(first posted 7/3/2016) In 1982 at the age of 38, just 10 short years since the Tempest/Duster dust up, I was fortunate enough to be able to sell my share of a small startup software service company and to wake up the next day with a clear conscience, and sense of peace and tranquility, and no need to rush here or there, or catch a flight to Dallas, or to rush to Manhattan to calm an upset customer.
I had been running like crazy for such a long time I felt guilty about not running that morning.
I wanted a simpler life.
And the clear conscience? Well, comedian Stephen Wright once said “A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory”.
I’m pretty sure I had been a good guy those past ten years.
So what kind of car should a good guy with a clear conscience who’s looking for a simpler life get now?
I said a simpler life.
Simpler than that.
Too simple.
Ahh, that’s just about right. But left hand drive please.
First I drove the Civic so the Accord would feel better.
The Accord felt better.
The 1982 Honda Accord was just beautiful, inside, outside, and in its endearing way of being a small hatchback but with a touch of style and a nice sense of quality.
The Honda salesman who sold me the 1982 Accord hatchback bought my 280 Z trade in from the dealership right after I turned it in. He told me “when I see a trade in where the prior owner keeps a spare distributor cap, rotor, points, six used but good spark plugs, spare air filter, and spare fan belts in the spare tire well, then I feel that is the car to buy”.
I hope it served him well. I told him there were troubling rust spots but he didn’t care. He had a fast flashy car with extra spark plugs.
The restyled for 1982 Accord was beautifully proportioned, crisp in appearance, and had a sense of being really well put together. I cannot say that enough. And the visibility looking out through all four sides of the Accord was impressive. Thin and stylish A, B, and C pillars and large windows gave its driver great views all around. It looked like the perfect high quality car for a person wanting to live a simple life, I mean a simpler, life.
The 1.8 liter engine had 3 valves per cylinder and put out 75 horsepower. I was back to a carburetor fed engine and a quieter, more serene, albeit a much slower ride, than the 1978 Datsun 280 Z “machine”.
In the above photo my brand new Accord is parked by my Washington Pond condo next to my neighbor’s Fiat Spider. She regularly beat me in racket ball. At the end of our games I’d be covered in bruises from the ball. “If you don’t want to get hit, get out of the way” she said. I kept going back for more punishment. Now I knew why her husband never played racket ball with her. We’d meet him and my girl friend at the local Charlie Brown after playing and, with a big smile he asked: “Have a nice game?”
I did notice that using the A/C impacted the Accord’s power to the wheels, especially with passengers on hills. The A/C compressor was almost as big as the engine block. But, when one is living a simpler life, one must turn off the A/C on steep hills. Or get in the right lane with the 4-ways on.
I liked the styled steel wheels and the overall feeling that the builder did not cut corners in its manufacture. Or if they did, I was not able to see where. And I looked.
The dashboard was the best interpretation of the 1980s Japan car interiors that I can recall. There was a little door under the left A/C vent for folded money. I put three crisp one dollar bills in there in case I ran short at a toll booth. Three dollars for tolls between NY and NJ is laughable now.
Paul wrote up the original 1976 Honda Accord at https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-asian/curbside-classic-1976-honda-accord-modern-architecture/ and a red 1982 hatchback model with gold wheels at https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-asian/curbside-classic-1982-honda-accord-honda-revolutionizes-the-us-industry-again/.
Perry Shoar wrote up a later model at https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-asian/curbside-classic-1986-honda-accord-why-drive-the-future-when-you-can-drive-the-present/.
Chris wasn’t visiting me as often as he had when he was younger. He had an active social like out on Long Island and no friends or relatives other than me in northern NJ where I lived at that time. That was OK. He was forming his own life as we all should, and I was still available whenever his mother went away with her new husband.
Chris and I spent time at my sister’s home and my parents drove up in their now aging T-Bird or Grand Prix from Miami for holidays.
In early 1983 I decided it was time to return to Manhattan, get a condo or co-op, find a job I could walk to like the old days, and get on with whatever life had in store for me next.
An ex-girlfriend told me about a one bedroom co-op across the hall from her. The sisters living there were going to list it with a broker but if I was interested, I could get it first. It was an 850 square foot unit on East 16th street with central A/C, parquet floors, a set back terrace, and it was on the 14th floor, overlooking the quiet back yards of nearby brownstones. In NYC housing parlance, perfect, perfect, perfect.
Was it wise to live directly across the hall from an ex girl friend? In NYC, a good unit in a nice building, with a terrace, and central air, trumped all other concerns. And, we always had a good “post-relationship relationship” and still occasionally went out for Chinese food together.
There was an occasional odd event. On Sunday mornings, it was my habit to start up the coffee maker and then go to the door to pick up the delivered Sunday NY Times before it was stolen by other residents of the co-op. I usually didn’t bother to put on a robe because it was just the hallway. Once, as I was reaching down to pick up the heavy Sunday edition, she opened her door to do the same. She was dressed; I was not. She shrieked loudly, giggled, got her paper, slammed her door shut, after which I could hear gales of laughter coming from her apartment.
I wondered who she was with and what she was telling him.
It happened more than once.
Buying a NYC co-op has one added complexity to the real estate process, the co-op board interview. I had to send the co-op board every possible piece of financial data and job history since college and then be interviewed by the co-op board in person at their monthly meeting.
On the evening of my interview with the board, I attended their regular monthly meeting. Dressed in my best suit and tie, I was told my interview was at the end of the board agenda under “other business”. I sat through the 90 minute meeting and when it seemed they were done with the co-op’s business, the meeting was adjourned.
I asked the board president if there was another meeting for my interview and she looked at me and said: “Oh, you’re fine.”
I listed my three bedroom condo in NJ and got a buyer within a few weeks.
Now I needed a job.
In 1982, The Coca-Cola Company acquired Columbia Pictures Industries for about $750 million and soon after bought the magnificent Columbia Pictures building at 711 Fifth Avenue (next to Trump Tower) from NYC real estate developer Larry Silverstein for about $57 million. (Keep this $57M figure in mind towards the end of this COAL).
Coke’s plan was to add to the already considerable assets of Columbia Pictures through acquisitions and see how much they could get for the built up business in the future.
To quantify and qualify these assets, Columbia Pictures needed better computer systems. Indeed, they were still using JCL (IBM’s job control language) punch cards to run their mainframe systems (a very outdated process in 1982). One of the critical systems needed was an Asset and Property Management Tracking System so they could show potential buyers the true value of the company and its assets.
Sound familiar? This was similar to the Grumman Property Management System, but much larger, more complex, and with user on-line screen access, control, and security to boot. Remember, this is the early 1980s, there was no public internet yet and no published HTML code. On-line programming was just getting up to speed using procedural code (like Cobol) and database systems offered by different vendors.
I contacted a headhunter an executive search firm company called JB Homer and Associates and met with JB Homer herself. Writing this and curious, I checked online and JB Homer and Associates is still in business, and it appears JB is also still there herself. JB is very good at what she does.
JB looked at my resume a long time, especially the Grumman stuff, looked up at me and said: “Do I have the job for you!”
JB said that my resume read like the job description for which her friend had recently opened a requisition at Columbia Pictures / Coca Cola.
“Coke? Atlanta?” I asked. “No; 711 Fifth Avenue, that’s 55th and 5th. Looking at my new address, JB added: “a nice brisk walk to work!”
I got the job, and JB got a fat finder’s fee. “They should all be this easy”, she told me.
With Coke’s funding, Columbia acquired Merv Griffin Enterprises, Embassy Pictures, some of Aaron Spellings’ Companies, part of Tri-Star pictures, and a few other theatrical and TV oriented companies.
I led a three person team (same size team as at Grumman) that developed Columbia’s on-line asset management and tracking system. This system was also used by Columbia’s film and tape library to manage creation and delivery of the tapes and films of TV shows and theatrical releases (movies) that Columbia sent to TV stations and theaters all over the world.
Syndication of TV series (the more episodes the better), and later premium and basic cable, and DVD distribution of movies, TV series, special productions, and even soap operas, was big money for companies like Columbia. Inventory was profit. Big inventory was big profits.
Our on-line asset system tracked every income producing asset that Columbia Pictures owned, from 70 MM prints and negatives of “Lawrence of Arabia” to each episode of “Days of Our Lives”, and everything in between.
We coded the system in a product then called DataCom/DB Ideal. It’s still around today (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DATACOM/DB) and owned by Computer Associates.
When I moved into my new co-op on 16th street it did not seem I would be using my almost new and very low mileage Honda much. I call my father and mother and said I wanted to give it to them.
Now if you read a prior COAL of mine you might recall that my mother thought VW bugs, and by extension small Japanese hatchbacks, were poor people cars; she did not like them. But one of their friends in Miami had a 1976 Accord, which she admitted was “nice”, and my Accord would be “newer”, so maybe this would be OK.
“But I do not drive manual transmission cars” she told me.
“What did you drive in the 1930s and 1940s before you got the Dynaflow Buick?”
“The what Buick?” She continued: “I said I do not drive manual transmission cars” sounding like she was talking to someone who was not quite bright enough for the conversation.
I decided to let my father sort this out. He was a lot smarter than I about these (and most other) things.
Doc sorted it out.
The plan was they would drive the T-Bird to my sister’s house on Long Island where I had parked the Honda, and they in turn would give the T-Bird to Chris, who was destroying cars at a rate that troubled me. At least he’d be safe(r) in that huge Ford.
Chris also had a motorcycle that gave me heartburn whenever I heard him as he left a family dinner at my sister’s house. I could hear him revving and shifting and revving and shifting that bike long after he was out of sight. I stood there and listened and wondered if our hug goodbye that night was the last time I’d ever see him. It wasn’t, but I worried.
I do not think the T-Bird lasted more than a year under Chris’ care, but he did not get hurt in it. I never quite found out what did happen to it. All I recall is that he told me “it broke”.
My sister called me to say that when my parents arrived at her house, she gave the Honda keys to my father and he sat in it a long, long time. He often told me this was the most fun car he has ever owned, and that included the Model A roadster he drove from Brooklyn to RPI in the 1930s.
On subsequent trips between Miami and Long Island in the Accord he would show me his mileage book and say: “look here, 43.4 miles to the gallon, and I was passing everyone on the interstate. No one could catch me.”
He put a CB in the Accord to keep a watch out for “Smokeys”.
On my first day at Columbia Pictures I met “The Irish Princess”, whom I shall refer to here as TIP, a tall, blond, blue eyed upper West Side resident who thought the name Plaut was funny sounding.
When she wanted to, TIP could put on the strongest Irish accent ever, almost undecipherable. It always made me laugh.
We started dating.
One thing led to the other.
After 13 years of single living, I did it again in September 1985. We were married in New York City’s elegant Municipal Building by a city judge with one witness. As seen above, I liked taking moody shadowed photos of her and she like to wear my white shirts.
I was pretty sure she did not have a violent bone in her body.
She even took that funny name as her own.
Back at 711 Fifth Avenue, Coca Cola sold Columbia Pictures to Sony for 3.2 billion dollars plus assumed debt of $1.6 billion. Even Doctor Evil would not have asked for that much. And, if that wasn’t a good enough deal, Coke kept the valuable real estate at 711 Fifth Avenue which was then renamed as the Coca Cola Building (*).
(*) Update Note: In August 2019 Coca Cola sold 711 5th Avenue for $909 million. A few weeks later that buyer resold its share of 711 5th Avenue to a third party for $937 million. A noted above, Coca Cola paid $57 million for the property in 1983.
The sale of Columbia Pictures to Sony would prove to be the deal that started the unraveling of the then current trend of Japanese companies buying up American companies and real estate. It was a terrible deal for Sony; they had little idea how to run a movie studio. Sony made terrible business decisions and hired the wrong people to run the studio. In 1994 Sony had to write down a major portion ($2.7 billion) of the purchase price, and then $510 million as an operational loss.
Some estimates say that Coca-Cola made a profit of about $1.5 billion in 1988 dollars before taxes on the sale of Columbia Pictures, or 1.2 billion 1988 dollars after-tax.
If you calculate what that profit is worth in 2016 dollars, it adds up to a lot. Or as the late Senator Everett Dirksen once said: “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money.”
So now in late 1986 early 1987 most of us at Columbia Pictures had to find jobs because Sony wasn’t going to keep most of the NYC tech crew after we had trained our replacements, and only a select few were offered spots in Atlanta Georgia at Coke’s headquarters. Frankly most of us were solid NYC or northeast types and did not want to move to Atlanta anyway, even if they had asked us to, and they did not.
I still had some work to do documenting the new systems and fulfilling some change requests, but the writing was on the proverbial wall. No bonuses of any kind were offered; none were expected. Nothing personal, this is just business. That’s the way things go sometimes.
Let’s see, I had a Manhattan co-op near Union Square, a new and very Irish wife, no car, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Hey, I think I could write a song about this
No, I’m not going to sail around the world in a J24 racing sloop, but maybe around New York Harbor.
Doc passed away in the late 1990s, a few years after my mother. He and the 1982 Accord were living in California with my brother during his last years. When he died, the three crisp one dollar bills I put there in 1982 were still behind the little dashboard door under the left A/C vent.
Time to move on.
This is bitter sweet story. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m glad you got married again.
Honda sure got their mileage out of their parts that dashboard transposed to RHD is the same as the on in my 84 Civic 5door sans the HVAC controls no AC on kiwi models, even the shifter surround the whole shooting match was used in both cars and even at twenty years old That Civic was rattle free, they did screw them together well back then, and my car was New Zealand assembled, Glad you remarried looking forward to next Sunday night for the next episode.
If you had realized at the time you were really buying a car for your parents. Would you have bought them an Accord or something else? Given the small size and manual transmission, it was probably quite a transition for them.
Again, the non-automotive parts are the most interesting. Absorbing reading. You didn’t happen to catalogue a misplaced copy of the original edit of ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’, did you?
Your Irish Princess is gorgeous.
‘It broke.’ hehehe
‘It broke.’ hehehe
Given sufficient time the average teenaged boy could probably destroy an anvil. I don’t have any children but my siblings have five sons among them; when they were growing up they caused havoc on all things mechanical, electrical, vegetable and mineral. The worst might have been when my nephew took a pencil and poked several dozen holes in the speakers of my brother’s vintage Fender guitar amp. He had heard somewhere (he was about 8 years old at the time) that particular technique was how bands achieved a fuzz-tone sound.
Your nephew must have heard the story of how Dave Davies of the Kinks put knitting needles in his “little green amp” to get the sound first heard in “You Really Got Me.”
A tall girl with an Irish accent? You win! ***I hope!*** 🙂
You threw us off the scent with the racquetball playing 124 owner… I hope, however, you get back to driving soon; after all, going for a walk is fine if you have a car (or seven) in the garage. 🙂
What great cars these Accords were – well styled both inside and outside, great size, fantastic craftsmanship, good variety of configurations (imagine a midsize, three-door hatch now).
The Accords from 1980 to about 1990 made Honda’s reputation. Kind of sad to think what a bulbous and bloated joke the car has become (at least in the US).
There are some people that think the best Accord was introduced in 1990. There are others that notice that every Accord is bench-marked against its predecessor, so the best one is the one on the dealer’s lot today. I have a job where I look at everything from new S-class Mercedes down to fleet Fords every day. Accords are still the best sedans on the market.
I would have to agree. I’ve owned four Accords of (mostly) different generations (2005, 2010, 2013, 2016). Each has been an improvement over its predecessor either with improved features, performance or both. I’ve put 100,000 miles on all of them with no repairs whatsoever. I have never used the regular or extended warranties.
As for the larger size, I don’t really mind since I drove mostly b body Chevy Caprices before switching to Accords.
It is a little strange though that a car can go from being a Japanese Scirocco to giving JerseyFred his B body fix.
This is true. I would say they became B bodies for me starting with the 6th generation (1997-2002) forward. Although I did have a lot of respect for the fourth generation cars (1989-1994).
I just wish they still made a wagon version.
Look at the current civic it is a half a size bigger than the last generation and probably the size of a 05 accord. As these things go honda and toyota will likely soon introduce a new model into their line ups.
Agreed. In terms of size, I’ve confused the current Civic with the Accord many times. I do like the new styling though.
Can anyone identify the coupe beside the British-registered Accord? I’m assuming something low-volume & British.
It’s a Clan. Don’t ask me how I pulled that out of my memory banks, way too many years of reading 80’s CAR and Performance Car magazines I guess. First I thought Marcos, then Ginetta, then somehow my brain said Clan even though I was doubting that Clan was even a car. Pulled it up on Google and sure enough there it was!
I think it may even be one of the later Irish-built ones. In any case a seriously rare beast.
Edit – I now think it’s actually a McCoy, which was a Mini based continuation version of the same Clan car. Here is a build thread link to someone in England restoring/modifying one. http://bristolkitcarclub.co.uk/smf2/index.php?topic=4389.0
Roger Carr probably knows the guy 🙂
Good call! The one in the article, appears to have a quarter window in the door. I have not seen this before.
Yeah, that’s what makes me think it’s a McCoy. At first I thought the pictured Accord was brand new but now I think it’s just a photo taken in the mid-80’s of someone’s clean Accord. The McCoy next to it has styling details that were much more popular by 1984-1985 than in 1982 such as the wheels, the color, the darker rockers with the red stripe etc. It’s too bad we can’t see either the front or rear of it.
Ha, I think I may have found more images of it.
And this one (same car) from a different source.
Nice work! I had heard of a Clan (and may actually have seen an earlier model) but never a McCoy. Wikipedia says by this time they had switched from being Imp-based to Mini-based – quite a shift. This model seems to have the wheels from a Metro/Maestro.
I was familiar with the Imp-based Clan Crusader, but not the Mini-based McCoy.
I find myself living vicariously through you during this series, and I think I speak for all of us when I say I’m hoping that your upward trajectory continues. That said, you’re spot-on about the Accord – – a truly iconic design, perhaps as close to the perfect car as ever there was. May the rest of your life be so trouble-free and enjoyable as that Honda.
It’s good to see your life continuing on its upward trajectory again and that Accord was so clean and fresh in the early ’80’s. These were all over the place in California (along with the 4-door of course). I wish it was still possible to get seat fabric that felt so nice and plush these days, Honda really had it together back in those days.
Great tale, I love the final sentence!
When I see these classic Accords it makes me weep for the bloated barges they have become. A friend’s mom had one just like yours and she loved that periwinkle blue Honda.
I am now picturing a Vancouverite weeping openly in the streets as a new Accord drives by. They wouldn’t have become midsizers if people didn’t want them to be midsizers.
Another great installment, as expected. Chris was a lucky kid to have inherited that T-Bird, it’s such a cool high school car. Funny, as I’m approximately his age I relate somewhat to “It broke”. The 80’s was the quintessential conspicuous consumption decade, and unfortunately that meant that those of us who came of age then were a bit blase’ about automotive care and the idea of preserving the mechanical integrity of our rides. When I think of the vehicles I let fall into disrepair or treated with indifference, having the perception that I’d replace them easily when necessary I really am perplexed at how I could have been so callous. That period seems to have bred the destructive behavior, with little concern for debt, etc. that helped my own exuberantly spending generation contribute so strongly to the crisis by 2008.
It’s enjoyable reading your life story through your cars.
When my 1979 Accord was really starting to irritate the heck out of me, I test drove a new ’82 like the featured car. Unlike my Accord, this new car drove smoothly with good driveability, functional synchronizers, and no rattles. It was a beautiful champagne color. I really wanted it, but coming off a divorce and having limited funds, couldn’t bring myself to trade in a 3 year old car with 30K miles, no matter how awful it was. Perhaps I made the wrong decision then.
Glad to see Doc enjoyed that Accord all those years.
You seem to have had an uncanny ability to pick the perfect slightly leading edge car at every stage. What a perfect car the Accord was 1982, without the many compromises that those of us with more traditional tastes suffered in the early 80s.
Your desire to simplify was a common thing then, but it was more often forced on folks by a nasty recession and sky-high gas prices. That you did so out of desire instead of necessity makes your trek through life all the more interesting.
Great series! Sorry to hear about your parents, but it seems your personal life is looking up at this point.
The budget being quite meager, my choice for the 2nd half of the ’80s was a lightly used ’84 Chevette. If I had it to do over again, would choose one again in a “Heartbeat.” (Pun intended) A little more oomph financially, and an Accord would’ve fit the bill nicely, too.
If Chris is following this, maybe he’d be willing to chime in with details on the T-Bird’s demise. A sort of “We can look back and laugh now” kind of thing? 😉
Enjoying this series again, immensely! Just had a deja vu all over again moment after seeing the Chevette above and reading my own comment from six years ago,
My Chevette was a sort of photo negative of the one you found online. The paint was a darker blue metallic and the stripes were the identical shape, but light blue. Some days I miss that car and those times, but no way would I trade them for today.
Nice story! I’m happy that your life started to come together. Sorry to hear of your parents’ passing. I hope that they did enjoy the car.
Thanks for the story, very well told.
Growing up in the 80s I had a friend with very welathy parents. His dad’s daily driver was a Bentley plus he had a big 1950s Rolls Royce some other stuff – I particularly remember a Bristol.
The lady of the house wasn’t interested in cars and just wanted something to run errands, so one of these was purchased (with Hondamatic). I strongly remember how the interior was in a different league from the Cortinas and Cavaliers that I was used to, and with it’s comfortable ride and good sound insulation it was just a nice place to be. Also, we were in the depths of the English countryside with lots of narrow windy roads, so a reasonably small and nimble car like this was definitely desirableThey ended up keeping it for many years, presumably because it was reliable, comfortable and pleasant to drive.
A beautifully written story, (as expected), though I must confess to being more enchanted by the ’71 T-Bird that Chris wound up with.
Ca. 1978 I had a brief (~1/2 hour) ride in a friend’s Accord, I’m not sure what year. Up to that point, all my cars (except a Fiat 128) had been Saab 95 or 96 V4’s. Admittedly the V4 was setting the bar low for NVH, but I was very impressed with the Accord’s refinement.
I assume the Irish Princess was pretty, but it’s hard to tell with her face in shadow. That said, it’s a very nice photo. Perhaps you’re respecting her privacy?
There’s a lot of ignorance on display about new Accords. I see every brand of car from the inside. Accords still make cars costing four times as much look like primitive, haphazard garbage. Get one now, before they adopt the worst CAFE compliance technologies. They have tuned mass dampers that have been banned in Formula 1, much like their automatic transmissions. Pearls before swine.
Dad bought an 82 Accord, same as this, but the sedan, and in dark brown with beige interior. He had always tended to smaller cars, and had been a dedicated American car guy for over 20 years when he finally got persuaded by my sister to give the Honda a serious look. After that, he was an Accord guy. He loved the 82, except for the manual choke, so flipped it for a new 86, then swapped that for a 91 (which he kept for another 22 years!).
For my money, the 82 was the best of them. Lively, simple, and SO well put together.
Such good writing here .
.
I liked those Accords when new although they were way out of my price league .
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I still see them occasionally here in So. Cal. .
.
-Nate
“The Living Years” was one of the last songs I played on Pop Radio before leaving for Country in January, 1989. I always flipped the 45 over and played the album version used in the above video.
The Country station to which I went was WWVA-AM/WOVK-FM in Wheeling WV, which had been one of those Columbia Pictures Industries assets bought by Coca-Cola. For a small market, the presence of these stations, both with 50kW signals, made Wheeling seem like a much larger city…until you actually got there, drove thru and went, that’s all there is?
Adding to that illusion was WWVA’s cooler, hipper version of the Grand Ole Opry, Jamboree USA, presented every Saturday night from the art-deco Capitol Music Hall which also housed the radio studios.
My parents listened to the Jamboree as youngsters; after years of not quite understanding my career as a radio personality, all of a sudden it was “my son, who works at WWVA!” I was playing their music…Country Music.
They finally got it.
I never actually drew a paycheck from Coca-Cola; FCC rules prohibiting foreign ownership of radio/TV stations meant CPI couldn’t be sold to Sony without first selling off those broadcast properties to a third, domestic party. (If you remember the movie “Working Girl” with Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford, that was how Trask Industries avoided a hostile takeover by a foreign entity. Trask bought some radio stations) But there were still some plenty of cool artifacts from their time as “A Screen Gems station”…and I’d always heard from those who’d worked under CPI/Coca-Cola that they were a good company.
Last summer, a mechanic friend noted the Honda Odyssey outside his shop, which needed motor mounts…”air filled, electric motor mounts! I swear I’m not making this up! Never seen anything like it…$200 for the part alone plus labor to install…”
Behold, the $200 air-filled, electric motor mount.
http://www.autozone.com/external-engine/motor-mount/duralast-motor-mount/411489_0_4222_187539/?checkfit=true
Blow up the shot and look closely, looks like an electrical socket on the lower left.
Whatever happened to “we make it simple?!”
The lone comment about that part says it’s one-third the price of a real Honda one…and that it’s not worth it.
> Not OEM Quality
>
> I bought this part because it is one-third the price of the OEM
> mount, but unfortunately, you get what you pay for. Sure, it has a
> lifetime warranty, but the vehicle will shake so much you’ll wish you
> spent the extra money.
>
> Pros: price
>
> Cons: did not reduce engine vibration
Problem is, if a motor mount isn’t worth $200, can one be worth $600?
Sorry, looks like back to American iron…
I absolutely love your storytelling, not to mention your candor. Gripping series.
As has been said several times already, fantastic story, very absorbing and beautifully written.
I’ve read the whole series throughout the day today and have to say you have had a very agreeable life beside that first marriage. I’m younger by a bunch but would have rather grown up in the time frame that you did. It truly seemed to be a good time to be a kid, teenager and then young adult and on through life. Good to get to know you sir…
Another enjoyable read…it seems your Accord ownership occurred at a time of renewal in your life. New residence…new job…new marriage to a lovely woman. Appropriate that it was a fresh, modern car for the time, one that really started the trajectory towards being the class leader for first compacts, then mid-sizers.
My family had an ’84 Accord sedan, same generation but after the mild exterior facelift. We bought it well-used in 1998; it was supposed to be my car to take to college but plans changed and Dad ended up driving it. I completely agree with your analysis of its quality. For a 14 year old car with over 150,000 miles on the clock, ours *still* exuded a sense of quality. Very few rattles or squeaks, materials still felt nice and solid, still tight and it drove well. Dad got another 4 years out of it and always seemed to enjoy that little car.
The story about your three crisp $1 bills still being in the change tray made me smile. Guess tolls aren’t much of an issue in California? Glad your ’82 was able to provide good transportation for your Dad for the rest of his life. That really validates your purchase, and your generosity in giving the car to them when it was still relatively new is truly admirable.
The only Honda I ever owned was a brand-new 1985 Accord sedan. While an otherwise fine car, the front brake rotors warped at 10k miles and the dealer refused to fix under warranty, saying it was normal wear and tear to replace the rotors every 10k miles. I paid to have them replaced, then promptly traded the vehicle in, and have never considered another Honda since. IOW, Accord brake rotors cost them a customer for life.
From what I understand, the Honda brake rotor situation hasn’t changed much since, all the way up to the vehicles they sell today.
Back in the late 70’s through the early ’80s I remember special machines to grind the warped rotors on Hondas being sold to garages as a time saving money maker .
You’d leave the rotors on the car and the machine would spin the warped rotor in situ as it ground it flat again .
Many rotors are warped / ruined by over enthusiastic grunts using high powered impack guns to speed up tire replacement .
I always use a hand wrench and if I have a shop to any tire repairs / replacements I make a point of standing there and watching as they don’t care and will claim to use a torque wrench then grab the impact gun instead .
Most rotors / drums are so thin these days that machining them seriously degrades the brakes .
-Nate
“… Most rotors / drums are so thin these days that machining them seriously degrades the brakes …”.
-Nate, I agree 100%. For most of my car driving life any rotor issue, e.g., warping or wear, means new rotors as well as new pads. I want as much metal in/on the rotors as possible to handle heat. They’re thin enough to start with; let’s not make them even thinner.
So you stand there and watch just like I do on all my cars. I recall once someone at America’s Tire was putting my wheels back on and I asked what are you torquing to? He said 120 lbs. Nuts! Told him 95 lbs. max and he said the book says this. I said I have the Ford manual in the car do you want me to show you? Some blah, blah about liability. He then followed my instructions using a torque wrench as I told him I have mine on the front seat.
That may have been the last time at a major dealer like America’s Tire. Now get my tires off Tire Rack and take just up the street to a small two man shop and they install the tires to my specs and none go past 95 lbs. Long ago got annoyed when I literally couldn’t get a front wheel off with standard tools because it was torqued on with an impact wrench so tight. I needed a long breaker bar which I could stand on.
You had to have grown up with drum brake only vehicles, some were scary when new like all 1937 ~ 1951 Chevrolet passenger cars and 1/2 ton trucks ~ they used “HUCK” (rhymes with SUCK) brakes that have the brake shoes pinned to the brake plate at the bottom, thereby loosing about 1/3 of the effective braking power .
Now, add in the late 50’s and 60’s when freeways became common and older highways speed limits rose, when you over drive the drum brakes at some point going downhill the harder you press the brake pedal, the faster you go .
Add in the average corner garage/filling station usually had a SUN brake drum lathe and they’d turn those damn drums paper thin, all was fine when pooting ’round town but load up the station wagon for summer vacation or the ol’ pickup with a load of bricks / sand / manure / whatever and head to the dump and you’d get quite a surprise coming down hill .
Disc brakes helped a _LOT_ but many died or were scarred for life from loosing the brakes .
I have vivid memories of going into and out of the Rockies, Death Valley, those tall mountains in Oregon, the Indian reservation back roads, on and on….
“Descend hills in the same gear you ascended them in” used to be the by word for safety .
This is the engineering ChryCo used to brag about their cars didn’t have the flash of GM / Ford but they certainly were better designed .
Even my VW Beetles had barely passable brakes, unless I put four bodies in the car I rarely over heated the brakes in the mountains and I always got plenty of notice before loosing the ability to stop .
Even when you’re standing there watching some will try to sneak too much torque past you .
-Nate
Wheels have torque specs, typically about 100 ft*lbs. Equal torque on the studs is just as important as the spec. Also a torque sequence. It only takes .003 inches of disc thickness variation to produce pulsation in the brake pedal. I scored one of these off of the list of craig for $300 last summer. These became mandatory shop equipment in FoMoCo dealers in the late ’90s. I had prior Honda experience (although the Honda system was not as advanced, it simply was a lathe that bolted into the caliper mount, and you ran the vehicle in drive to rotate the rotor, a screwdriver on the other side in a rotor vent slot overcame the differential action of the transaxle), so wasn’t averse to their introduction. As typical in the mechanic world, new tech is a bitter pill for many techs and I tended to be the only one using it. I’ve never been like that, most new stuff had a tendency to make your job easier, if you were willing to learn it. Brake pulsation was warranted 12 months 12,000 miles, and I could machine front rotors on most cars without removing the calipers in about 20 minutes, a rare warranty labor score.
Cool ~ that’s very similar to the machine I mentioned .
New tech is always new and different, I like to learn new things even though I also like things to remain as they are….
Some of my LBC’s have tiny lug studs that spec. out at 42 # torque spec, I’ve managed to strip more than a few with the cute tiny little factory lug wrench .
I still own and use to good effect a dwell tachometer and dynamic timing light with an advance dial, it’s the bee’s knees for dialing in older engines .
Whenever possible I replace contact breaker points with simple hall effect devices .
-Nate
We bought a sedan version of this in 1982, and it was a great car. I recall the mileage was excellent, and the car was trouble-free while we had it. We sold it with only 50-60,000 miles on it; our second child was on the way and it was time for a wagon.
I’d forgotten the “turn-the a/c off” power boost trick, but did it regularly with this car as well as with the Volvo 245 that succeeded it. I also recall the powertrain as behaving in a pretty rubber-bandy fashion. Too quick a clutch release, or getting on or off a gas at low speeds could provoke it; had never had another car do this, before or since the Accord.
Racquetball and bruises was one thing that got my attention. In my first game of racquetball (age 19), which was quite different from tennis, I was always turning around to see where the opponent hit the ball rather than facing forward towards the wall. Well one ball managed to hit me square in the right lens of my glasses. Luckily I wore glasses as my eye would have been lost. The metal frame gashed my eyebrow which started bleeding quite a lot. That was my one and only game of racquetball.
Then there is the story of Chris and him getting the T-bird and I knew it was a goner. I have a patient, around 75-77, a small 5’6″ guy who is a building supervisor for a major national contracting firm. Always saying he will retire but deep down I know he loves it. Well he drives a burgundy Hellcat of what year I do not know. I joked with him about doing 140 and he tells me he has done 190 on a road in Livermore. Seriously.
Ok, then, were you a hotrodder in the 60s? Yes he was. Built two cars, one a 1958 Pontiac, and raced in the Vallejo area in the early 60s. Said to be two of the fastest cars in the Bay Area. Drafted for Vietnam he gave them away to a brother and a friend as he didn’t think he was coming back. Before he left he got married to a girl with a VW Beetle. He couldn’t stand the Beetle and sold it to a dealer and walked home. New wife didn’t talk to him for a week. In Vietnam, mail arrived every two months or so, and he got his first large stack. In it two letters from guess who but the two car owners. Both cars had been wrecked in the first eight months after he left. Yep, never fails when no skin in the car they always get destroyed.
Always admired those Accords but had a new 1980 Civic wagon which morphed into a 86 Mazda 626. So I never got the chance to own an Accord but still own 626’s.
Update as of today I will no longer allow the shop to even put my lug nuts on even if they end up using a torque wrench. I just snapped off a cross threaded lug nut/stud an hour ago and the last person who put the nuts on was the guy who mounted the new tires. This in regards to anything other than the old standard lug nut. More on this in a maintenance update story.
If properly used, these are fine, especially for a shop tech removing and installing wheels all day. If you’re at home, working on your own car and time isn’t an issue, a quality calibrated torque wrench will do.
Man, how does a guy writing about vintage cars get me so worked up. My wife loves the Hallmark channel with all it’s tearjerkers. I laugh at them they’re so shallow and trite, it’s almost more like comedy. But RLPlaut, man, that’s real life, and not always easy.
Oh, wait a minute, this is about cars. Yeah, many love them, but not a Honda fan. I didn’t own, but spent a bit of time in oh, a late 80’s or so Accord, and it was a nice car for the era, but I still don’t like them or trust them. Their 70’s cars were fragile and short lived. Oh well. Another tip of the hat to RLPlaut for a great submission.
Can’t wait for the next installment! Glad to see that you found the TIP and interested to see your next move. Great COAL!
My last brand new car, a blue 1984 Honda Accord hatchback looked very similar, just a slightly different grill. I had the base model, no power steering. It had the standard transmission, which was ‘standard’ at the time and what I preferred. It was a great car, like the ’86 Accord that my ex won from a TV contest and a ’99 that I bought in 2018 and had until October 2021. In 2019 the ’99 needed brake and fuel lines, but other was pretty rust free. All had good shifting standard transmissions IMO.
I see ‘COAL’ mentioned on this site – what does that mean?
Cars Of A Lifetime
@ Steve :
Cars Of A Lifetime like my 1946 Chevy 1/2 ton pickup, purchased for $600 when I got married at 18Y.O. and then rebuilt using junkyard, swap meet and parts from an abandoned one I found…..
I kept it for decades, slow and reliable, cheap to operate and I thought it looked nice .
I foolishly sold it in 1989 or so right after buying my house .
I wish I had the word smithing skills others here have, I’d be able to write a coherent article or ten .
-Nate
Wonderful story, well written!
I bought a new ‘81 Accord HB, it was a good car. A friend bought an ‘82 Accord HB approximately 9 months after that and I remember how much more substantial that ’82 felt. The doors felt much heavier and sounded/felt like I imagined bank vault doors would have. Nice improvements, although there’s no excuse for not having FI by then.
Thanks for the COAL definition. No way would I have guessed. I didn’t get an email alert there was a reply like I have before. Sorry for the delay.
On an administrative note – I went to ‘manage subscriptions’ because I used to get Curbside Classic emails daily. Now I only do weekly. I prefer daily but didn’t see an option. I see ‘When choosing daily or weekly email delivery, which time of day would you prefer?’ with a dropdown of Monday-Friday – but no daily or weekly option selection. How I can change it back to daily?