New here, and to Honda - questions
 

Hi people,

Well I have to admit to being a long-time Corolla owner, but we're in a situation now, where we were in my first car accident in 50 years of driving, which totaled the 2002 Corolla. We just got the insurance check and need to replace it this week, before the rental runs out.

There's not much of a selection of 2000-2002 ( affordable to us ) Corollas in the Denver area right now, with low miles on them, so we started thinking; what about Honda? Another concern is that the Corollas in that year range that we can afford, tend to have clogged piston oil holes if an owner didn't change the oil religiously every 3000 miles, so that's a tricky one too.

So am I correct in thinking that the Accord is the nearest equivalent to a Corolla, with leg room, gas mileage, safety and reliability?

We want something with automatic, AC, and a cruise control. Kind of the equivalent of the Corolla LE?

The only reason we hadn't considered Hondas in all the years before this, was because Corollas make a nice kerchunk when you close the doors or trunk, and other brands always seemed tinny sounding. I know that's dumb, but...

So now we're considering. :)

welcome to the forum. Corrolla and Civic are in the same type of cars to compare.
I had a 02 civic dx w/ac 260k+ still on the road, gave it to my daughter. 5 sp.
oil change is when the oil life light goes on at approx 20% or approx 7500 miles. Honda says oil can be changed up to 13k miles per oil change. I use mobil 5w-20 same as honda dealer. timing belt changed each 110k. no problems to date.

Wow. Well we've always changed the oil every 3000 on all our cars. I grew up in Miami and met many Cubans back in the 60's there. They told me of very old cars in Cuba, that they just kept maintaining forever. I asked what the secret was, and they said that they would change the oil every 1000 miles, because labor was so cheap. But mechanics all my life have told me that if you just do it every 3000, that's the best thing you can do for the longevity of a car. Thanks!

the toyota Camry would be the equivalent to the honda Accord. i would stay away from automatic 01-02 civics they have faulty automatic transmissions.

What about 2000 Civics?

well it depends you have to remember its a 14 year old car and changed hands into what hands a sensible persons or speed racers ???. also the 6th gen civics are constantly stolen for parts.

I guess I'm stuck then, not being able to afford a Honda alternative to Corolla.

We wound up buying a 1998 Civic with 94k miles, in great shape, with lots of things fixed by the dealer, like timing belt, new tires, upper hoses, etc. Very nice. Now we could use a second one soon, but is there a model Honda in that year range ( around 1998-2002 ) that we could look for, that has more leg room, but is still 1.6 L?