09-05-2017, 12:49 PM
i hold RJ and Jayray mostly responsible for all of this.
a long time ago, back when i could throw a couple back for a night and not be hungover for 3 straight days afterwards, i got a ride around VIR in RJ's black Type-R during a DE weekend. that thing was a screaming riot, and did things i didn't think a FWD car could/should do. shortly afterwards, i ended up rooming with Jay who had a '99 Si. what a sick masochist that car was....just beaten relentlessly and kept asking for more while driving like an overgrown go-kart. not the fastest cars, but they were unfiltered and alive, and it stuck with me ever since.
fast forward a decade and a half, and my beloved 2.5RS got punted at a red light. i'm faced with a dilemma - i need a compact, fun, utilitarian and efficient car that was as reliable and "analog" as the subaru, but i wanted more power and a better chassis that didn't require so much tweaking to make it handle not like garbage. had to have a manual tranny and a real back seat, and more modern safety amenities. but beyond all that, it had to have a sense of character and occasion, and very few cars in the sub-$15k range can measure up to that list.
for 3 straight weeks after my wreck, i looked at everything and even started breaking my own rules to make something fit. i mean, literally, from Toyota X-Runners to Honda Crosstours to E91 wagons to IS300s. i had things narrowed down in the end to 2 finalists - the MKVII GTI and 8th Gen Si. Truth be told, they're very opposite characters, but each had strengths in certain areas and i had to figure out what felt the most fitting. i knew the GTI was a powerhouse and had the benefit of that awesome hatchback form. but i still remembered those days i spent in those old hondas....man they were good. were they still that good? i had to find out.
first up was the GTI, and so it was that i also dove deeply into the pit of suffering that is dealership car shopping. see, the GTI's became a possibility for my budget due to a crazy discounted August sale that was advertised showing them at $6-7k off MSRP with the additional bonus of 0% financing. i was very keen on NOT having a car note, but who can argue with 0% for 60 months? i start calling around, and by the 3rd or 4th dealer i'm seeing a trend - i can have the 0% OR the discount price, but not both....those scheming bastards. the bullshitting gets progressively more annoying with dealers starting to go silent in my email communications or only agreeing to talk over the phone, and then playing more cat and mouse games once i agree to talk. just utterly useless business tact and it became clear i couldn't get into a VW at a price that felt comfortable for me. i was glad to end that chapter.
enter Round 2 of the car hunt, which then became finding and driving a clean, unmolested 8th Gen Si with less than a billion miles on it for reasonable money. i test drove one locally, which was a smoker's car with a string of hazy ownership records and a couple half-assed modifications. i had to try it out though. i got hold of a salesman, took the car out, and by the first on-ramp it was clear these cars were special. truly a dual personality car - relaxed enough when you're just moving around, typical civic. but crest that 6,000 rpm limit and lean on the suspension and its angry and dynamic and full of racecar noises. i loved the driver interface, everything where it needs to be for performance driving and the inputs are Right Now - steering, clutch, shifter. tons of room inside too, for what they are. seemed to be stout build quality as well. i made a note of it, left, and decided this was the answer. i came to the realization that these Si's are sort of the "Last Mohicans" of the golden age of screaming VTEC hondas. only 4 honda models ever came to the states with an 8,000+ RPM redline, LSD, and 6 speed 'box: the S2000, NSX, ITR and 8th Gen Si. in short, honda will never build a car like this again for emissions reasons combined with the horsepower wars, which demand turbo power and lower revs. the newer civics will be faster, sure, but the experience i loved will be gone. i wanted a piece of that classic honda driving feel.
it became obvious very quickly that i had taken on a task that may require therapy. over the course of 2 weeks i test drove 3 Si's and attempted to purchase 2 of them in 2 different states, both deals falling apart in the final hour either due to negotiations not working out or life events taking the car back off the market. with my insurance rental gone at this point, i had about a week to figure this out or i'd have to just settle for what i could find locally, and to be honest i was getting emotionally drained anyway.
finally, in what felt like the 11th hour of the final inning of the last game, i came up on an Autotrader ad buried at the bottom of a list of cars, for an Si at a little tiny "mom & pop" dealer right here in GA, that checked every box I was hoping for: nice color, 09-11 MY, 1 owner southern car and UNMOLESTED. i cannot put too fine a point on how hard it is to find one of these things in anything resembling stock condition. higher miles than i wanted, but if it presented and drove well, i'd be fine with it. So, Friday before Labor Day at 5:30, i'm on the phone with this dealer asking 1000 and 1 questions about the car. everything is checking out. i decide its Go Time....except i need to get a certified check from my bank, which closes for the holiday in 25 minutes! AUGH. drive like a butthead over to the bank, blast through the doors like Kramer with 10 minutes to spare, and grab the sacred check. OK, call the dealer back, talk some more about seeing the car the next day...and the guy, Ron, makes a comment about the K20 in the Si and how they're strong enough to give him grief when he races. Wha? i gotta know more. we carry on a bit longer and i come to find out that Ron is a race director for NASA-SE! he campaigns an S2000 in Honda Challenge and drives a Legends car in American Iron too. unreal, and welcome news. apparently he's just an older dude who digs cars and has fun selling them from a little business he has set up. he knew the PO of this Si as well, and helped broker him a new BRZ, so the car's history is pretty known. i know now that this HAS to happen...the odds of finding another car like this, sold by someone that knows Hondas, just isn't going to come up again.
fast forward to Saturday morning. Ron has agreed to hold the car for me (racing community FTW) and give me right of first refusal when i get there. i'm out of bed at 6:30, throw sleepy wife and boy in the xterra, bomb over to Lawrenceville 2.5 hours away. we get there and he's got the car right on the corner of the lot, all shiny and proud. i give the car a thorough look-over, and Ron insists on driving the first loop of the test drive to assure me he isn't hiding anything. we poke around for a few minutes, then he just belts it - redline 2nd and 3rd, shift light strobing, just letting that K20 sing. slams into ABS braking - hands off the wheel to show its not wandering or pulling - then pitches it into a ramp and another VTEC romp through 3rd. i'm already sold. this thing just wants to run and run, and is clean as a whistle. we switch places, and within the first couple shifts i've got the clutch takeup down and can already tell this one's more solid than the first Si's i test drove, which had half the mileage. so as i'm driving it, Ron gets 2 calls - one guy wants to come buy the car today, and another guy from TN is trying to buy it sight unseen, over the phone, with a credit card. holy crap! i had no idea these cars were this hot right now. no more screwing around, let's get a check in this guy's hand. i felt like Indiana Jones outrunning the boulder trap and escaping with the gold idol....but i made it.
and so, finally, later that day i pulled this into the driveway:
![[Image: dSFjju4.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/dSFjju4.jpg)
2010, 86k highway miles, almost new tires, completely stock and rust free. Dyno Blue Pearl. it has some warts, sure - a couple good rock chips, some spider cracking in the paint on the rear bumer from a boop, the wheels are chewed up from some sloppy parallel parking, and a cracked fog light. overall though, it just rips and feels as tight as a car with far less miles.
current plan is to just love on it in the coming weeks:
• full detail inside and out
• new oil/filter and gearbox fluid
• air intake and cabin filters
• replace fog light
• patch up chipped paint
• needs an alignment
• install/hardwire my old dashcam
mod plans will be pretty straightforward updates to ensure the car is capable of turning a drama-free HPDE weekend while remaining as stock as possible. its incredibly tempting to throw parts at the engine....a reliable 240whp is completely formulaic with bolt-ons and a cam at this point. but, i really enjoy it just the way it is, and i've never been a "numbers guys" anyway, so these parts will come in slowly:
• TSX front caliper upgrade with better pads f/r
• shift knob (just a thing i do to make it "mine")
• SPC crash bolts to dial in about -1 degree camber up front
• OEM mud flaps for the rear
a long time ago, back when i could throw a couple back for a night and not be hungover for 3 straight days afterwards, i got a ride around VIR in RJ's black Type-R during a DE weekend. that thing was a screaming riot, and did things i didn't think a FWD car could/should do. shortly afterwards, i ended up rooming with Jay who had a '99 Si. what a sick masochist that car was....just beaten relentlessly and kept asking for more while driving like an overgrown go-kart. not the fastest cars, but they were unfiltered and alive, and it stuck with me ever since.
fast forward a decade and a half, and my beloved 2.5RS got punted at a red light. i'm faced with a dilemma - i need a compact, fun, utilitarian and efficient car that was as reliable and "analog" as the subaru, but i wanted more power and a better chassis that didn't require so much tweaking to make it handle not like garbage. had to have a manual tranny and a real back seat, and more modern safety amenities. but beyond all that, it had to have a sense of character and occasion, and very few cars in the sub-$15k range can measure up to that list.
for 3 straight weeks after my wreck, i looked at everything and even started breaking my own rules to make something fit. i mean, literally, from Toyota X-Runners to Honda Crosstours to E91 wagons to IS300s. i had things narrowed down in the end to 2 finalists - the MKVII GTI and 8th Gen Si. Truth be told, they're very opposite characters, but each had strengths in certain areas and i had to figure out what felt the most fitting. i knew the GTI was a powerhouse and had the benefit of that awesome hatchback form. but i still remembered those days i spent in those old hondas....man they were good. were they still that good? i had to find out.
first up was the GTI, and so it was that i also dove deeply into the pit of suffering that is dealership car shopping. see, the GTI's became a possibility for my budget due to a crazy discounted August sale that was advertised showing them at $6-7k off MSRP with the additional bonus of 0% financing. i was very keen on NOT having a car note, but who can argue with 0% for 60 months? i start calling around, and by the 3rd or 4th dealer i'm seeing a trend - i can have the 0% OR the discount price, but not both....those scheming bastards. the bullshitting gets progressively more annoying with dealers starting to go silent in my email communications or only agreeing to talk over the phone, and then playing more cat and mouse games once i agree to talk. just utterly useless business tact and it became clear i couldn't get into a VW at a price that felt comfortable for me. i was glad to end that chapter.
enter Round 2 of the car hunt, which then became finding and driving a clean, unmolested 8th Gen Si with less than a billion miles on it for reasonable money. i test drove one locally, which was a smoker's car with a string of hazy ownership records and a couple half-assed modifications. i had to try it out though. i got hold of a salesman, took the car out, and by the first on-ramp it was clear these cars were special. truly a dual personality car - relaxed enough when you're just moving around, typical civic. but crest that 6,000 rpm limit and lean on the suspension and its angry and dynamic and full of racecar noises. i loved the driver interface, everything where it needs to be for performance driving and the inputs are Right Now - steering, clutch, shifter. tons of room inside too, for what they are. seemed to be stout build quality as well. i made a note of it, left, and decided this was the answer. i came to the realization that these Si's are sort of the "Last Mohicans" of the golden age of screaming VTEC hondas. only 4 honda models ever came to the states with an 8,000+ RPM redline, LSD, and 6 speed 'box: the S2000, NSX, ITR and 8th Gen Si. in short, honda will never build a car like this again for emissions reasons combined with the horsepower wars, which demand turbo power and lower revs. the newer civics will be faster, sure, but the experience i loved will be gone. i wanted a piece of that classic honda driving feel.
it became obvious very quickly that i had taken on a task that may require therapy. over the course of 2 weeks i test drove 3 Si's and attempted to purchase 2 of them in 2 different states, both deals falling apart in the final hour either due to negotiations not working out or life events taking the car back off the market. with my insurance rental gone at this point, i had about a week to figure this out or i'd have to just settle for what i could find locally, and to be honest i was getting emotionally drained anyway.
finally, in what felt like the 11th hour of the final inning of the last game, i came up on an Autotrader ad buried at the bottom of a list of cars, for an Si at a little tiny "mom & pop" dealer right here in GA, that checked every box I was hoping for: nice color, 09-11 MY, 1 owner southern car and UNMOLESTED. i cannot put too fine a point on how hard it is to find one of these things in anything resembling stock condition. higher miles than i wanted, but if it presented and drove well, i'd be fine with it. So, Friday before Labor Day at 5:30, i'm on the phone with this dealer asking 1000 and 1 questions about the car. everything is checking out. i decide its Go Time....except i need to get a certified check from my bank, which closes for the holiday in 25 minutes! AUGH. drive like a butthead over to the bank, blast through the doors like Kramer with 10 minutes to spare, and grab the sacred check. OK, call the dealer back, talk some more about seeing the car the next day...and the guy, Ron, makes a comment about the K20 in the Si and how they're strong enough to give him grief when he races. Wha? i gotta know more. we carry on a bit longer and i come to find out that Ron is a race director for NASA-SE! he campaigns an S2000 in Honda Challenge and drives a Legends car in American Iron too. unreal, and welcome news. apparently he's just an older dude who digs cars and has fun selling them from a little business he has set up. he knew the PO of this Si as well, and helped broker him a new BRZ, so the car's history is pretty known. i know now that this HAS to happen...the odds of finding another car like this, sold by someone that knows Hondas, just isn't going to come up again.
fast forward to Saturday morning. Ron has agreed to hold the car for me (racing community FTW) and give me right of first refusal when i get there. i'm out of bed at 6:30, throw sleepy wife and boy in the xterra, bomb over to Lawrenceville 2.5 hours away. we get there and he's got the car right on the corner of the lot, all shiny and proud. i give the car a thorough look-over, and Ron insists on driving the first loop of the test drive to assure me he isn't hiding anything. we poke around for a few minutes, then he just belts it - redline 2nd and 3rd, shift light strobing, just letting that K20 sing. slams into ABS braking - hands off the wheel to show its not wandering or pulling - then pitches it into a ramp and another VTEC romp through 3rd. i'm already sold. this thing just wants to run and run, and is clean as a whistle. we switch places, and within the first couple shifts i've got the clutch takeup down and can already tell this one's more solid than the first Si's i test drove, which had half the mileage. so as i'm driving it, Ron gets 2 calls - one guy wants to come buy the car today, and another guy from TN is trying to buy it sight unseen, over the phone, with a credit card. holy crap! i had no idea these cars were this hot right now. no more screwing around, let's get a check in this guy's hand. i felt like Indiana Jones outrunning the boulder trap and escaping with the gold idol....but i made it.
and so, finally, later that day i pulled this into the driveway:
2010, 86k highway miles, almost new tires, completely stock and rust free. Dyno Blue Pearl. it has some warts, sure - a couple good rock chips, some spider cracking in the paint on the rear bumer from a boop, the wheels are chewed up from some sloppy parallel parking, and a cracked fog light. overall though, it just rips and feels as tight as a car with far less miles.
current plan is to just love on it in the coming weeks:
• full detail inside and out
• new oil/filter and gearbox fluid
• air intake and cabin filters
• replace fog light
• patch up chipped paint
• needs an alignment
• install/hardwire my old dashcam
mod plans will be pretty straightforward updates to ensure the car is capable of turning a drama-free HPDE weekend while remaining as stock as possible. its incredibly tempting to throw parts at the engine....a reliable 240whp is completely formulaic with bolt-ons and a cam at this point. but, i really enjoy it just the way it is, and i've never been a "numbers guys" anyway, so these parts will come in slowly:
• TSX front caliper upgrade with better pads f/r
• shift knob (just a thing i do to make it "mine")
• SPC crash bolts to dial in about -1 degree camber up front
• OEM mud flaps for the rear
2010 Civic Si
2019 4Runner TRD Off-Road
--------------------------
Past: 03 Xterra SE 4x4 | 05 Impreza 2.5RS | 99.5 A4 Quattro 1.8T | 01 Accord EX | 90 Maxima GXE | 96 Explorer XLT
2019 4Runner TRD Off-Road
--------------------------
Past: 03 Xterra SE 4x4 | 05 Impreza 2.5RS | 99.5 A4 Quattro 1.8T | 01 Accord EX | 90 Maxima GXE | 96 Explorer XLT