For two years, I'd been putting up with the gearshifter popping out of 2nd gear on occasion (especially when I'm turning right and engaging the gear at the same time). Over time, it got more frequent, and I finally decided to bite the bullet and have the transmission looked at by a mechanic. Turns out the synchros were shot, and the transmission needed a rebuild (or, I could have opted to replace the transmission for another few hundred bucks).

Mind you, the car was still fully operational, but I felt that there was just something inherently wrong about having to shift from 1st straight into 3rd when accelerating onto the freeway, if I didn't want to risk losing my acceleration when 2nd gear popped.

I also found out that Honda released a TSB regarding manual transmissions of their 2001 civic lineup - that corrosion of the shift cable may cause popping out of 2nd or 5th gear, and/or other shifting problems. But according to the people at American Honda, my VIN wasn't included in the batch of cars to which the TSB applied. (Likely story...) But in any case, this still didn't make me feel any more confident about the quality of parts that were used in 2001 civic transmissions.

After finding this site, I'm just sickened that a company like Honda, with its reputation for reliability, would have bungled it up so badly with its 2001 civic transmissions. And I'm also a bit suspicious as all these transmission-failure reports on this site come at a time when the car is (a) out of the standard warranty period, and (b) at less than half the mileage of when you'd expect a transmission to break down. Did they just build these cars on the cheap, or what? Here's hoping that they had these issues figured out and solved by the time the 2002 model year came out.

Moral of the story: don't buy the first year of a new body style.

Or better yet: don't buy Honda.