I am looking to buy an Accord between the model years 1998-2002. I heard of transmission issues with these cars so I wanted to know which of these model years are known to be the most reliable when it comes to the transmission and whether the 4 cylinder or V6 Accords have the better transmission. Also is there a specific mileage interval when these transmission problems start to appear? Any other helpful information you can share would be much appreciated.
The transmission debacle involved the V6 transmissions from the 1998 to 2004 model years. There are scattered reports the 4 cylinder transmission was also affected but to a lesser degree - I don't know if that is true. Anyway, several people in Honda forums of the time were complaining of having transmissions replaced three times before reaching 100K miles; others made it much more than 100K miles on the original transmission. There was an extended warranty (the window closed on that a few years ago) for the affected transmissions in some but not all model years. The transmissions were not replaced with anything different, just modified to reduce the failure rate. but not to what the reliability used to be. At this point everybody is on their own. The first source has an interesting theory near the end of the page about why this happened.
Honda makes far superior manual transmission vehicles. My secondary car is a manual 2000 Accord Sedan EX (135K miles currently), which I purchased new back in 2000 and have never had any problems with it over the last 12 years. Great car. I hear nothing but woes from people who buy autos with automatic transmissions (of any make). They simply are not as durable, and require more repairs to maintain. Besides, manual transmissions are soooo much more fun to drive overall, and definitely more responsive.
This is the main reason that i prefer to buy a manual transmission. I would love to get a late model CR-V but unfortunately they all come with an automatic transmission. Oh well, guess I'll have to go else where.
