Gasoline price jump helps Honda sell out Civic GX

[SVOboy]

From edmunds:

It's been a step-child of the green car movement for a decade now, but Honda's Civic GX is finally getting some notice.

As gasoline prices soar, demand for the company's natural-gas powered emissions fighter is soaring too.

Dealers are actually building waiting lists in California and New York, the two states where the car is sold to regular consumers.

Allocations are sold out through June, and Honda is considering nearly doubling production to 2,000 a year, with the possibility of an even bigger boost if market demand continues to build, a company insider said.

Those aren't earth-shaking numbers, but they reflect quite a jump from the GX's first eight years on the market, when sales averaged a mere 698 cars a year.

While I know this will make rick happy, I wonder how many others would look to CNG for their fuel source? It's definitely nice being able to fill up at home and is cleaner burning...

What do we think?

[DifferentPointofView]

I think why didn't I buy one sooner . I never heard of the GX until now. Ive never seen advertisements or anything, so I probably wouldn't have heard about it until I saw an ad or read this. Great Idea though. What's the potency of NG vs. Gasoline? Which makes more power per gallon?

[cfg83]

SVOboy -

In LA I'm "in the zone" for NG filling stations, but I can't get myself to like it. ... Just went to the Honda website. Automatic transmission only . Now even less than interested.

Now, if they offered a Honda Civic GX coupe with stick-shift, that would be cool.

CarloSW2

[Ryland]

here in wisconsin we have a car dealership that clames to buy and sell more hybrids then any other dealership, recently they started sending people out to californa (the only state honda sold them new) to buy up every Civic GX they could, that is how I managed to get to look at one first hand, and I must say, they look just like any other civic of that year! they appear to even use simaler fuel injectors (of course I'm sure they are different), I only managed a cell phone low res photo, so it's not even worth posting as it looks like the engine of any other car on the outside.

[TomO]

The Civic GX was introduced back in 98. It's not very popular in the cold states where subzero temps are the norm for nearly a month straight.

I tried to buy one through a dealership in 2001, but was informed that the GX performed very poorly in MN. Poorly as in it had running issues and line freezes, so it was not offered here anymore.

I know for sure that the 98-00 variant was identical to the other motors available with respect to the injectors being different.

Side Note:
The pistons from the GX (deemed "PMS") can be used in the D15Z1 (VX) motor along with a D16Z6 (Si) head to create a 1.5L motor that makes nearly 140HP at the crank (14 more HP than the Si model D16Z6 of the same generation).