'08 Honda Civic Dimples around Sunroof
 

No bashing please! I'm not real fond of this car but my wife bought it a year ago and loves it. I'm posting here mostly to vent, I'm also posting this at the 8thgencivic.com website.

4 dr. Sedan, Automatic.

Day before Labor Day, she hand washed it, noticed nothing amiss.

Monday afternoon we (I) drove about a mile to a friend's house for a Labor Day dinner.

Came home and when my wife got out of the car she immediately noticed a fist sized dent/dimple at the front corner of the sunroof opening.

I got out, checked the driver side, found the same at the rear corner.

I scrutinize my car for dings pretty thoroughly and in 5 years, have 1 small hail stone ding on the hood, no other dings on the car. I might not have noticed them on hers because I'm just not all that fond of it. But my wife is equally anal about her car, so we are both pretty sure she would have noticed these dents when she washed the car.

The car has never been in an automatic car wash.

We noticed nothing getting in or out of the car going to the friend's house, or while getting back in it to come home (all in the daylight).

She made an appt. to bring it into the Dealer. They checked it out, talked to Honda, claim they have never seen anything like this before, must have been subject to an external force such as from a car wash!

Got nowhere with the Dealer so opened a Case with Honda, but not optimistic. They claim they have NEVER heard of this before, which is a lie, because I have already found others who have made the same complaint and been told the same thing.

My first thought was that something was screwy with the sunroof that tweaked the roof panel. Dealer says the sunroof motor wasn't strong enough to dent the roof panel. Told him that was crap, that motor is plenty strong to do damage. And if there was something else causing it, all the worse.

Searched around and found two different Civic Forums that discussed this problem.

Apparently others have experienced the same problem. Believed to be caused by body flex, possibly from hitting potholes or from "aggressive" driving.

That doesn't apply to my wife's car, and if Body Flex from easy driving could cause this, should I expect the car to fold in half when I take an exit ramp at a more enthusiastic speed?

Not expecting Honda to do the right thing. Worse, others claim the dents will just come back if you repair them. My wife is bummed. I think Honda is way over-rated anyway. She has had the car in for this plus one other time for complaints of a belt squeal when we were having a lot of rain, an engine rattle that seems odd to my ear, and an A/C that seems sub-par for cooling (I drove a '96 Maxima that also struggled to cool, nothing close to the "ice cold" I expect from my GM, Ford, & Jeep products). All of which the Dealer tells her are "normal". I guess you can claim "defect free" if you refuse to own up when customers complain.

Anyway, if ANYBODY has ever known of this problem with an '06-'09 Civic let me know, I'm looking to collect evidence because I plan to take this as far as I can.

And thanks for letting me vent.