Honda To Extend Warranty on Some Vehicles' Transmissions

Earle Eldridge

Honda said Thursday that it will extend the warranty on vehicles with a problem transmission to seven years/100,000 miles.

The company also said it will reimburse those owners who paid to have transmissions replaced.

The moves came after angry owners swamped online forums and appealed to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for a safety recall because of a transmission that could slip out of gear, not go into gear, abruptly downshift or refuse to shift.

The extended warranty applies to 2000-01 Honda Odyssey minivans; 2000-01 Honda Accord cars with automatic transmissions; 2000-01 Prelude; and 2000-03 Acura CL and TL cars.

Honda says the extended warranty, which covers the transmission only, affects about 1 million vehicles. It says 1.6% of those vehicles have had to have transmissions replaced.

''We wanted to make sure our customers still believe in Honda, and we didn't want them to have any lingering doubts about our quality,'' says Kurt Antonius, a Honda spokesman.

Honda will send letters in the next few weeks to owners of the vehicles, notifying them of the extended warranty and offering reimbursement.

For vehicles still under the three-year/36,000-mile warranty given when the vehicle was purchased, Honda had been replacing the transmissions. But owners with problems after the warranty expired were required to pay for the new transmission.

The problem varies with each model, but Antonius says the culprit is a bearing inside the transmission that could break apart or premature wear of a third-gear clutch part that could scatter metal bits inside the transmission case.

Some owners said their transmission had to be replaced with as little as 1,200 miles on the vehicle.

David Champion, director of Consumer Reports magazine's Auto Test Division, says owners should reasonably expect a transmission to last for 120,000 miles.