Complaint Review: American Honda Motor Co. Inc - Torrance California

My car is a 2007 Honda Civic LX model. On August 31, 2017 while I was driving on the highway, the car stopped running and smoke came out of the hood suddenly. No warning lights came on the dashboard till the last moment. Fortunately I managed to pull over the car to a safe place immediately beside the highway otherwise I would have been in a fatal situation. I had the car towed to a Honda dealer at Pittsburgh where they performed the diagnosis to find the root cause of the problem. They identified that there was CRACK in the Engine Block which has caused the coolant to leak from the engine and hence overheating of the engine has happened and made it to malfunction. They told me that the whole Engine has to be replaced (used one) and few other parts as well (like spark plug etc.) to make the car running again which would cost me around $4000. It was devastating to hear this.

I did some research over the Internet regarding this issue and found that most of the 2006 to 2009 Civics had this engine crack issue and Honda is also aware of this. Despite this Honda has not called for the recall of such those engines and just did a warranty extension. TSB 10-048 was issued for this. But still a lot of 2006-2009 Honda Civics are facing this issue even at very low miles like mine. Mine has just 51400 miles. Still Honda does not want to do anything about this. I even had couple of Oil changes done at Honda dealerships and they did not even give a hint about this problem.

I checked with the Service consultant if this would be covered under the extended warranty. He did a VIN inquiry and said the Warrant has expired 10 days ago and this won’t be covered. (The original purchase date of the car was 22-Aug- 2007 and this incident happened to me on 31-Aug-2017). This is a again big blow to me. I raised this concern with Honda Corporate and they filed a case. Couple of days later (on 09/07/2017) the case manager (Ina) called me just to tell that Honda would not do anything about this issue with futile reasons like 1) the warranty has expired 10 days ago 2) Because I am the second owner and purchased this car only two years back 3) I did not purchase the car from a Honda dealership and purchase from a private party 4) My Loyalty to Honda was not sufficient ( that I had spent only $80 towards oil change service in a Honda dealership in my two years of owning the car). These reasons are just senseless to me and not even related to this cracked engine issue. She did not provide proper justification and just closed the case like that.

This is my first car in the US. I bought this car as the second owner in July 2015 with only 36000 miles on it and I have hardly driven 15000 miles over the past two years without any issues. The previous owner also never had any issues with it and that’s why I purchased it with confidence. I was neither aware of any letters sent to the Civic owners nor any letter was sent to me regarding this issue and the warranty extension.

CONSIDERING CUSTOMER'S SAFETY, THESE ENGINES NEEDS TO BE RECALLED BY HONDA AND REPLACED WITH NEW ONES OR AT LEAST THE WARRANTY OF THESE ENGINES NEEDS TO BE EXTENDED FURTHER (FOR AT LEAST FOR 5 MORE YEARS). I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO SURVIVE A FATAL ACCIDENT ON THE HIGHWAY.

I kindly request you to take necessary action on Honda and ask them to provide the proper resolution to me and also the affected owners by issuing the safety recall or warranty extension for those affected engines.