I hope you don’t mind my using the vast and powerful megaphone that is the Cold Start platform to voice complaints and irritations of mine that are, at least, several decades old. This particular one is about, oh, 40-something years old, but I’ve never really discussed it with anyone. And now I’m wondering how pervasive it may be, or if anyone else felt this same thing? It has to do with Hondas from the 1970s and 1980s, and how people tended to read their badges.
I remember dealing with this a surprising amount as a kid, and it always kind of drove me nuts and baffled me, but the frequency it came up made it impossible to ignore. I’m deeply curious if anyone may already know what I’m talking about here?
I should just tell you. Save us all some time. Here it is: a shocking number of people in the 1970s and 1980s would read the CVCC badges on Hondas as “Civic,” even when the car was not a Civic.
Yes, that’s right. That collection of letters on the grille of that Accord, which, to be fair, do share 75% of the letters of the word “civic,” were almost always misread as “Civic.”
In case you’ve forgotten what CVCC means, and can’t refer to the CVCC diagram you have tattooed on your back, let’s just refresh. The letters stand for Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion, which is a sort of deliberately-obfuscating set of words to describe Honda’s revolutionary cylinder head technology that used a combustion pre-chamber to ignite the fuel-air mixture and cause a little vortex that then propagated into the main chamber, the result of which was an engine that burned so clean it didn’t even need a catalytic converter.
As you can imagine, Honda was very proud of their CVCC technology, so they put badges announcing it on all their cars that had it, like the Civic:
… and the Accord:
These CVCC badges on the Accord were almost always read as “Civic,” as crazy as that sounds, since it does not say “Civic.” I remember other kids doing this, and adults, too, and as a car-obsessed kid at the time, it drove me bonkers. I remember having arguments with people about what was an Accord and what was a Civic and people pointing to the CVCC badges and telling me “see, it’s a Civic!”
Am I alone here? Does anyone else remember this phenomenon of lazy reading? Is it just me? I hope not. I suppose this also says something about how similar Civics and Accords were in general styling, outside of scale. I mean, they never looked that alike to me, but for people who don’t really give a shit about cars and live those sorts of empty lives? I guess they did.
Anyway, if anyone remembers anything similar happening, please, let me know!
I too thought this as a kid in the 70’s, when Hondas were strange, weird, exotic creatures. I think I figured it out by the time I was 10 and was hoarding car magazines.
I remember this as well. What didn’t help (a few years later anyway) was cars like the Stanza Altima that had two names on the back for a few years, which made an Accord Civic seem like it could be a logical thing.
Datsun Nissan Stanza Altima
that’s a beautiful Accord
Agreed! The LHD one in the second picture is awesome. I have never liked the fender mounted mirrors on RHD versions. They just look more lethal, and things would probably be even closer than they appear.
I remember they had a couple of non-gray colors back then.
1976 honda accord at DuckDuckGo
I understand the difference, but the stupid is definitely on Honda’s end.
People will try to pronounce any acronym more than three letters long. If you want to put it in the brochure, use as many letters as you want. If you’re putting it on a car badge, keep it to three letters or less.
This is why we don’t have Marketing Engineers.
Yup, I totally remember this, but the blame is all on Honda.
Somehow everyone understood VTEC.
I bet plenty of people are surprised that there is no ‘h’ at the end.
But no one pronounces it ‘V-T-E-C’. It’s ‘V-Tec’ so people still morphed into a partial word.
Because they weren’t also selling a model that sounded like that. If there was a Honda Vectic i guarantee people would mix them up
“Just wait til that V̶T̶E̶C̶ CVCC kicks in, YO!”
As a member of several Facebook car groups that celebrate old mundane cars, I can tell you this is still very much a thing. More than once I’ve had to tell someone that the car in the photo is a Civic but not a CVCC.
Down here in Forgottonia we assumed it had something to do with the CCCP and opened fire.
Western Illinois?
If it’s not Chicago we say “downstate.”
Forgottonia is less about physical boundaries and more of a state of mind.
I remember when Senator Durbin coined it, he was referring to the area west of the Illinois River, which had no Interstate highways.
Since then, they did get the I-72 out to Quincy and the Illinois 110 Chicago-Kansas City thingamajig.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgottonia
It started as a local gag to draw attention to the lack of infrastructure projects. Illinois (outside of the second city) is an agribusiness state, so lack of good roads is a problem.
“South of 80”
You folks east of the continental divide are adorable for the way you think an area not served by highways is ‘remote’.
Bet these areas all have excellent cell service.
( BTW I lived in the Chicago suburbs for 6 years .. you have to drive 4 hours to get away from the urban sprawl and into anything that resembles public land )
There’s still no cell service in most hollers out in Forgottonia. But at least we have some hard roads to haul out the crop now. Illinois is all about agribusiness. Can’t cattledrive the soybeans to the Joliet stockyards 🙂
Yeah, especially since there are so many places West of the divide that are “remote” despite being right next to an Interstate highway.
Yep. Right down the street I remember a silver 79 with cvcc on the grill. As a kid I had no idea what that cvcc stood for. Thought they were to cheap to get an ”i“.
Just saw a one year only cvcc prelude on bring a trailer last week. I had no idea that they were put in the second gen chassis.
Sometimes I looked at that badge and a tiny voice in my head started to say Civic, but I always caught myself. I think it’s the way our brains fill in gaps, like reading a chunk of text with the vowels removed. A Honda Civic is in most people’s vocabulary, even non-car people, so their brains fill in the missing i’s and ignore the extra c.
Oh, yeah, you ain’t alone!! I immediately made a guess as to what it would be when I first saw the headline and before reading the post and was mighty gratified to find my guess to be correct; that did indeed bug the heck out of me back then. Yeah, it persisted for so long, too. Had occasion to drive a circa ’79 Accord hatchback almost exactly like the one in the photo with the exclamation point (it was even the same color) in the late 80s and people would indeed insist it was a Civic; it seemed like people started getting it only after the boy racers started tuning all those poor hapless Civics in the late 90s and early 00s.
Right now I’m in the midst of getting a 1954 Panhard Dyna Z back on the road and it’s surprising, no, not surprising how many people will read the Panhard emblems as Packard and keep calling it that.
Years ago I came across a pretty funny anecdote from someone in a Panhard community forum (alas, I have lost the link to that post) who took his Panhard to a cars & coffee type event where someone kept indignantly and repeatedly insisting that the car was a “baby Packard” despite several concerted attempts at correction from the Panhard owner. Seems that the person had loudly and confidently identified it as a Packard to the people he was with and just could not admit he was mistaken and kept doubling down by adding the “baby” qualifier. Apparently he wasn’t joking. Yeah, who knew cars went through growth stages??
I wonder if they look at the rear suspension and say “Yeah, this one is equipped with a Packard Rod.”
I owned a 1979 Honda Accord CVCC and yes, I had this same discussion many times. Being all of 18 or 19 years of age I had one guy tell me it was a Honda Accord Civic. He explained the fact that Honda only had the CVCC, and it came in a Civic model and the bigger Accord Civic model. Why else would they have the CVCC badge on both the Accord and Civic. It made sense at the time.
Hmm, that ‘bigger model’ thing is inaccurate, but what it does remind me of is the “Pathfinder Armada”. which WAS a thing in 2003 & 2004
Considering that Toyota was actively screwing with us by making a Celica, Celica Supra, and a Celica Camry, thinking Honda was playing the same game isn’t much of a stretch.
Mentioned elsewhere, but the Stanza Altima as well.
Yeah my car is a Solara, but the title says Camry Solara.
Don’t forget the Corolla Tercel.
Or the Corolla Matrix before they just changed it to Matrix.
Subaru also had an Outback in both Impreza and Legacy flavors… before it was just an Outback.
And Oldsmobile chimed in with Cutlass Ciera, Cutlass Calais, Cutlass Supreme…
And the station wagon version, the Cutlass Cruiser!
Nissan Datsun 810 Maxima.
Nissan Datsun was second stage of changing the brand name from Datsun to Nissan in the early 1980s. First, it was Datsun, then Datsun Nissan, then Nissan Datsun before settling down on Nissan.
You’re right — I now remember the badges that said “DATSUN” on the left, and “Nissan [model name]” on the right.
Well Honda did sell a car in the US that was called the Honda CR-X del Sol. In other markets it was called the Honda Civic del Sol, Honda del Sol and the Honda CRX. Didn’t have a CVCC engine but it had VTEC, yo!
It had to do with the insurance carriers looking at CRX as “sports car” and priced the premium and insurance accordingly. So, Honda wanted to disassociate the name CRX and package the second generation as “lifestyle car” and named “appropiately”.
Same with Pontiac Fiero: the car was presented to the GM board of directors as the “lifestyle car” in order to get it approved for production in the early 1980s. Eventually, Pontiac added V6 and GT trims…
Pretty sure it was called the Civic del Sol in the States at release.
You are correct, I mixed up the Euro and US names.
Things like that are understandably annoying, like when someone calls a Pontiac 6000 a GOOOLE.
Or drives round in a big Ford FISO
Or a Toyota Buzzforks.
BEES forks. The car runs on bees. Literally.
It will always be Busy Forks to me…
Until they change it to the DOOD / OOOO
even better since Google didn’t exist at the time 😛
It is ob-li-gatory to check the L10 fluid at each fueling.
Can’t say I heard that. Note there is no vortex in the CVCC. That was what Honda originally thought would work but when they got into Ford’s emissions lab it didn’t give the desired results. Because it didn’t provide the desired effect they switched to the rich pre-chamber, lean main chamber design. To save face they kept the name they had been touting.
I know, as the CVCC engines had the worst emissions of the Honda cars sold at the same time, once the reached about 20,000 miles…
Sorry I guess I’m a geek and always associated with geeks as I never encountered this phenomenon. Amongst owners of Hondas I knew they also knew what there cars were and bragging about the mileage they got, the regular gas it used (cheaper) and the reliability. Generally these folks were proud to drive these vehicles until they were leaving rust trails like bread crumbs everywhere they went with rusty body panels flapping in the breeze. Which usually took 3 to 5 years.
I know, as I owned a few Honda’s that customers gave up on. None got more than 30 mpg, when the Ford Escort Pony I bought new for $4800 could get 39 mpg on the freeway…
But then I have heard non-plug in Pruis owners say they get 65 mpg and even over 70 mpg, which is pure BS. But then I have been told that my Mustang GT doesn’t even get two digit fuel economy and my Audi 4000 Quattro doesn’t even get 20 mpg. And both are polluting the planet and should be junked. Also I have been told by an ah neighbor that my Mustang GT won’t even last 47,000 miles, the distance her Honda SUV went before needing a new trans-axle…
My old ’96 T-brd, 4.6 V8 and 4R70W w/ 3.27 rear gears would consistantly get 25 mpg highway. My 5 speed ’94 SHO honestly did no better, maybe 27.
Yeah, leaded gas sure did a number on 20th century literacy rates.
Not to mention crime rates, teenage pregnancy rates, school dropout rates, and a whole lot of other rates.
Leaded gasoline wasn’t the big problem, it was lead based paint in crappy rentals, and to a lesser extent lead pipes after caustic water was used in Flint, by the governor’s appointees…
I absolutely remember pronouncing it as “Civic”. It was a thing.
This is what you get for not using letters to make words.
My older sister took the cake, though. Circa 1978, we were in a parking garage in Birmingham, MI, and there was this neat little targa top convertible. Clearly a Japanese car, and in Detroit in those days, they were always looked at as something to be reviled. But this was really cool. Probably a custom job at that.
My sister (probably about 13 years old at the time) read the writing on the car, and said it was a “Soon Ka Haser”.
Sounded Japanese, but I had never heard of it. So I got a little closer, and it turned out it was a “Sun Chaser”.
Don’t get me started on the 3 BBL carburator…
“three bubbles”?
Yes, they were crap…
This has nothing to do with taillights.
I am a bit young to have seen a lot of these on road, but yes this still happened in the 90’s occasionally. I thought it was weird as well that other people did not seem to care about these details of cars, especially the names of them, quite like I did. I also thought it was a really dumb move by honda to put CVCC on there as on a quick glance it does look like Civic. So shame on non-car people and shame on honda.
I do remember the CVCC badges and went through similar bafflement over the mispronunciations and misconceptions.
There was a kid in the neighborhood who referred to the Renault LeCar as the “lee car”, so other non-‘Murican marques were subject to similar indignities.
That one irks me but less so than the Pontiac Le Mans, which is, according to Pontiac, pronounced with the “NS” on the end , instead of, you know, how Le Mans is actually pronounced. God forbid us Americans say a French word correctly, and also forbid us from seeing the irony of us still using these french words for our car names.
Eh, knowing the intricacies of which loanwords in a given language(especially English) are pronounced in what way is a time-honored shibboleth for national origin, social class, and/or regional familiarity. They are particularly common in parts of the US that were previously part of another country in the colonial era, or in industries that are heavily influenced by other countries.
Examples:
• Sauvignon Blanc – most Americans say the C, dropping it sounds snobby, but don’t say the G sound.
• Vallejo – most Californians say the LL like it’s an English word and the J like it’s Spanish.
• Magazine St in New Orleans – pronounced by locals just like the English word.
• Bolognese – this one varies a lot! Some people make an ñ sound in the middle, some the G is silent, usually the first group pronounce the E at the end but it’s not a guarantee.
Town names are particularly bad. Around the great lakes so many have French names, and some have some semblance of the original pronunciation and others entirely do not, so it’s a total gamble if you haven’t heard it said.
I was in Bellefontaine Ohio once for work. The engineer I was meeting at our supplier told us “It’s pronounced Bell-fountain. Makes it easy to tell when people aren’t local.” Maybe because that’s not what that word is, my man?
Oh yes! Michigan is filled with town and region names, both French and Native American origin. Lake Orion is, for some reason, said as Ori-in, not pronounced as we would Orion the Constellation. Same for Milan Michigan. My-lin instead of the French Pronunciation Milan…The examples go on and on.
On Star Trek, there are green “O-ryans” and blue “O-ree-ons”. They made fun of it on Lower Decks.
Interesting, the Milan Street in New Orleans is also pronounced like the town in Michigan!
Louisiana has some fun ones. Bossier [City] is pronounced BO-zher. I’m guessing that pronunciation sticks in the craw of Francophone Cajuns.
Bexar County, Texas gets it wrong in two languages — they pronounce it as “Bear”. Not Bex-ar [English] or Bay-har [Spanish]. If Bexar is “Bear”, shouldn’t Texas be “Tess”?!
I really like the breakdown! Language is a fascinating thing as it changes in different regions etc. I just find the Pontiac Le Mans a bit worse as its trying to get the buyers to think about Le Mans, the race, in France, or at least, French style as something to be sought, but then they pronounce it as un-French as possible. Like they wanted to get buyers to think about French stuff to buy the car, but still wanted buyers to know this is an AMERICAN car.
At least people pronounce Chevrolet correctly. Imagine the horror if it was common knowledge that name is French too.
That last one is just baloney.
Wait’ll you find out how GM thinks “Traverse” is pronounced!
In this case the different pronunciation is appropriate, given the travesty that was sold as a lemans at the end.
I wonder if that new “KN” car company uses this technology.
You mean KVI?
Weird. I always thought it meant they were 105cc engines.
lol
Awwww, the H has been stolen! That’s how people know it’s a Honda!
As the 24-year-unbroken owner of a pair of B5 Passats, I have thoroughly enjoyed both of these Jettas.
If you have owned a pair of B5 Passats for 24 years, I guarantee you “unbroken” is not a proper description.
Touché. These days I’m leaning into it…semi-restoring the 2001 and driving it daily now (in rush hour interstate traffic and downtown streets because I like to live on the edge). It sat in the driveway for 7+ years with little usage, so mechanical breakage is minimal, but age-related breakage is….well…beyond repair 🙂
Yeah, I was gonna say, he must be a glutton for punishment.
We’re very sorry for your loss, Supernintendo Chalmers.
Oh, man. I sold these when they were new. People got on a waiting list for our allocation to arrive and then – if their chosen car wasn’t available – they would get first choice from what we had.
CVCC engines were known – especially in Civics – for head gasket issues. It seems that there was a hot spot in the block that could cause failure.
Yup I did a lot of head gaskets on the CVCC engines. We even twisted up a couple of wrenches to be able to get to a couple of the bolts. To be fair I did a lot of head gaskets on other Japanese 4cyls too.
You needed to buy a 12 mm universal socket for the manifolds. And yes, the CVCC engines were junk, but not as bad as Honda’s aluminum 1200 that made the Vega engine look good…
Thanks for the CVCCs lesson, Torch. Being a car nerd, I never read CVCC as “civic”, but always wondered if the Civic model name was derived from the technology.
But I know plenty of people who would probably get this wrong. Since I never worked for Honda, it didn’t particularly bother me.
My favorite CVCC story is when Honda bought a 1973 Impala and had it shipped to Japan. He had his engineers apply the CVCC tech to the V8, including intake and heads, and shipped it back to the US for emissions testing. It passed without a catalytic converter.
And didn’t GM just completely dismiss what Honda had done?
It was 70’s GM, I think we all know the answer to that question…
Honda is lucky if GM simply dismissed it instead of their standard treatment like they did with Nader…
They basically said “yeah, it works. Neato. It’s too expensive, because we’re not interested in doing anything other than what we’re doing, so we’ll find excuses to avoid even attempting.”
And thus, they had to be forced, and they did so kicking and screaming (and to this day we have the idea of “emissions crap” on engines)
It was too expensive for GM to do as with their current sales and engine families it would have meant a lot of design and tooling to make new heads and intakes for 6 V-8 engine families a 6 and 4 cyl. Plus it was a dead end since it did not reduce NOx which had looming reductions in the output limits.
Meanwhile the Catalytic Converter would meet those future regulations and didn’t care if it was behind a Chevy, Pontiac, Olds, Buick or Cadillac engine. Plus they could and did sell it to other companies making it easier for all companies to meet the emissions standards.
Were the NOx regulations ‘pushed’ by American manufacturers to lessen the advantage of the Honda engines?
I think the EGR system is aimed at reducing NOx emissions, but I still don’t think Japan requires EGR on their domestic vehicles. I may know someone who bas imported / installed some JDM engines that were not equipped with EGR provisions.
No NOx regulations were not pushed by US automakers, they were scared of them. It is why many of them purchased licenses and GM did so much development on the Rotary due to its inherent low NOx emissions. It was seen as the savior until the energy crisis hit and its inherent high fuel consumption limited its potential use.
You are correct that EGR is used to lower NOx by lowering combustion temps. You are also correct that many of the JDM imported engines had to have the US specific EGR systems transferred from the original engine.
Could be transferred, could be blocked off. Nobody really knows what happened to those engines my friend may have seen, but he assures me they were installed in very low use vehicles.
I would have been surprised at any US auto maker pushing for emissions or economy standards.
I only thought spite and protectionism could possibly motivate them to do it.
Yeah we had emissions testing so I transferred pretty much everything, including getting rid of the points equipped distributor, since at the time Japan had such lax emission controls for so long.
Unless it’s one of those cadillac converters I see needed a lot on marketplace. Must be rare.
Yeah, fair points. Ford had been working for YEARS on “PROCO” by that time, too, which was similar in some ways to CVCC – stratified charge, fuel injected, etc. The problem that they had to learn to overcome was that you could get the mixture lean and the burn hot and complete, and that would actually make things WORSE because NOx would go up. And NOx = smog because it turns into ground-level ozone.
They did the thermal reactor -> catalyst thing together with EGR and timing/compression adjustments to get there.
Microprocessors were also still very, very expensive, and that led to amazing flying machines such as the nest of vacuum lines and variable venturi carburetors. All of which are amazing and clever applications of engineering and design to work within limitations and overcome a challenge, but, like V8-6-4, they ran into the limitation of the hardware/computing power of the times.
So – they tried a bunch of stuff, but also there were so many self inflicted wounds due to the culture of “not invented here” and hubris.
Yup Ford spent a lot of time and money on the stratified charge concept and by the time Honda showed up on their doorstep had determined that high swirl and vortexes weren’t going to create a sufficiently stratified charge to net any significant benefit. Ford’s work on stratified charge is likely why they went knocking on Ford’s door when they needed to borrow an emission’s lab and pick the brains of other engineers working to the same goal.
Ford ended up with direct (mechanical) injection for Proco which did meet the performance goals, unfortunately it was just too expensive to bring to market at that time. They were literally several decades too soon since many current vehicles are using direct injection to meet today’s emission regulations and performance/economy demands.
Now if you want to talk about miles and miles of vacuum hoses the award goes to Honda with their final carburetor cars.
Speaking of NIH syndrome the Escort was originally set to use Honda supplied (non CVCC) engines and transmissions. Unfortunately Hank II got wind of it and say “No way is any car with my name on it going to have a $#$%@% Jap(ensese) engine under its hood”. Never mind that they had been selling a Mazda with with Ford’s name on the hood for several years by that point. So yeah the CVH was rushed through design and into production when that last minute edict came down.
We had a couple Escorts with the CVH – I still think it would be neat to adapt the heads to a V8, but nothing in the catalog shares the bore centers.
I remember as a kid finding the tag that fell off the timing cover – it said “DEARBORN” – and that’s the day I learned where that was.
There was so much research and development sparked by the convergence of safety and emissions regs and a sluggish ’70s economy (and fuel crises); all of it got kinda squandered, unfortunately.
And companies were, as they are now, afraid of disrupting the status quo, so they talk about innovation and then get their asses kicked by innovators who are hungrier.
Actually GM offered the rest of the industry the rights to use their Catalytic Converter design for free on their models…
Yes, because Honda’s CVCC would fail emissions in as little as 20,000 miles…
Oh, yeah, the GM CEO was dismissive of Honda’s claims by saying “Well, I have looked at this design, and while it might work on some little toy motorcycle engine…I see no potential for it on one of our GM car engines” which then prompted Soichiro Honda to bring the aforementioned Chevy to Japan to be fitted with CVCC with vindicative success.
Covered here in a couple of articles:
https://japanesenostalgiccar.com/50-year-club-honda-cvcc/
and over at the German Lighting Site:
https://www.jalopnik.com/when-honda-gave-gm-one-of-historys-most-amazing-smackdo-1576732771/
Except that Honda’s CVCC engine would rail emissions within 20,000 miles or so. Honda’s “prototype” would have also failed within a similar time period…
Never mind that Honda CVCC engines failed emissions after about 20,000 miles. To make them pass they would need a head rebuild and a new exhaust manifold as that contained the thermo-reactor which would either come loose and rattle or block the down pipe…