2025 Honda Civic: What to check before buying

The wheel stiffens or sticks, then suddenly frees up, which makes it easy to overcorrect. Reports describe this at low speed and at highway speed, sometimes with the engine malfunction light flashing and the car pulling right. In the one crash report, the wheel went stiff and then released during a left turn at about 20 mph. Clicking, popping, or creaking during low-speed turns is the other common complaint, reported as early as 1,400 miles. Dealer fixes such as new strut bearings do not always stop it. Several filings only report waiting on steering recall 24V744000 because the repair part is unavailable.

Phantom braking is the main complaint. With adaptive cruise control on, the car brakes hard or stops for vehicles that are not there, often on clear highways at 60 to 65 mph. Several drivers were nearly rear-ended. Some events come with collision mitigation and road departure warnings. Low-speed braking control has also held the car back when the driver needed to accelerate. In the one crash report, adaptive cruise did not slow the car at 50 mph and it hit a truck. Owners also say the camera-only lane keeping drifts and loses track of the lane.

The most serious report is a fire: one car burned on the highway about a month after purchase. The insurer suspected the high pressure fuel pump covered by a recall. A second pattern is rough idling and near-stalling right after startup. Dealers found misfires, damaged spark plugs, and faulty fuel injectors at about 2,000 and 9,000 miles and replaced the parts. One hybrid owner also reports that the tank takes far less fuel than its advertised 12.4 gallons.

All three filings are about recall 24V763000 for the gasoline fuel system, and none describe an actual failure. Owners report that the repair part is unavailable, which the recall VIN lookup confirms, and that the wait has gone on longer than is reasonable. Treat this as an open recall that may not be fixable yet, not as a pattern of breakdowns.

Jerking, stalling, and loss of power are the common thread. Cars shake and shut off without warning, sometimes after jerking hard at low speed. One car went to the dealer over five times without a fix. Another dealer suggested premium fuel and made no repair. A separate report describes a burst of warning lights covering brake hold, stability assist, driver assists, and tire pressure. The dealer traced it to a low fuel pressure code, could not explain it, and cleared it.

Unexpected braking under cruise control is one pattern. One owner reports 6 to 8 events in 12,000 miles, with a string of driver-assist warnings ending in a collision mitigation fault at around 6,000 and 10,000 miles. The other report is more severe: the accelerator pedal stuck at full throttle on the highway with factory floor mats in place. It stayed stuck after a restart until it was pried up, a clear loss-of-control risk.

Both reports describe sudden failures with no warning. In one, the engine shuts off in traffic, the accelerator stops responding, and the car cannot be moved. That owner had an earlier major failure early in the lease. In the other, a brake warning tells the driver to stop, the pedal goes soft and grinds, and the dealer replaces the electric brake simulator set. Both failures create a real crash risk.

Windshield and wiper problems both block the driver's view. Wipers collect ice in winter driving until visibility is nearly impossible. A small rock strike can send a crack across the whole windshield. Because Honda Sensing needs OEM glass and camera calibration, a backordered windshield leaves both visibility and the driver assists compromised. This matches other reports of windshields that crack easily.

Collision mitigation and road departure warnings flash on for a few seconds at a time, starting on the first drive home and appearing often after that. Dealers find no stored errors and cannot reproduce the problem. The other complaint involves manual-transmission cars with aluminum pedals that get slick in wet weather, so feet slide off the clutch, brake, and accelerator. The dealer has no replacement pedals, and rubber pedals come from an outside company.