Project Backmarker Civic
Life's uncertain, eat dessert first. Many readers will question why we chose to modify our project cars cosmetically before doing anything else. Others will wonder why we did it at all. The left brain would probably rationalize this decision by arguing that having better looking project cars could get more people to read about them. But in reality, there's no way to justify spending the amount of money that I recently have on my $500 Civic. I just wanted to.
I've always wanted to own one of these cars. While I've often daydreamed about how fast it could one day be and what it would be like to drive, for the most part I've been obsessed with what the car should look like. So before going and balling the thing up while trying to clock a faster lap time than Chen's NSX, I needed to see my vision come to fruition. And well, here you have it.
The hardcore JDM enthusiasts out there will see this car as a poorly done replica of a Civic SiR. It's not. I worked at a manufacturing/importing company named Password:JDM many years ago. Let me just say that JDM is not a religion, not a very good one anyway. If someone wants everything on their car transformed to Japanese specs, that's fine. However, I chose to go with just the modifications that I really like, regardless of origin. Some of them were cool back in the early 90's, some will work well on the track, and some just happen to come from the JDM SiR. So please don't send me anthrax for having USDM taillights and unpainted moldings.
Most of the body panels forward of the firewall have been replaced with those from an SiR. This includes the hood which bows up in the center instead of down, providing more clearance for the engine swap (which will be happening later) and theoretically slightly better aero. The hood also lines up with the SiR headlights which are slightly longer, pointier, and quite a bit lighter since they use plastic lenses and brackets instead of glass and steel. Moving on down, the next piece is the SiR bumper filler which is shaped to fit the bottom of the headlights. Below that is the SiR bumper cover with its reinforcement and blinker lights. Finally an aftermarket front lip hangs from the bumper cover.
The fenders are the originals from the car but they've been flared out by about half an inch with a fender roller and notched for sidemarkers. It should be noted that the Japanese bumper reinforcement weighs almost nothing. It has only enough rigidity to keep the bumper cover from flying off at speed. For this reason it's not particularly legal in America, nor are the headlights which are directed slightly toward oncoming traffic since they're designed for right-hand-drive cars. All of the parts were sourced through Password:JDM including the brand new, in the box, OEM Honda bumper cover. If you want the end result to be absolutely perfect I'd recommend going with new covers since minor blemishes in plastic are a lot harder to fix than those in metal.
The only change in the rear was switching to a Civic SiR wing. It is slightly larger than the standard USDM wing and is most distinguishable by its long LED brake light. I tried using a JDM rear bumper support, which is similar to the front in that it's ultra lightweight. Unfortunately it was not compatible with my original bumper cover which was too immaculate to replace. I did however lighten the rear support with liberal use of a plasma cutter. The car will no longer pass the government 5 MPH impact tests, but I honestly believe that anything harder than that would total it anyway. Besides, I'm now so paranoid about having the car scratched that I wouldn't dream of parallel parking it.