Model years › Honda Civic

2021 Honda Civic

This year drew an ordinary 281 complaints for a Honda Civic — the model's median is 440. What they were about is the unusual part: 9.3% of them mention feature, against 3.3% across the other years of this generation.

Last year of its generation. This Honda Civic ran from 2016 to 2021, so it had the whole run for its faults to be found and fixed. Last years are usually the most sorted of a generation.

NHTSA opened a defect investigation into this model year.

What the complaints were about

• feature — 9.3% of this year's complaints, against 3.3% across the other years of this generation (2.8×). Owners wrote it as: feature, occurrence, automatically, nowhere.
• collision — 9.3% of this year's complaints, against 3.4% across the other years of this generation (2.7×). Owners wrote it as: collision, sport.
• effort — 6.4% of this year's complaints, against 2.3% across the other years of this generation (2.8×). Owners wrote it as: effort, increased.

Words owners used for the same problem are counted together, so a fault written four different ways is measured once. Grouped by which complaints they appear in, not by a list anyone wrote in advance.

What owners wrote

while driving 55 MPH, the electronic power steering assist was not functioning properly, requiring an increased effort to maneuver the vehicle. The vehicle returned to normal functionality, but the failure became a regular occurrence. No warning lights were il…

Car will display BRAKE on the dashboard, and automatically brake without an object in front of vehicle, causing vehicles to have to slam on their brakes to avoid collision. Has happen multiple times. Dealership was unable to replicate the problem as it is very…

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint filings, with identifying details removed.

Recalls for this year

• 23V458000 SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC Fixed free of charge.
• 24V064000 AIR BAGS Fixed free of charge.
• 23V858000 FUEL SYSTEM, GASOLINE Fixed free of charge.
• 26V332000 AIR BAGS Fixed free of charge.

Own a 2021 Honda Civic? What happened to yours?

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How this was worked out

Every year of the Honda Civic was compared against its own history rather than against other cars, which removes popularity and age from the answer — a common car draws more complaints at equal reliability, and an older one has had longer to accumulate them. A year is flagged when it drew at least 2.5× this model's median and at least 50 complaints.

This is a fault record, not a review. Nobody files a federal complaint to say the car was fine, so it shows what tends to go wrong — not whether owners liked it, and not whether it is a good car.

Source: NHTSA complaints, recalls and investigations, retrieved . Look this vehicle up directly on NHTSA's site to check anything here.

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