Yahoo Autos Junkyard Gem: 1993 Honda Civic del Sol
For the 1984 model year, Honda began selling a two-seat version of the third-generation Civic known as the Civic CRX. Perhaps this was in emulation of Ford's two-seaterization of the Escort, known as the EXP and LN7, which first hit American showrooms as a 1982 model, but the copycat ended up being far more successful than the original here. The CRX was fun to drive while getting shockingly good fuel economy, and its final model year was 1991. Its successor first appeared here as a 1993 model: the Civic del Sol. Here's an example of a first-year del Sol, found in a boneyard near Denver, Colorado.
I daily-drove CRXs for years and loved them very much (other than the nightmarishly complex "Map of the Universe" tangle of vacuum lines on the CVCC versions, especially when trying to pass California emissions tests). Like many CRX aficionados, I never could warm up to the del Sol.
It seemed to be trying too hard to be lovable, while its predecessor earned love by just being a better car than any of its rivals. By the time the del Sol hit our shores, Soichiro Honda was dead, the competition had caught up and Americans no longer had to pay well over MSRP to buy a new Accord or Civic.
The fifth-generation Civic (the basis of the del Sol) was a masterpiece of engineering, my personal favorite of all the Civic generations. The del Sol was built just as well as its hatchback, sedan and coupe siblings (and its first cousin, the 1993-2001 Acura Integra), but perhaps those car shoppers who might once have considered a two-seater were moving on to more truckish cute machinery by 1993. In any case, the rare CRXs I find in junkyards nowadays get picked clean right away, while most del Sols go the the crusher's cold steel jaws with most (non-mechanical) parts still present.
For 1993, the base del Sol got the very reliable but not-so-powerful 1.5-liter engine, rated at 102 horsepower and 98 pound feet. That's what we have here, and it's very unlikely that any junkyard shopper will be buying such a commonplace plant. The 1993 del Sol Si got a VTEC-equipped 1.6 with 125 horsepower and 106 pound-feet, and that engine remains fairly desirable in the eyes of Honda builders.
An automatic was available, but this car has the five-speed manual.
