If the car is only a month out of warranty and has only a low mileage, you should definitely get Honda customer service involved. They won't buy you a new engine but they might contribute to the costs. The downside is they will probably insist on the job being done at a Honda dealer, which means it will cost more. So you might not save much.

Cambelt failures have been known to occur at 30,000 miles or so on some cars, but if this is the Honda 2.2-litre i-CTDi engine it has a chain-driven cam – and chains very rarely break.

If the engine was very low on oil – either through neglect, or because it sprang a leak while you were driving – it might have destroyed a main bearing or big-end bearing, which would certainly put you into new-engine territory.

If you have a question about cars, send it to me and I'll do my best to answer it.