AtWhatMileage
Body · 38 owner reports

Other body or interior problem on the 1998 Honda Civic

1 crash 3 injuries 4 of the 38 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.

Only 2 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 38
With an odometer reading 2
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 4
Typical repair $200–$2,000
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 4th

When other body or interior problem gets reported

There are 38 reports of other body or interior problem on the 1998 Honda Civic, 2 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 88,000 miles. It is the 4th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 2 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 161,500 miles — —

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Of these reports, 1 a crash and 3 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.

Putting it right typically runs $200–$2,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 27 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2017, at a median of 10,000 miles, and latest on the 2024 at 180,000 miles.

By volume the 2006 carries the most reports, with 71; the 1998 has 38. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 1996 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 71k
  2. 1997 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 51k
  3. 1998 (this one) 162k
  4. 1999 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 126k
  5. 2000 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 55k
  6. 2001 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 128k
  7. 2002 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 65k
  8. 2003 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 95k
  9. 2004 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 64k
  10. 2005 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 86k
  11. 2006 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 56k
  12. 2007 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 50k
  13. 2008 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 55k
  14. 2009 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 41k
  15. 2010 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 45k
  16. 2011 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 56k
  17. 2012 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 19k
  18. 2013 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 13k
  19. 2014 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 10k
  20. 2015 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 15k
  21. 2016 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 25k
  22. 2017 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 9k
  23. 2018 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 12k
  24. 2019 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 9k
  25. 2020 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 25k
  26. 2021 Honda Civic other body or interior problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  27. 2022 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 26k
  28. 2023 Honda Civic other body or interior problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  29. 2024 Honda Civic other body or interior problem 180k
  30. 2025 Honda Civic other body or interior problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  31. 2026 Honda Civic other body or interior problem
    no odometer readings given
    —

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

The passenger side door and window mechanism is not working properly. The door can not be unlocked with a key, with keyless entry remote or from unlock handle on the inside of the car. The door will not stay unlocked even after turning key in key slot. The only way to open passenger side door is to insert key in key slot, turn key and pull door handle at the same time. The passenger can not open door from the inside. When opening or closing window, the window would get stuck. The window switch would have to be switched between open or close several times before window will continue moving. Both of these malfunctions are potential safety issues. What if the passenger(s) need to get out during an emergency? *nm

150,000 miles NHTSA complaint 604806 filed 2006-11-30

Tl* the contact owns a 1998 honda civic. The contact stated that the dashboard on the front passengers side near the steering wheel was cracked. As a result, the air bags were exposed. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was 173,000.

173,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1137850 filed 2014-12-10

Also reported on the 1998 Honda Civic

Other powertrain problem

40 reports median 60k

Other electrical problem

39 reports median 154k

Airbag failed to deploy in a crash

38 reports median 72k

Exhaust leak or fumes in the cabin

21 reports median 91k

Other speed control problem

18 reports median 44k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 38 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 38 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does other body or interior problem happen on the 1998 Honda Civic?

Across 2 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 160,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is other body or interior problem on the 1998 Honda Civic?

38 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed