Honda Dreams Do Come True

Every auto enthusiasts has dreamed of finding their dream car in a barn somewhere, protected from the decay of time and preserved just for them to discover one day.  Sure, we've all had this dream, but how often do these dreams come true?  Very rarely.  However when they do, it's something special.

The phone rang.  It was Randall's mate from Honda Mobility, a firm that sources high quality Honda's all over Europe.  Being a life long Honda fan, Randall was excited to hear what he had to share.  The news was good.  During a trip to Austria to track down a 1991 vtech CRX, his mate made an incredible discovery.  He had met a contact who supposedly had the pristine second generation CRX that he was looking for, but when he was led into the man's garage, he had no idea what he was in for.  The man had a large collection of low mileage Honda's, all in pristine condition.  The two that initially caught his eye were the second gen CRX and an Integra nearby.  As he finished up negotiating for the CRX, he noticed that there was one car in the corner of the garage under a tarp.  He inquired after it and was shocked to see what the owner unveiled.  The man pulled the tarp off to reveal an immaculate 1985 Honda CRX 1.5i with less than 5000 miles on the odometer.  After inquiring, the owner was able to provide documentation to confirm the authenticity of the the odometer reading.  This was a 'barn find' for the ages.  Unfortunately, the owner was not interested in selling the car, so Randall's friend finished up the paperwork on the second generation CRX and headed home.

It's no surprise that Randall was his Honda Mobility mate's first call.  Randall has been into Honda's since he was 18, and has since accumulated quite the collection of Honda's including an Accord Tourer, CRV, S2000, N600, and four S800's.  It was an act of kindness that introduced him to the Honda community.  While in high school, he had been lusting after his neighbors 1990 Civic Hatchback with 9300 miles, when she offered the car to him for much less than the car was worth.  Since then, he has owned nothing but Hondas.

"From day one I was impressed with the high level of design quality and reliability of the Honda by itself and never since dared to switch to another brand."

His involvement in the Honda community even lead him to start a business called Hontec that is now under the care of his Honda friend and co-founder, and continues to serve a large part of Europe.  He and his friend decided to start their own business doing Honda engine swaps because they couldn't find any shops that knew how to do them properly.  The business grew quickly, and they found themselves not only swapping and maintaining Honda engines, but also building and servicing rally cars, including those participating in the Paris-Dakar rally.  Today the business focuses on service, specializing in work on the NSX and S2000.

When it comes to 'barn finds' it's not hard to imagine someone with more money than sense purchasing an exotic sports car, tucking it away somewhere away from the elements, and leaving it there.  What's difficult to imagine is someone doing the same thing with a common, affordable economy car .  You never hear of someone purchasing a new Honda Accord and then storing it in the garage under a tarp.  Car's like the CRX are purchased to be used, not pampered.  That's what makes this 'barn find' particularly special, and Randall knew he couldn't just look the other way.

He tasked his Honda Mobility friend to pursue the car further.  It took him almost a year to convince the owner to sell the car.  They went back and fourth many times before they were able to agree on a price, but finally in 2016, Randall was able to take possession of the car.  The car was everything he had hoped it would be, and more.  He was so impressed by the cars condition that without touching a thing on the car, he took it straight to the Dutch Authorities to have it inspected, and it passed with flying colors.  It was essentially a new car.  The parts of the car that are simply not immune to the sands of time, such as the plastic body panels, showed signs of age, but otherwise everything else on the car was in showroom condition.  It had even maintained the 'new car' smell inside.  After having the car inspected, Randall replaced the original steel wheels, that had the original tires on them, and replaced them with a set of freshly powder coated Phone Dials and Bridgestone rubber.  He also lowered the car slightly, but other than that, the car remains in the condition it was in when it rolled off the showroom floor.

Future upgrades for the car include Mugen CF-48 wheels, factory Honda fog lights, and NOS door panels, side skirts and bumpers, but aside from that, Randall plans to keep the car as original as possible.  We all thank him for that.  It now spends its days in a heated garage under a blanket, much like it did when it was discovered.  Randall only drives it on rare occasions because he wants to continue to preserve the car as best he can.  In most cases I would disagree with this philosophy and insist on driving it as much as possible, but not in this case.  First generation CRXs in original showroom condition like Randall's are extremely rare, and I applaud his decision to continue to preserve this beautiful piece of Honda history.

Photos by Shot At Speed Photography

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Magic Mile Road Rally

Nope.  This isn't the kind of 'rally' you were thinking of.  There is no mud involved, unless you really get lost.  It is held on public roads (while the public is using them), and you never go over the speed limit (well, you shouldn't anyway).  At this point you're probably questioning whether or not to continue reading... I mean, the title image of this post doesn't scream 'action packed' does it.  I would recommend, however, that you continue... and not for the enjoyment of my literary skills.

Most people have heard of rally (or stage rally), but not road rally (or Time-Speed-Distance - TSD rally), or they think they are the same thing.  That's because the word rally brings to mind images of Subaru's, Renault's and Audi's blasting along gravel roads at insane speeds.  Can you say Group B?  Although it was established by the same people who started stage rally, road rally is the complete opposite of stage rally.   Instead of relying on the team's ability to go as fast as possible without crashing, the success of a road rally hinges on the teams ability to follow instructions, observe the environment around them, and maintain average speeds, none of which exceed the posted speed limits, over marked sections of the course.  The other major difference between stage rally and road rally is that road rallies are held on open public roads, where stage rallying is held on closed circuits, or public roads that have been closed to the public during the event.  The goal in road rally is to finish with the least amount of points.  You start the rally with 0 points, but if you answer any of the route questions incorrectly, or you are unable to maintain the average speeds over the specified sections of the course, you are given points.  Not all road rallies are the same.  Some allow the use of GPS, others don't.  Some require the competitors to answer questions about the route, other's don't.  In our rally, we were not allowed to use GPS, and we were required to answer 50 questions along the route.

The 2017 Magic Mile Rally was the Atlanta SCCA regions' inaugural event after a 25 year drought, and to celebrate, and draw some attention, they combined the event with the Cars and Coffee gathering in Athens Georgia.  We rolled into the parking lot next to Jittery Joe's Roadster Tasting Room about ten minutes before the Cars and Coffee event was supposed to start.  I was in front, in the CRX (of course), and Nick, my navigator, friend and fellow Honda nut was behind me in his 1986 AE86 Corolla (Think Initial D).  As we pulled in, we were surprised to see only a handful of cars.  The Cars and Coffee type event that we are used to is the Caffeine and Octane gathering held outside of Atlanta which starts incredibly early, and no matter how early you show up, all the good spots are usually already taken.  So showing up only minutes before the show started, had us worried.  Thankfully, the Athens event is much more laid back than the intense and overly commercialized Caffeine and Octane.  We pulled our cars into a couple prime parking spots and walked over to the tasting room.  Jittery Joe's Tasting room is a really neat place.  The building is an old airplane hanger that has been converted into a storage room for the coffee shop chain.  It has a small lobby where you can order drinks and the interior is charming with its eclectic decorations.  After grabbing coffee, we spent the next hour or so looking at all the cars, meeting some very nice people, and hearing some wild car stories.  The people of Athens were very hospitable and we had a great time.  While walking up and down the rows of cars, Nick spotted a bright orange sign with a large black check mark on it, leaning up against a small table.  The rally crew had started to set up shop.

Photo Courtesy of Athens Cars and Coffee

Registration for the rally had just begun, so we headed over to the table and signed in.  The starting times and team numbers were based on when you registered.  Thanks to Nick's eagle eye, we ended up being the second team to sign in, and since each team departed at two minute intervals, our start time was 12:04.  We had about an hour to kill before the rally started, so we headed back to our cars to relax and read over the rally instructions and navigation guide.  It didn't take long at all to go over the rally material so we decided to do another round in the parking lot to see if there were any new cars.  As we got up to leave, an older gentleman came up to us and complimented me on the CRX.  He then inquired about whether or not we had met another gentleman which of course we hadn't.  "Oh well I'll just have to introduce you!" he said.  Judging by his confident and insistent demeanor, I'm not sure we had a choice.  He led us over to a group of people next to a gorgeous red DeTomaso Pantera.  He pulled aside one of the men in the group and introduced us to him.  He turned out to be the owner of the Pantera, but not just that one, he had several.  After chatting for a bit about his substantial car collection, it turned out that he also owned two first generation CRX's.  It was neat to know that someone of considerable means and taste in cars would also have two 1Gs in his collection.

After getting a thorough tour of the Pantera, which included a peak at the massive ford v8 situated immediately behind the front seats, we headed back to the CRX and prepared to leave.  I set up the GoPro with it attached to the hatch glass, and Nick tried to decipher the first section of the route in the navigation guide.  The navigation guide consisted of several pages of numbered lines of text with additive mileage markers next to each line.  Each instruction was minimal, vague, and required close attention to syntax and character style.  The roads were specified by the way the name appeared in the instructions.  If a street name was in all caps, it meant that the road was a recognized through road, where as if it was in lower case it would be either a 'no outlet' road or it wasn't officially recognized.  So yeah, pretty anal, and I say that because we both skimmed over these little details when reading the instructions, and we ended up getting a lot of the questions wrong because of it.  In order to stay on course and not miss any of the turns, we had to pay close attention to our mileage and zero the odometer at every turn.  This meant that my old-school gear type odometer was going to play an important role in our success.  So was Nick's analog watch that he was using to monitor our timing.  This was no frills, tenting without a tent (or a shovel), swimming without a life vest.  It was retro, hairy-chested road rallying... at least that's what we told ourselves.

'How are we on time?' I asked as we waited with the car idling.  'It's noon now, so we have four minutes before we need to leave'.  The rally was a self start event.  No fancy start finish line with people waving flags and cheering.  You just left when you were supposed to, and as the clock struck 12:04 we pulled out of Jittery Joe's and headed toward the next turn.  Most of the direction changes or instructions came at a frequency of every 1-2 miles.  This did not allow much time for sight seeing, in fact, it was pretty intense.  Each segment started with me resetting the odometer, then Nick would read the next instruction line and point out the mileage to the next turn.  If there was a question associated with that particular segment, Nick would read it out and then we would both spend the duration of that segment scouring the countryside looking for a road name, or the colors of barn roofs, or whatever they would ask for.  When we came to a Magic Mile, which was the name for the timed segments, we had to stop at a particular land mark (usually a road sign) and wait for our specified start time.  If we arrived late, we had to record our 'time allowance' which would account for any lost time along to route that was acquired while getting lost.  When we began the segment I would accelerate to the specified average speed as fast as I could and then maintain that speed until the segment was over.

It took us about 15 minutes to start getting into a rhythm.  Nick didn't have to remind me every time to restart the odometer, and I didn't have to ask him as many times to repeat the route instructions or the mileage.  Everything was going smoothly and we were feeling good about our chances until I offered to help Nick with his navigating chores.  I offered to look for the next turn on one of the longer segments.  This didn't go well.  I totally missed the turn, but in my defense, we weren't the only team to miss it.  We went on a short detour that costs us almost 10 minutes.  I felt pretty horrible because it made Nick have to calculate our time allowance for each Magic Mile.  After that I left the navigating to him.  

Once we settled in to a groove, it gave us some time to enjoy the beautiful scenery.  The rally led us on a winding route through the farmlands just north and east of Athens Georgia.  Neither of us had been there before and it was a real treat.  The rolling hills were littered with tidy little farms, most of which had livestock scattered across their green pastures.  It was like driving through a postcard.  As the hours passed the rally became an afterthought of sorts.  We got a little caught up in our enjoyment of the drive and it caused us to miss quite a few turns and answers to the route questions.  It was OK though, we were having a great time.  As the countryside started to be replaced with more buildings we knew the rally was coming to a close.  The final stop on the course was a restaurant in Athens called Loco's Grill and Pub.  How far behind we were in the rally became abundantly clear when we pulled into the parking lot and saw almost a dozen cars that were participating in the rally.  If we had arrived on time, we would have been only the second car to arrive.  But neither of us were really phased by this because the only thing on our minds at that point was where the bathrooms were.

After using the facilities, we headed into a large room just to the right of the main dinning area.  The rally had reserved a separate dinning area for the occasion.  We turned our time sheet and answers to the route questions in to the rally organizers and found a seat.  As our dinner was being served, the rallymaster, UGA professor Mark Johnson, stepped up to the platform that was positioned next to the projector screen.  Results time.  At this point we were both hopeful for a good placement, but as Mark started to go over the answers to the route questions, our confidence dwindled.  Only then did we realize just how anal they were when it came to the questions.  Wow.  We got lucky on a couple, but things weren't looking good.  By the time he started announcing which teams placed where, we were just hoping we didn't get the Dead Last but Finished Trophy, which instead went to go a guy at our table.  Bullet dodged.  We ended up placing 26th out of 31 cars.  Not exactly what we expected, but it wasn't a big deal.  We had a great time bombing around the countryside in the CRX.  There aren't many better ways to spend an afternoon.

Photos by Stephen Dettman

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Letting Go

This last weekend was an important weekend for me, and not for the reasons that I expected it to be.  What was supposed to be the culmination of weeks of methodical preparation ending in the attendance of the CRX's first legitimate car show, turned out to be something quite different.   The last month went from being an exciting opportunity to a lesson in letting things go and learning how to properly appreciate hard work.

Four weeks ago, I was informed that the annual spring Import Alliance show was featuring cars 1987 and older in their Spotlight area.  The show had been on my radar for the past few years, but it usually got trumped by other events due to the fact that I don't blend well with the usual crowd of people that attend.  I'm not a fan of camber, stance, or offset unless it's used to improve the functionality of your car, in the pursuit of speed.  However this year, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to represent old school Honda's in the Spotlight portion of the show.  I filled out the application to be in the Spotlight, and was surprised to get an acceptance email just hours later.

With a fresh injection of confidence, and what I thought was plenty of time before the show, I decided to take the opportunity to fix everything that was left on my to-do list for the car.  This was a big mistake, especially in my case... being an intense perfectionist.  My list was long, but after I had sorted everything in order of completion, I felt success was attainable.  The list I created was made up of all the little tasks that pile during use, that you regularly tell yourself, 'I'm going to fix that eventually...when I get some free time'.  It included things like body panel repair, dent removal, a serious cleaning, a good waxing, replacing worn bits, changing gaskets and oil, and painting... lots of painting.

The one task that had me worried was the one I didn't have control over.  The body work.  The rocker panels had been deeply gouged by the door skins when they expanded in the heat of summer.  Since the SI rocker panels have their own 'door sill' that regularly collects dirt and dust, by the time I realized what was happening, the damage had been done.  I didn't have the time to do the body work myself, so I knew I had to take it to a shop.  The uneasy feeling that came from that idea originated from my checkered history with body shops.  I've never had a good experience, and the last trip to the body shop was the worst experience ever.  What was supposed to take 2-3 weeks ended up taking 3 months.

With that in mind, I found a seemingly reputable body shop in the area and dropped the rocker panels off to be repaired and painted.  He told me it would be done in three days, and I laughed.  Probably not the nicest reaction, but in my mind, nothing could happen that quickly at even the best body shop.  He was adamant that it would be done in that time frame, so while not holding my breath, I thanked him and went on my way.  Sure enough, three days later, I get a call, 'Your parts are ready for you to pick up!'  It was very difficult to disguise my elation when I thanked him and told him I'd be there as quick as I could.  'Could this be true?!  They must have done a terrible job.'  They didn't.  They were perfect.  I tossed them in the back of the Land Rover and went home with a huge grin on my face.  However, when I got home and carried them into the garage, my grin melted like an ice cream cone under a desert sun.  It only took a glance to realize that they weren't the right gray.  It wasn't even close!  I couldn't have been more dejected.  What was really depressing about this was not the fact that the body shop had painted the rockers in the wrong color, because they hadn't.  I had given them the factory paint codes, just like I had done when I had the entire car painted.  I knew right away that the body shop that painted the whole car originally (the one I had such an awful experience with) had used the wrong color gray.  To think that they were still causing my grief, years later, had me in a rage.

So with only two weeks before the show, I returned the parts to the body shop.  'Here we go again', I thought.  I explained the reasons why the paint didn't match and provided him with one of the door skins for him to match.  He balked a little and said that it would be easier to just paint all of the gray parts on the car instead of trying to match a couple panels.  There was no time for repainting half the car, so I just asked him to get it as close as possible.

As the days went on, I continued to spend my evenings and weekends in the garage.  My list was being whittled down, but not fast enough.  It seemed that even the simplest of tasks were taking forever and causing me issues.  Not only were things taking much longer to complete, but the guy at the body shop never told me when he'd have the parts completed.  He just said, 'They'll be done before your show for sure!'  This didn't sit well with me and after three days had passed without a word from them, I started calling.  'Just give me a couple more days.  They're having trouble getting the color to match' was what I was told after the first call.  After the third call, which was days later, he was still asking for more time.  I was starting to get a bad feeling about all of it.

With only three days before the show, I was reaching the panic stage.  My list was still way too long, and the car was still in pieces.  I had to start purging my list of things to do.  Even after scratching off a number of tasks, the list still felt long, but I couldn't comprise on anything else (so I thought).  It was now time to call the body shop again and get another status update.  'They're almost ready to paint' he said, 'They have it really close.  It'll be done on Friday for sure.'  Friday?!  Friday is the day before the show.  How am I going to put the car back together, and then wash, wax, and paint the trim pieces (among many other things) in less than 24 hours?!  I insisted that I needed them done by Thursday at the latest.  His response of 'We'll see what we can do' was hardly convincing.  To make an already long story a little bit shorter...  I was finally asked to come down to the shop to approve the color that they had decided was close enough.  This was Friday morning mind you.  By that time I had convinced myself that this wasn't going to happen.  My only hope was that I could at least make it to the show on Sunday.  The color was fine and I told them to move forward.  By 1pm the parts were completed and in my possession.  They did end up getting the color very close, but ended up having to blend the paint on the door skins to avoid any obvious differences.  I was about 24 hours late based on the schedule in my head, but I was pretty sure I could be done by Saturday night.

Amazingly, as the clock struck 12:30am Sunday morning, I stepped back from the car and realized I had done it.  Well, sort of.  My list had received yet another purging, so in the end I had only completed two thirds of the original task list, but at that point I was just happy to have the car back together and looking half-way decent.  Sadly though, the drama didn't end there.  Before I went to bed I decided to go over the car and make sure I hadn't forgot anything.  As I was wrenching down on one of the front wheel's lug nuts, I heard a weird popping sound come from the engine bay.  When I looked up there was smoke coming out from under the hood.  I stood there for a moment just staring at the smoke as it rose from the car and disappeared into the night sky.  'SERIOUSLY!?'  I lifted the hood to find my suspicions of a blown fuse to be correct.  Of course it was the main 55amp fuse, the one I didn't have spares to.  Finally I knew that this show wasn't going to happen.  It was time to let it go.  I calmly shut the hood, rolled the car back into the garage and went to bed.

The next morning, as I sat glumly on the couch starring out the window at a beautiful spring day, it dawned on me that I still had the nice camera gear that I had rented for the show.  I knew nothing positive would come out of me moping around the house, and I wasn't about to let that camera equipment go to waste.  The only thing standing in my way was a dead car.  So I put my big boy pants back on and went to work.  6 fuses, getting stranded in the left turn lane of a busy intersection, and several trips to the parts store later, and she was back in action.  To add insult to injury, the cause of the problem was of my own doing.  I had loosened the alternator harness connector while washing the engine bay, just enough to cause it to short.  Lovely.

Once the car was running again, I packed my gear into the car and headed into the mountains.  It didn't take long to find an impressive scenic byway just north of Helen, GA.  It led me to two fantastic lookouts that offered impressive views of Yonah Mountain and the Chattahoochee National Forest beyond.  After spending a few hours driving on beautiful mountain roads, taking pictures, and just soaking up nature, I realized that this was so much better than being crammed in a parking lot with thousands of other cars and people, getting sun burnt and covered in tire smoke.  This is what I should've been planning to do the whole time.  To truly enjoy your car is not to have other folks look at it while it sits in a parking lot, it's to care for it, drive it, and take the time to step back and appreciate what you can accomplish with a lot of hard work.  That is what is so special about motoring.

Photos by Stephen Dettman

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