made a friend of mine swear off of owning another Honda. He bought one of these for his wife when they started having kids. Within a couple of months of buying it used the water pump went big time and his wife kept driving it till it died. So a “low mile” imported from Japan engine went in once he could find one. Then winter came along and we had snow, and he found that despite the fact that the car was wearing the “real-time 4wd badges” it couldn’t make it out of his driveway as the front tires just spun and the rears did nothing. So out came the trans and what did he find inside….. NOTHING, somewhere along the line it apparently failed and rather than spend the money to fix it right they just gutted it and put it back together. After another lengthy search he found a used unit to stuff in it. He did drive it another year or so to ease the pain of the amount of money he spent on it. But he swore no more Hondas because of that car.
I have to wonder how many of the early real-time equipped cars that are still on the road will actually still engage that rear axle.
A friend of mine had an XJ Wagoneer in 1993. It had less than 100,000 miles. It was a family hand-me-down from parents living in Wilmington, NC. They probably never engaged Selec-Trac 4WD. When it snowed in Charlottesville, VA, my friend hit the switch. Nothing happened. Not just when he hit the switch, but no matter how the owners manual was interpreted, nothing could be done to get any reaction from the Wagoneer relating to the Selec-Trac switch. I’ve seen similar things happen with the older big Wagoneers too. It is enough of a common occurrence that PJ O’rourke commented that 4WD pickups have levers that either refuse to engage 4WD or refuse to disengage 4WD. If I had your friend’s experience with a Honda, I’d probably not want another one either. Judging them by one obviously second rate used car might not mean much though. I’ve seen a 1990ish Real Time wagon that has had its power doubled without touching anything further downstream than the clutch. It was used as if it were a factory rally car, and the 20 year old drivetrain worked like it was designed for it.
I see a lot of trucks with electrically operated 4wd that doesn’t work when it is needed. Much of the time it is due to the fact that it went many miles and/or a long time with never being engaged and the motor or linkage connected to the motor seized up. If you look in most owners manuals of trucks so equipped you’ll find they recommend engaging 4wd for a short time on a regular basis just to prevent such occurrences.
Of course that is far different than finding that the parts to engage the 4wd had been removed.
In the case of my friends Civic it wasn’t an “old” used car, it was only about 4 years old when he bought it and he bought it from a local Honda dealer.
So, two huge “nut behind the wheel” problems, and your friend blames… the car maker? Seems a bit misplaced.
The fact that his wife kept driving it until the engine quit was certainly her fault no doubt about that. The fact that it failed on a car that new that supposedly didn’t have many miles on it is an issue IHMO.
As far as the 4wd issues it is pretty hard to know what exactly went down there and whether it was due to abuse or not.
The fact that the Honda dealers regularly sell water pumps as “maintenance” items with timing belt replacements, he bought it at a Honda dealer that supposedly did that 60K service before selling it to him, and then told him to pound sand (over both issues) was more what torqued his nuts.
Considerign they still use the same system on the CR-V’s (although updated with the 2005 facelift, I think) there are probably 100′s of thousand still on the road that engage the rear wheels when needed. This was never intended to use for serious offroading thogh, and it has a weakness when it comes to differing wheel-diameter because of more worn front tires… (and , as someone mentioned on a CR-V forum, you can over-inflate the front tires as much as you like, you will never wear out the center-threads first…)
I’m willing to be that since it is a clutch system and clutches wear out that a large percentage of them with lots of miles cant transfer any meaningful torque to those rear wheels anymore. If it can it probably takes a fair amount of wheel spin to build enough pressure to transmit significant amounts of torque. Outside of a Honda dealer or specialist I doubt there are very few people who are even aware that there is a clutch in that system that will eventually wear out.
Honda knew it and for this reason later rationalised all their products for commonality. This is the reason there are so few models available now.
At 360 Yen to a dollar there was little reason to control costs. By 1985 it was Y150 and 1990, Y100 to a dollar. Causes major changes, like making Honda cars in Ohio and Ontario.
@canucknucklehead: “At 360 Yen to a dollar there was little reason to control costs. By 1985 it was Y150 and 1990, Y100 to a dollar. Causes major changes, like making Honda cars in Ohio and Ontario.”
Making cars in Ohio and Ontario started long before the Yen started its rise, which is why I’ve always regarded those as PR plants. Hey look how wonderful we are, we’re building a plant in your city/state/country.
Until of course, someone else is cheaper yet. Witness Vietnam, Malaysia et al. According to TTAC, Canada will see some Chinese made Fits imported there soon. TTAC’s Bertel Schmitt used to favor the idea that GM would be the first to import Chinese cars into North America. Looks like Honda will beat them to the punch.
@geozinger:
I think you overlook all the hard feelings from the very-public competition Honda staged to select its site. States and cities were tripping all over each other offering free land and tax breaks to locate there; it was a quite-acrimonious spectacle. I remember, living in Cleveland, there were public questions of whether Ohio was a winner or a loser for getting the plant, given all the tax breaks given.
I think it was Honda’s strategy to protect itself from world currency deviations. If it was cheaper to build in Japan, production would focus there. If cheaper in the States, then there. I expect there were some plans as well to move auto production into other worldwide Honda plants if the need arose.
@JPT: I remember those arguments rather well actually. I really didn’t want to get into all of that, as I’m the “they all rust out guy” already. But since you bring it up I will address that. The tax breaks and all of the other stuff that gets lumped into one of these things is just obscene. IIRC (and I may not) but didn’t Marysville outbid (Hammond? Columbus?) Indiana to get the first Honda plant?
When I lived in Georgia, Mercedes Benz was shopping states for a place to put their new assembly plant for the ML SUV. Alabama won the bid. The state bought the land, put in the roads, the water & sewer lines, the electrical grid, and on top of all that, gave MB a 15 or 20 year tax abatement. The statehouse in Atlanta was aghast, but only probably because Alabama out bid Georgia.
This same kind of thinking is what pissed me off at GM for so long. In the mid 80′s, it was becoming known that GM was going to start the Saturn project. GM officials went around to all of the different towns in the Rust Belt and entertained offers from all of them. All the while knowing they had already chosen a site in Tennessee for the new plant. Why do this to these communities?
Everyone plays this game, but to me it’s a race to the bottom of the toilet.
/rant
“PR plants” I hope you haven’t forgotten about the VER (Voluntary Export Restrictions). That was undoubtedly the biggest single motivation for the Japanese to open plants in the US. They feared things might only get worse as their market share kept increasing. They really had no choice.
And their US plants are/were madly profitable. It wasn’t too long ago that there were some credible info that Honda (and Toyota) were generating 90% of their profits in the US.
Ask Nissan how much they’ve minted with Smyrna.
@Paul: Yes, the Voluntary Import Restrictions were a huge factor, and I should have noted that in the earlier post. But it still doesn’t change the rest of the issues I’ve noted. I would hope they would do well, with much of the infrastructure given to them and favorable tax arrangements. You and I could start a heck of a company with that kind of a head start. (Well, maybe.) But as I noted in the follow up post, EVERYBODY was playing that same game. I don’t like it, but I can’t do much about it.
As for Toyota and Honda, they’ve always made big profits in the US. How else would they have managed to grow so large? Take away US and they lose half of their sales? It’s a really big number.
OTOH, I seem to remember a lot of pain and suffering when Nissan abruptly closed its California offices and (in some cases) “encouraged” some workers to move to Tennessee, or else. There was a woman who was blogging about the internal problems at the TN offices, she got into a lot of hot water over it.
Agree, mostly, with this and the earlier post. I’m not a fan punitive taxes on businesses for the crime of profitability; and as a longtime import owner, I’m definitely not down on Honda. But – let’s face it – remove the tax revenue, and the presence of a plant in an area is a huge cost to the city. With taxes, less is more – but they’re absolutely a necessary evil.
And your term “race to the bottom” described the time and style of Honda’s (and others’) bidding war(s). It really was a disgrace.
Did it add to their bottom line? Of course. But let’s not forget, these companies were very successful BEFORE they located to the U.S. And it wasn’t subsidies but product that got them there.
The same argument could be made as regards Japan, Inc. and its role in the Asian success with automobiles. Was it a factor? Absolutely. The deciding factor? If it were, Mitsubushi, Suzuki, and Isuzu would also be major players; and Nissan wouldn’t have had to be bailed out by Renault.
(end MY rant)
There was nothing PR related to moving production to the US. In Brock Yates 1983 book, “The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry,” he makes repeated references to a Bill that UAW president Douglas Fraser was trying to push through congress which would require all major car sellers in the US to build or buy 90% of their parts and components in the US and Canada. Fortunately, the political climate changed around then. Yates specifically stated it as Honda’s reason for starting car production in the US.
Geozinger, the Yen started to really rise in 1984, two years after the Ohio plant was opened. The original reason was the import quotas the Reagan administration imposed.After the Yen really started to appreciate in 1984, all Accord production was moved to Ohio.
I am not sure how much the Cambridge, Ontario, plant is “PR.” All Civic production was quickly moved there (except a few specialty models) and only recently has some been moved to Marysville where costs are lower due to the high Canadian dollar. The Canadian dollar has gutted the auto industry in Canada. Much us being moved, or has moved, to Mexico already.
Like VW with it’s Westmoreland, PA plant, the Marysville plant was something of an outlier. It’s not near major Interstates, or rail lines, or water routes. At the time it wasn’t close to the supplier networks.
If you were to ‘blue sky’ a manufacturing facility back then, why bother with US conditions (wages, OSHA, EPA other regulations) and head to business friendly Mexico? Which most companies did later anyway?
I’m not as familiar with the geography of Ontario Province, but Cambridge or Alliston are closer to the supplier chain that services the greater Toronto area than Marysville was to the supplier chains in NE Ohio or SW Ohio.
Over the last 30 years all of that has changed and there are many other plants in the US in locations that wouldn’t normally have had this kind of business.
I own an 87 rt4wd, and it still works flawlessly. No “in and out” of four wheel drive when the front slips, and the handling is solid. I’m also car savvy, so I don’t know where you heard that the wagons had a clutch system for the driveshaft. It is indeed viscous coupling that engages the rear wheels. Your friend must have received one of those “one in a million” faulty civics, seeing as how my wagon is 25 years old, and shows no signs of tiring out. I still get 35mpg’s even with four other full grown passengers. I would, however, agree with Paul Niedermeyer that 25 more horsepower would have made this THE ideal car. All in all, this is the most reliable car I’ve ever had.
I remember seeing a few of these Swiss Army Civics around Toledo when I was growing up. But yes, in the rust belt we killed so many great Japanese cars in the 80s and early 90s with salt. There simply are no survivors. My wife’s first car was an 18 year old 1989 Camry from California. It was in beautiful condition, as though it had been a trailer queen. Two Toledo winters later that thing was rusted through and flaking to pieces. Winter in the Midwest is brutal on those cars, unless you’re lucky enough to live in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where they use sand instead of salt that didn’t eat away at my aged Japanese car year after year.
This was my then-girlfriend, now-wife’s car in college (the 2WD version)–after our current Subaru wagon, perhaps the best overall car we’ve ever had. It was the veteran of many a college road trip, and never let her down–until someone rear-ended it and totaled it a few weeks after graduation. To date the last Honda either of us has owned.
Just an aside: To address the issues with Nissan moving its US corporate HQ to Tennessee–this had partly to do with Smyrna being so close to the new site in Franklin (a suburb to the south of Nashville) and partly to do with the low cost of living for Nissan executives in TN. Plenty of golf courses nearby, McMansions available for a fraction of the cost of a decent house in California, and no state income tax–what’s not to like?
Dad was a mechanic at an Austin-Rover-Honda dealer when these came out. I don’t recall seeing any CRXs here new (although plenty arrived since as used JDM imports), but I remember the rest of the range well. Getting the used imports meant we did eventually receive the Ballade sedan (Civic sedan with CRX front end and pop-up light covers) and a CRX model with the flush lights from the hatch. Dad was certified to install hand controls for disabled drivers, and I remember him converting several of these Civics (one’s currently for sale on trademe).
The Civic’s reliability meant Dad got one of my sisters an ’82 Civic wagon (old shape) as her first car in 1992. It served her well until she wrecked it and ripped a driveshaft out of the transmission – engine was still fine but the car was bent. So in 1995 she then bought an ’85 Civic 1.5 ‘S’ (alloys, stripes and sunroof) hatchback, which I drove several times. Although I prefer bigger cars, it was a real hoot – nippy engine, great ride and handling, roomy, and great looking!
My sister still has it – now with over 400,000km on the odometer and mechanically it’s never been touched and runs like a swiss watch. But its nemesis was rust which was phenomenal and eventually rendered it unroadworthy 3-4yrs ago. The sills, windscreen pillars and concealed drainage channels in the roof were bad, but the hatch is the worst on the hatch (ha-ha!), as the frame and hinges rusted right out. All Civic hatches were notorious for it over here.
So yeah, fantastic wee cars at the time, they had so much more character than many of today’s cars!
I’ve owned four 1986-87 Civic sedans, and two 1990-91 Civic wagons. There are no mechanics out there that still know how to work on the vacuum-hose-hell pre-1988 carburated Civics so I wouldn’t recommend one unless you have your own factory shop manuals and a smoke machine (to find vacuum leaks, or make your own using a squeeze bulb, some rubber hose, and a couple of vacuum check valves from a malaise-era domestic, plus one cigarette and a fitting to hold it – my mechanic friend calls this the “engine bong.” I made one and smoked half a pack, the first and hopefully last in my life, to find some small vacuum leaks on my 1987).
The ultimate wagon to get is the 1988 (and maybe 1989), as it still had the conventional fixed front seat belts. I know for sure that the 1990-91 models had the auto-choke motorized shoulder belts which personally I can’t stand. Out here in the PNW, the 4×4 models of these wagons still command top dollar and are getting increasingly rare. IMO the 1988-91 Civic wagons are one of the best car models that Honda has ever made.
Also, I must point out that despite visual similarity between many of the body and interior parts between the sedan and wagon models, they are NOT interchangeable in most cases! The windshield is not raked back as steeply on the wagons and the roofline (and thus door window frames) is something like 1.5″ taller than the sedans. All the front end sheet metal, headlights, and even marker lights are different. Even the front door mirrors do not interchange (ask me how I know).
The wagon dashboards are slightly different from the sedans even though they look almost identical. Even such things as the HVAC control head, which you will sware must be identical even if you have the wagon and sedan side-by-side, are different (BTDT, thank God for pull-a-part return policy, keep that receipt!). Personally I was shocked that Honda didn’t use more common parts between the sedan and the wagon – they certainly spent a significant amount of $ for all of the tooling of the wagon components.
The upright seating position in the wagons is superb, with second-to-none forward visibility that simply does not exist at all today (thanks to those inane ‘must-limit-damage-to-pedestrians’ design rules now in force). In fact, visibility in all directions in the wagon is wonderful. Try one out and you will realize how dismal the visibility is out of most modern cars (including almost all Hondas, sadly).
This lack of visibility really is a significant safety issue – a couple of years ago, a local man was turning into his driveway and had to wait for a bicycle train of neighborhood children to pass on the sidewalk before he could drive into his garage. Tragically, he couldn’t see over the hood of his SUV and drove over the last child who was on a small bike or trike that he couldn’t see. He killed his neighbor’s kid! I can guarantee you, if he had been driving a Honda Civic wagon, this would have never happened (sit in one and you will see what I am talking about).
Sit in my daughter’s Eagle Summit Wagon nee Mitsubishi Expo LRV and you look at the world the same way – the bottom of the windshield is about even with my belly-button! And at 5’8″, I could wear a Stetson hat and not scrape the roof.
I guess rollover regs killed that kind of visibility long ago, but it sure comes in handy sometimes for safety’s sake.
And I don’t know if the Hondas were the same, but on the Stanza wagons as pictured above, there was no ‘B-pillar’ per se – open all four doors and the sides were completely open from A-pillar to C-pillar. I don’t recall seeing another car like that until Honda came out with the Element.
Doh! Should have read the CC about the Stanza wagon before making my post! Great argument for it as the ‘original mini-van’, but I think the micro-bus guys have the better of it
After an exasperating 8 month search for a reasonably priced used Ranger pick-up truck or a compact car built by a Japanese manufacturer in good condition for my teenage son, I was able to land a 1987 RT4WD Civic Wagon two days before Christmas. Quite a Craigslist find. So far so good. As Comic Book Guy would say: “It is in near mint condition.” No stains, rips or tears on the baby blue seats. A dime-sized rust spot on the hood where somethng probably fell on it in the garage. Non-oxidized metallic blue paint. It has 134,000 miles on the ODO. I bought it with a heavyweight tow-hitch welded and bolted on to its nose and removed the hitch before giving the car to my kid on Christmas Day. One owner, who I was told, garaged the car when it wasn’t being towed behind his motorhome. So many of the miles on the ODO were probably in tow. Took the car up a local canyon/ riverbed road on the 28th to go on a hike. It ran like a charm we and tested the functionality of the 4wd system. Seems to work fine. Worried about the antiquated fuel delivery system though. Having some problems getting the old/original AM/FM stereo radio out of the dash.
The kid is in heaven.
Having owned a 1989 Civic wagon, I believe the answer to your question “what car does all these things better is answered by the following generation of Civic wagons. Didn’t want to drive stick? automatics in 4WD and regular cars. Down on power? Not any more, with standard fuel injection. A complex exhaust system comprised mostly of vacuum hose spaghetti? Banished by EFI. The 1988-91 Civics were probably the high point of the Civic line. They shouldn’t have stopped making the wagon, that much is for sure. I miss my wagon every time I load my tuba into my Golf…in the back seat.
My brother had one of these. We called it the “moon buggy”.
Is a very good little car ,mine looks like that