As I near completion of my sixth decade on this planet I now completely believe that nothing good happens after 10:00 PM. Counting back through the decades I’m sure that was 11:00 PM in my 40s, 12:00 AM in my 30s, and probably in my 20s something like 4:00 AM. Which might explain why I got up one Saturday morning in my early twenties after a night shooting pool and playing darts in the pub and had a recollection of buying a car sometime around midnight the night previous. And since I was due to leave for university in 3 days I had better get wrenching.
It seems so wasteful now to spend money drinking beer on a Friday night but hanging with friends and having adventures meant that sometimes it was good to get together and celebrate them with the craic as the Irish part of me would call it. Late one such evening a friend leaned over to me and said, “Wanna buy my car? $100.” “What car I inquired?” “My Civic” said he. Well, I was quite surprised to hear that particular Civic was still out there. It had been his mom’s car new in 77 and with a 3-boy family driving it quite hard, its exploits were the stuff of local legend. The most famous of these being the time it went airborne over some railroad tracks and remained so as it flew past a police cruiser. Must have been built well to endure that level of abuse.
The only problem disclosed by my friend is that it had a bad CV joint. I figured what the heck and said I would buy it, beer occasionally caused instances of bad judgment in me back then. The next day I went to the bookstore and picked up a copy of How To Keep Your Honda Civic Alive, and then hit the parts store for a reman axle which I believe was about $200 but I got the core change back so maybe less. As bad as I was at working on old American iron, I seemed pretty capable of repairing small front-drive foreign cars. A few hours of labor and I now had a relatively good running car. I wish I’d kept that old John Muir book. Like its more famous Volkswagen sister edition it was a good read and had some quite useful tips.
The car was a plain 1200cc 4-speed so no CVCC systems to figure out. It was odd in that it didn’t have a hatchback, just a little trunk. Parts of the body looked a bit shabby, so I did some quick repairs, masked off some random geometric shapes and hit the paint cupboard to apply an eye-catching paint scheme.
The next day I loaded it up with quite a few of my possessions and headed out for the 600-mile-long trip over the numerous mountain passes between me and University. During the climb up the first pass, a slight problem started to manifest itself in the form of a coolant leak. It started to get worse by Grand Forks, the locale of so many semi-tragic moments in my automotive life. I hauled out the tools and started looking for the problem. Turns out the water pump was not held on by all its fasteners as one stud was messed up allowing a steady little drip of coolant. I wasn’t expecting this car to be a family heirloom when I handed over the five twenties, so rather than fool with a proper repair I just poured in some Barr’s Leak and within a few minutes all was well and no longer leaking. The leak never came back for as long as I had the car for that matter. I was so happy heading down the big switchbacks into Oysoyoos, that the car might actually make the coast and I wouldn’t be stopping to add any more antifreeze, that I took a photo through the somewhat cracked window to commemorate the event.
For some reason I had named the car, something which I usually don’t do, Chariot of Fire, from the line in Blake’s Jerusalem. Seems a bit weird now, but what from the 1980s doesn’t, has been my thought going through my old pictures for this series. A classmate was working at a vinyl graphics place and printed me a nice flame sticker for the hood with Chariot of Fire written underneath. I think that the fact that I fancied myself to be some type of urban rebel at the time, and not the mining and logging rural fellow that I was in the summer, might explain it all. Unless it doesn’t.
The car served me well all fall. It ferried university students all over Vancouver. I remember transporting a car full of blue-haired punks through a police roadblock and being very relieved to not have faced a mandatory vehicle inspection as the police were looking for drunks and not old cars of questionable roadworthiness. I taught a girl with a Honda motorcycle, who I had started to hang around with, how to drive a standard shift car in the Chariot. My mom broke her leg and was left at home alone around Thanksgiving, and I made the 1200-mile round trip back to see her with nary a hiccup. This thing was fun to drive and super zippy in the city. Maybe the FIAT 128 handled better overall but it had better tires than the mud and snows the Civic sported. When there was a snowstorm that winter in Vancouver the real snow tires the Civic had moved it about a lot better than the majority of the vehicles there.
I was really starting to think liked Civics. I had a light load of courses at that time, so I took on an evening and weekend job as a lot man/car jockey at Budget Rental Car Sales in South Vancouver. I was able to drive nearly every late 80s to early 90s vehicle there was, during my employment there. This was during the time of Air Care pollution testing and the lot manager had figured out that a thoroughly warmed up car had a better chance of passing the test first try than a cold one. The standard instructions given to us was to run the car hard to get it warm before going to the inspection station, but don’t get a speeding ticket. Not too much fun in a 15-passenger Econoline, but a super assignment in a CRX Si. Though thinking back, it really was fun in a 15-passenger Econoline just on a different and potentially more alarming level if you had to change direction or brake.
I spent so much time with cars it was easy to come up with some opinions. This was peak minivan time and they all seemed pleasant enough, the Chryslers were nicer than the Astros and Aerostars. Other than the Cadillacs and the odd big Buick, which were smooth cruisers, GM sure made some crap. Sunbirds, Cavaliers and that Daewoo LeMans thing in particular. The S-10 Blazer was not the vehicle the Cherokee and Explorers were either. The medium-duty Chevy trucks with the 366 V8 were pretty dismal if your experience was with Diesel Internationals. Tempos sucked, Escorts were OK, the Taurus was pleasant. All the Japanese cars were pretty good: Accords, Civics, 323s, Camrys, Miatas, 300ZXs, even the Geo Metros were tolerable. We had a fleet of Nissan Micra shop cars which we used to drive in a high-speed formation over the Oak Street Bridge. The Hondas were a lot more exciting than the stodgy Toyotas for sure.
Overall, they were a good employer. The General Manager bought everyone lunch every Sunday. Some of the salesmen were a bit high strung, particularly when trying to make quota near the end of the month. One of the real eye-openers was what people would trade in and just what poor condition some of it was in. Especially in the brake department. We had some scary trips ferrying the trade-ins not good enough for the lot to the low-end lots where they were to be sold, using one heap as a block to make sure the one behind could stop if it had to. At the time there was only one deal where I remember thinking that the person was making a terrible mistake. He brought in an orange 1973 455 powered Trans Am and traded it for a 1990 Firebird. The old one was a glorious driver around the lot and may have chirped the tires a few times getting moved about. The new one had a V8 I guess, better than the stupid V6 Camaros.
As we will see next week another vehicle showed up in my life that made the Chariot surplus to my needs. The girl with the motorcycle had a job where sometimes the motorcycle was not ideal, so she drove the Civic when she had to be presentable in dress, if not in vehicle. The old Civic just kept running along fine and was proving to be worth the $100 I had spent acquiring it.
When the same girl was looking for a more permanent car it seemed that a Civic would likely fit the bill. We looked and found a silver 1500 4-door Civic. It was in really nice shape, all systems worked, and it did everything right. Enough power, nice seats good ride, and it handled well. Such a well-designed car. I have no idea where I put the pictures of it so this is the only one I could lay my hands on. This was taken on an unfortunate long trip where the muffler got damaged on a Sunday and we kept on driving as there was no way to repair it. We were accompanied by a large tabby cat who normally liked to ride in the car, but when the muffler fell off the noise bothered him enough that he meowed constantly for the next 200 miles. When he wasn’t yowling at ear-splitting sound levels that is.
This Civic worked so well that it was a bit of a shock when it started to use oil with all of 75,000 miles on it. It seemed to be both leaking and burning a bit. One day the oil leak made it to the vicinity of the timing belt which caused it to stop turning the camshaft which of course was its job. I hooked the broken car up to my pickup and towed it home. The best fix would have been to just swap in a scrapyard engine, which due to the mechanicals outlasting the body on these in winter climates, would have been easy enough to find. Even swapping out the head may have helped. I had another vehicle that was more appropriate for our use, so I put a for sale sign on the Civic and it quickly sold despite the engine problem. The new owner ignored my repair advice and only changed the timing belt. Soon after I saw it going by and it was smoking a fair bit of blue. I’m not sure what happened after that as we moved to a new town. I should have just fixed it into a nice car again, but I was as usual super busy with more pressing mechanical and other issues, so I didn’t have time.
It made me happy to see this one in Washington State last month. I know many people had good luck with these second-gen Civics.
The old 77 Civic was sold to someone who was going to use it around their farm. I had noticed that part of the passenger side floor was actually a tacked-in road sign under the carpet, so it seemed that was the safest use for it. I certainly got my $100 worth out of it. Despite the failure of the 1982 I still remained a Honda fan for a bit longer. I consider the whole thing with the 82 just a bit of bad luck to balance out the good luck with the 77.
I never did work in the automotive industry again though I remain glad that I did, even in such a small role. I came to the realization that most cars are a commodity to be bought and used and scrapped. Most cars anyways. The girl with the motorcycle is still around though now she rides a Harley. The tabby cat lived until a ripe old age and very much enjoyed riding around in trucks as long as the muffler was fine.
And next week I end up with someone else’s bargain that turned out to be a very good vehicle indeed.
All right, the first reliable Honda. A friend of mine had one of those in the Bay Area and it was a four-door, got over 200,000 miles. The 600s were extremely unreliable and gearboxes would fail or lock up. J Edwards Deming did his magic on Japanese manufacturing. Too bad America wouldn’t listen to him. Even now, American auto manufacturing would be wise to listen to his doctrine.
Great story! I know quite a few folks who loved those early Civics. They indeed seemed quite able to take abuse, making them perfect college student vehicles. Or at least they were at about the time I was in college. I remember once pushing one sideways the length of a gravel parking lot (with the assist of several friends and my early 70s Buick). From what I could tell, it wasn’t any worse for wear (but its owner learned not to park in a loading zone/fire lane after that)
I can also see the attraction the Civic had to you after your experience with the Fiat 128. Quite similar in many ways. It makes me wish for something that small, buzzy, and easy to work on once again. For once maybe I could get something that wouldn’t take up garage space that I don’t have. If I could find one that hadn’t turned entirely into rust.
Thanks also for the image of the John Muir book. Those books, of that period, always make me smile. There aren’t many aspects of 1960s counter culture that bring pleasant things to my mind, except for the vehicular self-sufficiency of hippiedom. I love that.
” GM sure made some crap. Sunbirds, Cavaliers and that Daewoo LeMans thing in particular… ”
As a regular user of “compact’ rental cars in the 1980s through to the early 2000s, this sentence seems accurate.
Other than the occasional Town Car as a substitute because all compacts were already rented out, nice surprises were limited to the occasional AMC (Concord?) at LAX airport and Ford Fairmonts in NYC.
Love picture #5 of the seemingly raised and heavily tired Civic.
As commenter Bob (above) notes: “All right, the first reliable Honda”. I agree.
But some of that crap just keeps on running and running. We just returned from a 2 month nearly 7000 mile trip up and back from California to Alaska with a lot of time spent in Interior northern BC and the Yukon. There were some smaller towns and villages where it seemed that 80% of the vehicles fell into three buckets: full-size domestic pickup, older Chrysler/Dodge minivan, and old GM cars. Of the latter, Cavaliers and Sunbirds were the most common, with a smattering of GrandAms, Buicks, even one Lumina. In Houston BC, population 3000, we stopped in the old downtown. On one block there were about ten cars parked. Seven were Cavaliers, Cobalts and Sunbirds. Plus a Buick. The other two were our van and a Ram pickup. Not a RAV4 or CRV in sight.
It’s funny you should mention that. I also noticed that when on a Yukon trip a few years ago and I even spotted a Chevette north of Whitehorse! I remember looking northern car sales up and reading about it in The Grope and Flail. There are/were very few import dealers up north. In the middle of BC like Houston there was only a GM dealer though there are import dealers within reasonable range. There’s getting to be dealers in Whitehorse over the last few years. But for a while, your choice was GM, Ford or sometimes Chrysler and Toyota. With the travel time and distance from some of these locales being in the neighborhood of a thirty hour and 2000 mile trip if you did have a warranty issue buying choice might be to favor what’s available locally. Hence buy what is available. Also the prices usually don’t vary much up north from the south if you are at a dealer. If you have to ship yourself then it’s on your own dime.
Plenty of Cobalts and Sunfires etc. left here, particularly beside the road in the winter.
Super, I haven’t seen a 70’s Civic with snowtires since the 70’s. Of course around here they were all rusted out by the early 80’s which is too bad, because they were nice driving cars. I got to briefly drive one and it felt very zippy and a little bit like a British car.
Two thumbs up for the girl with the motorcycle, I approve of lifetime motorcycling.
I used to work with a smokin hottie that owned and rode a Honda 400 quad. Does that count?
These were wonderful little cars, which introduced the really small FWD concept to a whole lot of Americans.
One of my coworkers at the tv station in LA had a 1200 like this; he had spent one winter in Kansas with it and was now chasing down the rust after effects like a maniac. He stripped the whole interior of the car and sanded down all the iffy parts and primed and painted them. Not sure if it was effective, but he loved his Civic.
I certainly hope it survived. I am giving some thought to that now, in keeping a small slightly buzzy car of little current value in top shape as in a while its ilk will all disappear.
When I was living with my father in Montreal in the late 1970s, he bought a second-hand 1975 Civic to use as a winter car, wanting to preserve his prized Rover 2000TC. I ended up driving it a lot; it accompanied us to Toronto a couple of years later.
As expected for an Eastern Canada car, it rusted terribly – the fenders were half gone; the door hinges were affected, and you had to more or less throw the doors at the car to get them to shut. It started to burn a lot of oil – eventually my later-stepmother didn’t keep an eye on it, and the bearings started to go. It was still fine as long as you didn’t go over 4000, but eventually it expired and was replaced by a bottom-line Nissan Micra.
Various memories:
– it came with an aftermarket tachometer and was geared to exactly 15mph per 1000rpm in fourth – so 60mph was a busy 4000, and it was flat out doing 90 at the 6000rpm redline
– we had snow tires on all four wheels in winter, and it would go anywhere – as long as you kept the wheels turning slowly it would climb a hill with 6 inches of snow
– the carburetor would ice up in damp near-freezing weather – I remember having to pull over on the elevated expressway in a snowstorm, sitting with the hazard lights on in the right lane (no right shoulder) and hoping to god not to be rear-ended
– I used it to teach my younger brother to do hill-starts – we went around various hilly residential streets until he got the hang of it
We got to experience a few of these. Between about 1974 and 1976 we got these as service loaners from the dealer where my mother had her 74 Luxury LeMans serviced. Mom thought they were fun to drive. I agreed after I got my license. I abused one mercilessly.
Haven’t time to comment properly, but your usual excellent installment here.
I had exactly this booted type (though a very early’73) as my first car in ’86, and for $50AUD more than you! No meaningful rust in this country, but 150K miles had worn it to a bit of a stub. Got it all going fine and roadworthy again, with all the enthusiasm and incompetence a 17-18 y.o. brings to such a job (ie: was really fine, but liked to smoke, but then, so did I, back then).
Favourite part of these? Only sub-1.2 litres, but use 2-2,500prm each gear for good n’ efficient progress in traffic, or a still-smooth 6,000 for speed. No littlie previously had engines that could do both like that. Great car, and an auto landmark too.
I remember that. Actual low end and upper end power of a sort. The 1500 in the second part was even better. We take tractable engines for granted now.
How I miss the days of sub $200 cars that were a going concern.