Dear Scotty,
One of my friend is looking to get a Civic. He has 2 options. A friend of his is selling a Civic 2018 and a colleague a Civic 2012.
He is rather afraid of getting a CVT transmission after seeing a lot of problems with it especially models which are more recent.
what is your advise.
Civic 2018 is 40,000 KMS
Civic 2012 is 1,10,000 KMS.
He always looks to keep his cars quite sometime and his current Camry 2006 is 3,50,000 KMS.
By how your separated the "1,10,000" I assume you're from India(?)
IF roads aren't great (I'm unsure where you're from but in many parts of the world they're not great) - go for the AT, CVTs breakdown because of poor roads.
Here's a recent post showing what a CVT looks like after trying to get out of being stuck
And form my understating of things, bumps will also cause internal slippage.
Also Honda has admitted that a lot of their CVTs aren't well built, as new as 2020 - I wouldn't say they "perfected" them.
https://carkiller.com/scottykilmer/qa/should-he-buy-2017-hrv-ex-with-cvt/#post-203260
And there's plenty more extensions and service bulletins on them.
Honda ATs aren't the greatest out there, and I'd just get a Mazda3 3rd gen or a Corolla E150 (international versions) - but the older ATs aren't terrible and at only 110,000km (about 70k miles), it most likely still can last for a very long time given moderate driving, and correct service.
Haha Dan, ! I am from India, Yes. But I Live in Kuwait. So does my friend.
Its mostly highway driving in Kuwait.
I would go with the automatic transmission over CVT, esp. since your friend plans to keep the vehicle for a very long time. Even if it was a Toyota, my advice would still apply.
Get the 2018 by then Honda is pretty much perfected their CVT transmissions
Hello Scotty,
Thanks for replying. A lot of them including a common friend at Honda say the same, but they keep having issues with late transmission gear shift, high groaning noise. and this is usually on 2017, 2018 Honda CRV, Civics.
Unfortunately a lot of them at Honda (Mechanics) themselves have no idea and these guys are doing the work Outside. BTW this is in Kuwait.