rev up your engines, today I'm gonna talk
about the worst Honda's ever made, now aside from somewhat weak automatic
transmissions, Honda's have generally made pretty good cars, but
like any other manufacturer they've made mistakes, and here's the
biggest ones that I've ever seen, now the first big mistake was the 1994 Honda
Passport now I guess Honda wanted to get into the
SUV market, so the passport was just a rebadged isuzu, it was made by Isuzu in
Isuzu factories and it just had Honda emblems on them, they were not really
Honda's but Honda sold them as a Honda so it's carrying the Honda name, and to me
that was a big mistake by Honda they were gas hogs, my customers with
them had all kinds of problems as they aged, and a lot of them didn't know they
thought they were getting a Honda SUV, no they weren't they were getting an Isuzu,
not long after that Isuzu pulled out of the United States as a car seller,
that says something you know, the United States is a huge market and if you pull
your vehicles out, you pretty much say oh we can't make it in this competitive
market where there's lots of profit to be made, they should have been happy
making good cars, back then Honda was still making some pretty good cars,
selling lots them to the people, and not get into a market like SUVs using
somebody else's vehicle not even their own, now the next mistake was the 2005
Honda Accord Hybrid, now the early Honda hybrids the small ones, they were pretty
much a failure they didn't sell that many of them, personally I thought
they're ugly as can be, they were really ugly looking car, and when I drove around
Houston here I'd see a bunch of them sitting at the Honda dealers just
collecting dust because nobody wanted to buy the things, but the old five Accord
Hybrid was the worst one they ever made the transmissions slipped and many of them
you had to spend a fortune having the transmission rebuilt, they weren't
very well made, now the new 2018 accord hybrids, hey those things are really
interesting technology, they're a far step away from those old ones,
they've got two electric motors to help drive it, it's a completely redo but 2005
Accord Hybrid stay away from one of those, now my next pick is the original
Honda that was sent to the United States the Honda 600, now the reason they called
it the Honda six hundreds because it had a
five hundred ninety-eight cc engine so they rounded it up to six hundred, it was
a two cylinder air-cooled motorcycle engine that was stuck in the hood of
this tiny little car and an electric fan inside to blow air to help cool the
engine, I actually worked on these things when I was a young mechanic, if Honda
introduced a car like that today, oh it'd be a massive failure, now we do
have to take into consideration the times, Honda
was starting up going from a motorcycle company to a car company, but those
things they rode like washing machines the automatic transmission, you had to
shift it with lever, they did have a clutch but I mean it wasn't very
sophisticated it can barely get out of its own way, it had
a whopping forty seven horsepower and only thirty-seven foot-pounds of torque,
and the funniest thing was, one of my father's customers that owned one, the guy
was like six foot six he came crawling out of this car and the
first time I ever saw it I thought, whoa this is like something at the Shriners
circus where they all come out of these little cars you know, but he was really a
cheap guy, and it did get phenomenal gas
mileage, and he liked saving money when he was driving because he was an
accountant, that was a truly terrible car to drive around with it hardly any
amenities at all, like I say hey that was the first car they sold in the United
States and it was a transitional one, if you would compare that thing to a modern
Honda Accord with a v6 engine, you'd think they came from completely
different planets, but I have to give it to Honda they certainly evolved from
that basic little motorcycle two cylinder air-cooled engine, they
certainly changed their engineering and went a lot forward, now the next bad
vehicle that Honda made was the Honda Odyssey, throughout
history they had problems especially with automatic transmissions, the 1995
Odyssey was the worst, they had head gaskets failure, transmission failures
they were true clunkers, now they did refine them over the years, but they've
always had automatic transmission problems, I had quite a few of my own
customers have the transmissions go out, I did a little research on the internet
and I'd print it out to them, they went to Honda and they ended up getting
brand-new transmission put in these cars free, they didn't have to pay anything
for it, but the point that the transmissions broke in the first place
and a lot of the engines they had problems with the v6 cams, that they
would wear and then they'd start moving back and forth a little bit, and you'd
have to rebuild the engine, that's uncalled for in a company like Honda it's
known for making strong engines, and when you're talking about the odyssey's main
competition coming from their highly reliable Toyota Sienna van, you'd be
foolhardy to buy a Honda Odyssey van, when you can get a Toyota van that would
run circles around it over time, so if you ask me here again, Honda they started
with motorcycles and small cars when they got
into bigger things, like the passport SUV or the Honda Odyssey van, maybe big is not
the thing that Honda should get involved in
now that's bad vehicle was the 1988 Honda Prelude that's got that four-wheel
steering, the idea is when you got a small space to park into on the road, if
your front and your rear wheels can turn, then the car can go in and park really
easy in very small spaces, the rear steering part was always breaking down
on these things, it cost thousands and thousands of dollars to fix, it was an
idea that, okay that sounds like it might be a good idea, but hey if you're taking
something that's normally stationary, just goes down the road and all of a
sudden you're making it so those parts turn too, it was a recipe for disaster
it may have been the first production vehicle to feature four-wheel steering
but hey that's a feature that really was probably a big mistake, at high speeds it
also could engage so you'd have really crisp steering at higher speeds, they
wouldn't go the same way they kind of go the opposite ways when you're steering it
at really high speeds, so yeah it's a trick
to make it go like a racecar but hey you're driving it on the street,
so really stay away from high-tech things like that that yeah they're not
proven, you don't find them in cars now unless you're into really exotic cars,
and let's face it I mean exotic cars cost exotic money to repair, and their
values plummet like a stone going over Niagara Falls, so stay away from the
prelude with the all-wheel steering, now the last bad Honda design I'm gonna talk
about is a 2002 Civic Si, it was pretty much a poorly designed vehicle, the
exhaust manifolds would often crack, the transmissions would often fail because
of engineering designs, the engine blocks had a tendency to crack, even the
headliners over your head were sagging down they just looked bad as they aged, it was
also the first time in 14 years to have the steering attached to the struts so
it didn't work all that well, and it had the least amount of suspension travel, so
it road really bad, the less travel your shocks have, the worst the rides
gonna be, this was really the worst riding Civic of all time,
granted it rode better than that early Honda 600, the first one they brought
that had a two cylinder motorcycle engine in it, but it didn't fare all that
much better driving down the road, those things were like riding around on a
bucket, so now you know a bunch of Honda's that you should stay away from,
they were basically poorly made and designed vehicles, which is kind of rare
for a company like Honda because they're known for quality engines and cars that
can last a really long time, but like anybody else, hey they made mistakes too,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember
to ring that Bell!
