Honda Civic Forum

Hi all. New here and to Hondas. I have a fairly clean '97 DX Coupe, 5-speed, manual steering, 171k miles. I've actually had it for about four months, but I'm a truck driver, so it sits most of the time.

I actually always hated Hondas (and the whole tuner/import scene) growing up (Fast and Furious did that no favors), I was more of a big classic cruiser guy - Cadillacs, Chryslers, and the like, plus my Pa and I restored four classic Mustangs, two of which were daily drivers of mine. When my last one was slightly damaged, I started driving my gf (now wife's) Toyota Echo, which introduced me to small, modern, efficient Japanese cars, and to having a beater I didn't have to obsess over all the time. I ended up driving that for 5 years and 80k miles needing only about $800 excluding only insurance and fuel to cover that time. A randomly leaky radiator was all the excuse I needed to get out of it. Naturally I came back to small efficient cars. This Civic was the last car I was going to look at for the day before giving up, but it was fairly clean, had new fluids, ignition components, and O2 sensors, plus awesome fuel trim readings, so I took her home.

Nice little car for the money. I plan to mostly maintain the car as-is, or if practical upgrade as things are due for replacement anyway.

Hope I can learn from what looks like a nice group of kind folks!