The philosophical – moral implications of a 1989 Honda Civic

The car has already been built and driven. Those carbon emissions have been made and you can’t do anything about them. You could think of things in terms of the butterfly-in-Africa-causes-hurricane-in-Florida sense and worry that your son buying that vehicle has somehow caused one additional new car to be manufactured. I think that’s way too much of a stretch.

Anyway, I had the prior generation Civic. Great car. I’m surprised that this one has a carburetor. I thought mine was the last generation to have them. It may surprise people from California, but in a place like Germany - with seasons and humidity and rain any time of year - there are going to be times when that car is not going to start. Like say you drove to the store in a drizzle and the rain stopped while you were inside, and now that you’ve got a load of ice cream and frozen pizza and a slightly warm engine and some pretty high humidity. Those Honda carbs aren’t perfect, ya know. Oh, also…. Cheap Honda/OEM-equivalent brake pads of that era tended not to have wear indicators. If you weren’t checking pad thickness frequently, your only indication that you needed a brake job was the very expensive sound of metal grinding against the rotors. Better make sure to check if this car has pads with wear indicators ;)