general problems of the 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid

When driving at 50mph on a national highway 95s heading to philadelphia around 11am,the speed of the car suddenly reduce to 20mph and then stalled and stopped moving. I had to pull aside to check the engine. After some thirty minutes of rest,I had to return home with an idea of getting the car checked by the dealer. The dealer reorted of having no problem in the engine and I had to take the car back and running as carefully as possible without using for a long trip. I had some dents due to other driver with rash driving and hitting the car. I need to get the dents fixed as soon as the present winter season turns feasible for easy running.

I bought this car off of a private seller few months ago when the car was around 99000 miles, used it to commute from and to work (6 miles drive), and couple of road trips from boston to rhode island. The car was working perfectly fine, I was really happy with it, until last week when the car started to startle when I come to a complete stop and hit the gas again. I just figured its time for an oil change so I took it in to meineke but the jitter would not go away, the guy from meineke told me it could be a motor problem. So I took the car to a mechanic and they said its the starter clutch. I did some digging around on the different forums and figured out this is a very common problem for first gen hch. I was actually surprised by the amount of complaints I was able to find on edmunds, kbb, autraders, and cars. Com knowing how reliable Hondas usually are (I personally drove two Hondas before, and never had any problems). Seeing the amount of complaints, why isn't there a recall being issued for this dilemma. Honda should really try to fix this issue, or loyal customers such as myself would start to walk.

We were driving along the freeway around 8:30 at night at about 70mph in the fast lane when the transmission suddenly stopped working. We had to coast over 3 lanes of traffic to pull into the emergency lane. My husband was driving, I was the passenger, and our 4 month old newborn was in the backseat. It took an hour for us to get a tow and a ride home. All the while I feared for the safety of my family, as it was quickly approaching dark. After some research on the internet, I found that I am no the only one that has encountered such a problem with the '03 Civic Hybrid cvt. Apparently, Honda issued an extended warranty that would cover it for 7 years up to 100k miles. Unfortunately, I just bought this car a year ago, so I am well outside the extended warranty limit. My complaint is that there should be a safety recall on this vehicle. There were no warning signs that this would happen. We were just driving along, and there were no sounds or anything. By not having a recall on these vehicles, Honda put my little family in an extremely dangerous situation.

2003 Civic Hybrid- 80k miles. Bought in 2006 with 60k miles. The vehicle hesitates when accelerating from a stop. There is about a 5-8 second delay in pressing the gas and the car going, which has caused me to almost be rear ended a few times. The vehicle also slows down extremely rapidly when the foot is removed from the gas pedal. Even with no pressure applied to the break pedal. To ordinary (not hybrid) cars, it seems like I am pressing my brake, they just see me slowing down, but there are no lights to warn them, I have almost been in two really bad car accidents that were avoided by mere inches when: on the highway I have taken my foot off the accelerator to slow my vehicle, but I did not need the breaks since the car slowed down so fast on it's own. I threw on my emergency lights and tapped the brake to signal to cars behind me who were moving much faster still. I think that Honda should put in smaller lights or a different safety light when you remove your foot from the accelerator on the Civic Hybrids, to avoid rear-ending accidents due to rapid decrease in speed with no usage of the braking system. History of problem: during test drive vehicle made slight shudder noise and hesitation before starting to accelerate. The dealer told me that it was a normal noise for hybrids. I foolishly believed him. A few months later the shuddering was worse and I knew that it wasn't a normal noise for any transmission to be making at 60,000 miles! over the last 2 years I have taken the car to the dealership many times to "fix" this problem, which is only patched up and the shuddering comes back a few thousand miles later. Honda knows about this problem and has a service bulletin for it, yet their dealerships try to put off fixing the problem until someone's warranty is almost over, or over. Honda needs to be held responsible for this faulty vehicle. A recall should be done at the very least, to fix the cars driving around with bad transmissions.

In 2006 the car was jolting when you took off or were traveling at low speeds. The dealership burnished the starter clutch/engine and the problem went away. Now in 2012 the problem has begun again and reading through blogs and posts is seems there may be a design change in the transmission from plastic belts to metal. . . So if this fixes the problem, then my older model should be retrofit to repair the faulty issue.