UPDATE 6/27/23: My wife is way too good to me. One of my neighbors had a little red '97 Type SH (all of the Type SH had the 5MT) out in front of his house. 251,000 miles (honestly not bad for a 25+ year old car). No rust, everything ran well. I honestly don’t remember the last time I drove stick but I was very rusty. Nearly stalled it at the first stop sign. Car drove pretty good. Everything looked good. Aside from the paint being in pretty bad shape from its age and being out in the sun, everything was in pretty good working order. It’s not as clean as my car was, but hey, you can’t win them all.

As for my garage-kept 9th gen Civic…well, I’m afraid that’s going to have to give up its spot in the garage. Now, the real question is on where to park it. I think I’ll still daily my Civic because it’s a damn good car and has half the miles of my to-be Prelude.

Owner seemed like a really cool dude. He clearly loved his car. Life seems to have got in the way for him. I feel like I paid a pretty fair price. The problems the car has seem mostly cosmetic. Now that I finally have a decent income, I think I can do work to this car.

I won’t be too bummed if it doesn’t last another ten years, but I think it will barring some kind of natural disaster. I want to do some work to it, but I owe my wife a lot of house projects she wants done first. If the Lude is a touch sketchy, my 9th gen is proving itself extremely dependable. This was always going to be my weekend car anyway. Doesn’t mean I’ll be passing on the opportunity to take it out for a spin every once in a while.

Guess I need to get familiar with driving stick again.

Anyway, that’s it for the update. I’ll post a pic tomorrow. Just didn’t want to make a second post about it.

UPDATE OVER

I don’t have this car anymore, but this is my car as it was December 15, 2013. It probably had about 175,000 miles on it at the time. I drove the absolute shit out of this car. It took beatings and chugged along like a champ. Imagine that I got this car as a teenager and drove it like a teenager would.

I had to park the thing on the street once I graduated, moved to the city, and got my first big boy job. In 2015, someone backed into it and never left a note. Messed up the fender on the driver’s side pretty good. People suck.

I had myself a little accident too. If you zoom into the car’s right side, you’ll notice the fog light blanking plate is missing. That’s from spinning the car into a ditch at 45 miles an hour. The bumper sagged in that area too because some of the clips broke off. I drove it right out and home.

The drivetrain was perfectly fine. Ran smooth and shifted just good. Reverse was a little clunky when the car was cold (yes, it was the four speed). I had a fan motor go out at one point and it was regularly overheating. Took a while to save the money to fix it. Then the radiator cracked after the fan motor issue was solved. The car just ended up in the shop for something else every few weeks. Essentially, it was the rest of the car that was falling apart.

In a practical sense, it was like having a car payment, except sometimes I didn’t have the car for a couple days.

I traded it for $1,200 and bought a Honda HR-V at the behest of my parents. At that point, the odometer read about 197,000. It was the worst thing. I felt no connection to that car. I tried to love it, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t what I wanted to drive.

Looking back, I would have been better served taking out a chunky personal loan and overhauling my little car. I wish I could have a do over on that.

Drive what you love. Don’t let anyone tell you what you should drive. I’m in a 2012 Civic LX now and I couldn’t be happier. It’s actually just a little zippy and tossable. Plus, it seats 4 (5 if everyone’s skinny), does 40 to the gallon, doesn’t run the engine at three grand doing highway speed, and there’s a million of them like it out there. If I wrap this thing around a tree, whatever, I can just go buy another.

Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading a post by some dude approaching middle age pining for the car of his youth lol I really miss how driving this car made me feel. Wonderful machine this thing was. I constantly think about buying another and treating it right this time now that I’ve got a few more bucks in my pocket than I did in college.

Bonus points if you recognized the Del Sol next to it.

Found a couple more pics from around then.