Playboy Hots up a Honda

take a nitty-gritty city car, add a flared fender here lower the suspension there and you're on your way to a four-alarm machine

And now, fellow paupers, a vehicle uniquely suited to the times; we proudly present America's first recession sports car. Divest yourself of those bread-line blues. The minor inconveniences surrounding unemployment, bankruptcy, mortgage foreclosure, credit collapse, indentured servitude, debtors' prison, etc., that accompany what stockbrokers refer to as a downward adjustment need not prevent you from savoring the delights of motoring in the grand style. No, we are not suggesting that you steal a Ferrari Dino or hijack a Porsche Carrera in the name of the oppressed masses. We have cleverly devised a totally legal alternative--one that can be duplicated at modest expense and that transforms a zappy, nutball economy car into a neater, zappier, more nutball nickelnosed GT machine.

The essential ingredient is a Honda (continued on page 176)Playboy Hots up a Honda(continued from page 80) Civic--certainly as neat a roller-skate-sized automobile as any known to man. Carrying a mere 1800 pounds on its 86.6-inch wheelbase, and available in base form for under $2800, the Civic provides nimble transportation while delivering over 30 mpg. But, unlike a lot of small economy cars, which tend to be rubbery and anesthetized--as if their engines and suspensions had been injected with Novocain--the Civic is a real trip to drive. It is so tight and tiny that it can be run more like a motorcycle than an automobile, with its driver whistling through holes in traffic and accelerating around obstacles as if he were astride one of Honda's four-cylinder 750-c.c. bikes and not in a car presumably built for sensible, economical motoring. The Civic has adequate, acceleration, while its brakes, steering and gearbox are properly precise, to turn any congested city street into a fantasy stretch of the Nürburgring or the circuit at LeMans. What's more, it is amazingly quiet and stable on the open highway, and with a top speed approaching 90 mph, this wonderful little midget becomes an automobile with a wide range of usefulness.

The Civic is available in a variety of forms--semiautomatic, four- or five-speed manual transmission--with a choice of two engines: the overhead-cam, 1237-c.c. motor rated at 52 hp, or the larger 1488-c.c., 59-hp CVCC (Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion) version of the same power plant. This latter unit represents one of the most advanced internal-combustion-engine designs in the world. It uses a special Honda cylinder head that has two combustion chambers, the smaller one of which burns a very rich charge of gasoline, then spreads it into the larger chamber to promote clean, slow burning of the fuel. This "stratified charge" principle permits the Honda CVCC engine to run with great efficiency, flexibility and extremely low pollution levels without any complicated emission plumbing whatsoever. If you purchase this engine in combination with the optional five-speed transmission, the hatchback and a variety of trim items, a Civic can cost over $3500, which still keeps even a loaded model in a very low-priced league by today's standards.

Our car began life as a simple, unadorned, three-door CVCC model with four-speed transmission and a radio as the only significant option. (A duplicate of this can be driven out the door of most Honda dealerships for about $3200, depending on local taxes, etc.) It was then transported to the shop of Ron Nash Engineering in the bucolic Upstate village of Perry, New York.

Nash, who is one of the most talented of the young high-performance-car designer/fabricators in America, then set out to modify the Civic in behalf of greater sportiness without wallet-busting expense. His first move was to discard the skinny, stock Honda wheels and tires and replace them with custom versions that offer both better performance and more appealing looks. The wheels, Victory Mags from Dan Gurney Industries, Santa Ana, California, are 13-inch, 5-1/2-inch-wide GT style mounted with a set of the sticky, long-wearing, low-profile BR-13 T/A Radials from B. F. Goodrich. These wheels and tires, in combination with a slight lowering of the suspension, prompted Nash to flare the fenders to accommodate the wider shoes.

While ex--racing champion Dan Gurney lent his name to the Honda's wheels, another superdriver had his trademark on a number of other accessories. Mark Donohue, whose Racemark brand (distributed through B & B Auto Sport, Ltd., Burnt Hills, New York) is embossed on an excellent line of steering wheels, racing gear, etc., markets a selection of superior European seats that provide outstanding comfort and lateral support in combination with light weight. These Carrera Racing Bucket seats were installed in front (although the stock Honda seats are surprisingly effective for a car of its size and price). These, in combination with a small-diameter, leather-rimmed, competition-style Racemark steering wheel, produce an environment that could delude the most jaded driver into thinking he was seated behind the wheel of some fire-breathing race car on the grid at Watkins Glen. Because the cheaper Civics come with rudimentary instrumentation (speedometer, gas and water-temperature gauges, plus a collection of idiot lights--although a more complete selection is optional), Nash fabricated a small instrument pod in which he installed a highly readable and reliable Stewart-Warner "Stage 3" speedometer, tachometer, ammeter and oil-pressure, water-temperature and gas gauges. Like the other changes, these instruments enhance not only the function but also the cosmetics of our Civic.

In order to keep costs within reasonable limits, little was done to the externals of the car, other than to change the location of the turn signals that had to be mounted by the factory in front of the grille to meet Government-mandated specifications. Not being beholden to the whims of bureaucracy, we shifted the lights to a spot below the bumper, where they are tucked just above a small, durable B & B Auto Sport spoiler. Like most Japanese manufacturers, Honda has a styling department that cannot resist frosting otherwise clean, functional body surfaces with a plethora of chrome gewgaws and name plates. After a number of these were scoured away in the name of aesthetics, the Honda was painted black and given a restrained accent of pinstriping by the skilled hand of Dick Dawson of Warsaw, New York.

The result is a truly appealing little automobile. The wider wheels and tires give the Civic superior handling qualities without magnifying any of the steering eccentricities (mainly erratic steering while turning under power) found in some front-wheel-drive systems. The seats and other interior additions aid both the comfort and the efficiency of the driver and the cosmetics give the automobile a kind of head-turning distinction without making it look like a refugee from a rod-and-custom show.

While Nash will build a facsimile of this machine for $1500 (plus the car), any variation on the theme is possible, ranging from a cautious, first-step installation of the Racemark steering wheel (approximately $70, complete) to a balls-out enterprise that might include everything from B & B's optional electric window lifts to a sun roof to a tweaked-up engine. The ultimate Civic might cost you over $5000, but when you consider the realities of the present automotive market, wherein the VW Scirocco runs nearly $5500, the BMW 2002 over $6000, the Porsche 914 about $7000, etc., the outlay for a special Civic becomes a mighty nickel-nosed way to get into the tricky-car league.

And just think of the splash you'll make when you roll up in front of the unemployment office!