Federal complaint record · Honda Civic · model year 1997

1997 Honda Civic

Owners submitted 373 federal complaint reports about this model year, placing it at the 94th percentile for complaint intensity within its 1995 to 1999 compact sedan cohort. The largest reported component group is airbags. Sample sizes and limitations are shown below.

Airbags · 32% · group n = 146Speed control · 9% · group n = 39Visibility · 8% · group n = 34Electrical · 7% · group n = 33Tires · 7% · group n = 31
373
Complaint records on file
88,000
Median mileage at the reported problem · 93 complaints reported mileage
32%
Of classified component reports name airbags · group n = 146
94th
Complaint-intensity percentile in a cohort of 25 model years

Airbags · 3 in ten classified complaints

Where this record concentrates

All failure files
Component group 01 · Airbags32%

Airbags reports

Honda Civic · model year 1997

Reports in this group146
Share of classified reports32%
Component groups on file6
Open the failure files

Adjacent model years · same badge, different data

The complaint signal has a shape

Compare model years
1996
0.1complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years
305 matched incidents
This car
1997
0.1complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years
373 matched incidents
1998
0.1complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years
435 matched incidents

The line compares submitted complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years, not failures per 1,000 cars. Vehicle-years use compiled US sales, a 0.25 prior-calendar-year plus 0.75 current-calendar-year model-year allocation, and the shipped survival curve. Rates appear only where estimated vehicles in operation are at least 5,000.

From the record · recurring narrative clusters

What recurring complaint clusters describe

How clusters are built
Airbag concerns · 93 reports

Reports describe airbag warning or deployment concerns

Cluster 1 of 31997 Honda Civic
Brake performance · 36 reports

Reports describe braking performance concerns

Cluster 2 of 31997 Honda Civic
Transmission behavior · 22 reports

Reports describe harsh shifting, slipping, or shuddering

Cluster 3 of 31997 Honda Civic

Cluster summaries paraphrase recurring symptoms reported to NHTSA. They are aggregate descriptions, not individual verbatim reports.

Records through 2026-07-19Published 2026-08-02 · Updated 2026-07-19

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NHTSA consumer complaint records can reveal recurring patterns across published model years. MotorCensus summarizes those records as one complaint-signal index, with a 95% interval and sample size, updated with each data snapshot.

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