Zero to sixty in never

ZERO TO SIXTY IN NEVER

I was strolling somewhere around the Gowanus Canal general area when I noticed this little bike chained to a sign:

I don't know motorcycles at all. Identifying this off the top of my head was out of the question. The one detail that made me notice it at first was that big rectangular taillight. To me it immediately looked like late '70s/early '80s Japanese, but that's it!

I made my way past it and saw why this little punk was abandoned; the entire drivetrain is missing! I dig those mag wheels though. A housemate of mine once owned a Honda Shadow and it had the same rims.

I'm going to take an amateur guess and say that this is a 1980 Honda CB750F. From my fumbling through the darkness trying to identify this from scratch I noticed the elongated gas tank that curves down at the rear with the front of the seat matching the angle. That subtle wing is cool too. 

If it is a CB750 it is missing a 4 cylinder air-cooled engine. The CB750 enjoyed a glorious run from 1969 to 2003. Somehow it took me until now to notice that it's not chained to the sign at all actually. 

This Honda has been around long enough to not only garner some tickets, but for the color of those tickets to fade. I doubt this little pony will be up and running anytime soon.
Well that's it for a rare 2 wheeled interlude. When this blog was new I featured a few abandoned scooters roosting in the Williamsburg area but this doesn't happen often. Something about the cool stripes and massive brick of a taillight made me stop and appreciate this little ride.

Sweet little rally racer lying dormant in in Red Hook

CIVIC RALLY CROSS

Thankfully the late coming snow has now washed away or melted. However just a couple weeks ago this was the scene in Red Hook:

This tiny little car is a 1990 Honda CRX Si in Granada Black Poly.

I'm showing this pic next because it neatly sums up this entire ride. DOHC on that little trim piece indicates a Dual OverHead Cam engine.

 MUGEN equipped stands for the Mugen Motorsports company. Mugen was founded by the son of the founder of Honda; Soichiro Honda. As a result it is about as legit a badge of aftermarket performance parts as you will find.

Combine those details with a broken marker light, rusted brake rotor, and dented fender and that's this CRX in a nutshell.

The CRX was introduced in 1983 as a 2 seater version of the Civic. The three letters stand for Civic Rally Cross.

As dusty and beat as this thing looks now somebody spent a lot of money on modifications at some point. This is a race car parked on the street. The hood is a fiberglass replacement with a cheesy deep reverse scoop accented in LOOK AT ME purple.  

These cars are tiny - just over 12 feet long. From the factory even the earliest, most frugal models handled incredibly well. Parking is so easy that it's like having a private space wherever you go.

This was a great era for Honda. There was a 4 wheel steering option for the Prelude where the rear wheels turned slightly in the opposite direction of the fronts. The result was a Honda that outperformed Ferrari and Porsche in handling! That innovation combined with the legendary durability of their cars was spectacular for their reputation.

All CRXs are true 2 seaters. I rode in one back in high school as the 3rd person and it entailed jamming my legs between the front seats and laying flat in the trunk area, looking up at the sky. There is ZERO extra room in these!

This tiny wing probably helps with the already enviable drag coefficient. 

That shockingly green thing in the window looks to me to be a valve cover. Maybe the engine is disassembled at the moment? Actually upon further review it looks like an engine in a plastic tub.

Yeah bro now we move on to the bro area of this ride. BUILT NOT BOUGHT is the sort of ridiculous macho crap that dudes slap on their car for other dudes to admire. Please rotate your hat and show respect. Do you even lift bro?

Cool dude I totally get it! That little sticker means kiss your ass right? Sweet!

Putting blackout stickers over your taillights seems ridiculous to me. The best thing about the bumper with those 6 holes in it is that it's cracked and might be replaced.

In many ways this design is similar to the '71-'73 Ford Mustang Sportsroof (fastback) as each has an equally useless rear window. Unlike the Mustang Honda augmented the visibility by making that panel between the taillights and the wing out of glass. Heavily tinted as it is you can still see through it enough to back up without hitting something.

I bagged on the bro-mods a bit but in reality I've always loved the CRX. It was eventually replaced by the Del Sol which has a removable targa roof but lost some of the charm of the original for me. If you somehow found one of these that was rust free or close to it in running condition I would highly recommend picking it up. You'd be hard pressed to find a better blend of fun and reliability. 

Historically significant + beat to hell = HOOPTIE

THE END IS iN SIGHT!

Newer cars rarely make it onto this blog. For a car younger than 25 years old to be featured it has to be either historically significant, ultra rare, or truly beaten to within an inch of its life. Todays car qualifies for about 2.5 out of 3.

On one of the widest and most beautiful blocks of Park Slope I saw this little number standing out like a pimple on a prom queen.
What we have here is a 2000 Honda insight* in the oddly named color New Formula Red. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the first hybrid production car to hit the streets of America (beating the Prius by about half a year). You'd hardly know it was an innovator by looking into those hazy cataracts.
*The name is spelled with a lower case i that has a red dot on top. Since it's confusing to have a lower case name and I can't easily make the dot itself red I've gone with insight.

Not many were built overall even though it held the all time gas mileage record from its introduction in 1999 all the way through this year when the 2016 Toyota Prius Eco finally surpassed it. With it diminutive aerodynamic shape and gas/electric hybrid motor the Insight boasted 61mpg on the highway and 53mpg overall.

The body panels are largely made of plastic with an aluminum structure underneath. The gas tank is plastic and the spare tire mounted on an aluminum rim to further save weight. From the factory this thing checked in at a mere 1,850 lbs!

The realities of a fragile subcompact used on the city streets are very evident on this ride. The rear fender skirt is gone and there's a fat dent in front of the wheel well. With such an aerodynamic design I'm sure the missing fender skirts are affecting the efficiency a bit.

The insight is a true 2 seater with hints of the fantastic Honda CRX in its design. The rear panel is smoked glass to help with the blind spot behind the driver.

Say it loud Insight! History just might celebrate this model as a turning point in automotive history yet.

I like the fact that there's a reflection of an Acura smiling in the reflection. Honda produced Acura as a stand alone luxury division back in the '80s.

Another glimpse of the inner plastic workings of the insight.

2000 doesn't seem like a long time ago but there's that cassette player in the dash looking like a page from the history books. The fact that it's a manual transmission is sporty as the alternative was a CVT. CVT stands for Continuously Variable Transmission which uses a system of belts to seamlessly run through different gear ratios without actually having different gears. If it sounds like I just dropped that on the page without fully understanding it you are correct.

Here's that sweet sneaker styling in all its glory.

Oh yeah! When your body panels are plastic even small accidents can look tragic. Here we see the deep crevasse from a fender-bender. They got away somewhat easy this time as another few pounds of pressure probably would've shattered the front fender. I've seen plastic bodied cars that had been in moderate accidents driving by and they looked crazy with huge jagged open holes on the body!

Well that about does it for one of the youngest cars to ever grace the NYCHoopties blog. I almost walked by it before realizing what it was. As forgettable as it is now this may turn more heads as the years keep rolling by.
Imagine seeing one of these pull into a car show in the year 2050 (seems far away but that's the equivalent of seeing a car today from 1966). In this era of electric Teslas
 and driverless cars it's hard to tell what vehicles will look like 34 years from now. The Honda insight stands with one foot in the past and one in the future and for that it deserves to be noticed.

Twofer Tuesday/Wednesday returns with 2 1970s cars that couldn't be more different

TWO SIDES OF THE 1970S COIN

I was on my way to drink these delicious watermelon tequila drinks on the sunny rooftop of Brooklyn Crab in Red Hook when I spied this little punk through the bars of the Fairway parking lot:

SWEET! What we have here is a beautiful 1977 Honda CVCC Civic in Forel Blue. We know it's a '77 because the grill and hood design only lasted from '75-'77 and this great color was introduced in 1977. This is the car that really put Honda on the map. The CVCC stood for Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion. Basically the design of the heads and fuel mixtures burned so efficiently that these cars passed stringent emissions without a catalytic converter.

They are also so tiny and cute that parking was easy and the fuel economy staggering.
One great anecdote about the CVCC is that the CEO of GM was asked about the technology and why it wouldn't be used in their cars (Ford and Chrysler had both licensed the technology from Honda). The GM boss stated that he had studied the design and "while it might work on some toy motorcycle engine I see no potential in using it in one of our GM car engines".
Word eventually got back to the great engineer and company founder Soichiro Honda. Soichiro took it upon himself to buy a brand new 1973 Chevy Impala with a 350 engine and have it freighted to Japan. He instructed his designers to build a CVCC unit for installation on the mighty GM powerplant. Afterwards he sent the CVCC equipped 350 Impala back to America for testing by the EPA. Not only did it work but it blew the emissions numbers of the catalytic cars out of the water. The moral is this: don't tell Soichiro Honda what can and can't be done!

The Achilles Heel on these rides was their prone to rusting out. The problem was so dire that Honda recalled all cars for front fender replacement on the condition that rust had taken hold within 3 years of it being sold new. Unfortunately that was the case for most CVCCs sold in states that used salt on the roads.
But enough of that innovative world-changing Japanese design. How about some good old American hubris I discovered last time I was in Alameda California?

 This unapologetic beast is a 1973 Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna in either Tuxedo Black or something close to it. The Laguna was the top of the heap for Chevelles produced from 1973-1976. The main styling difference is the front bumper being incorporated with the grill and lights into a single polyurethane unit not unlike the Pontiac GTO Endure Front of the day.

This was the era of Colonnade styling where the rear window was steeply raked and the thin pillar behind the door could support the body weight in a rollover crash. In '73 the regular Laguna sported this small opera window in the side of the landau vinyl roof. However you could also order a large quarter window that reached back all the way to the rear window.

I dig the Chevelles of this era as it manages to still look pretty tough even though it's a large car (for the record this was a mid-size Chevrolet in '73!). The four round lights in the back are similar to both the Camaro and Corvette, and the Colonnade roof give it a very forward-leaning stance. This is the same year that Ryan Gosling drove in Drive (though his was a Malibu; one step down from the Laguna). Even with the back bumper painted black and those Flowmasters poking out from underneath I would proudly roll in this ride.

Somebody made a deal with the rust gods

CIVIC MINDED

This car should not exist in 2016 Brooklyn. As far as cars go the body on this little grocery getter should have dissolved into rust like a Kleenex tossed into a fire. However there it was in Clinton Hill!

This is a 1982-1983 Honda Civic Wagon in the terrifically yawn-inducing Arctic Silver. By the way the reason I capitalized Wagon is that it's written on the back as a nameplate. I can't remember an instance where an automaker spelled out the body style on the car itself. I mean, isn't it obvious?

This faithful little steed has a 1500cc 4 cylinder engine good for 34mpg in the city and 47mpg on the highway. As great as these numbers are there was a special ultra-efficient model with a 1335cc engine that boasted 41mpg city and a whopping 55mpg on the highway! I always think of these 35 year old marvels when automaker bristle at being forced to coax 30mpg out of their vehicles in 2016.

This was known as the Quint in Japan due to its 5 doors.

The Wagon was front wheel drive while the other Civic body styles remained RWD like ALL Civics going all the way back to 1972*. Other than that this car is a hold over from olden days; the engine breathes through a carburetor, the rear brakes are drums, and there is no power steering.
*Shout out to Cyota Corolla for catching me on that one.

This is the base model, so side trim and a rear wiper are omitted. The price for the base Civic Wagon was just above $6,000 which was more than an average domestic pickup truck, more than the Ford Escort, and just a touch less than a Mustang. What your money got you was a whole lot of car though and legendary reliability.

The CIVIC emblem has always looked a touch evil to me due to it's larger V.

In the era of big American station wagons this car looked diminutive. These days there are smaller cars on the road, but this design can still hold a surprising amount of cargo.

The rear doors on these are larger than the fronts which allows for side loading when the rear seats are folded flat.

We've got local parking stickers going back to 1992 so the fact that there isn't much rust is amazing!

Just the basics; spare tire dumped in the back and a shovel. Check out that terrible aftermarket speaker from the '80s too!
The factory spare tire placement for the Wagon was under the trunk on the outside of the body. There were two small metal arms that held the tire up under the trunk just like if you put your arms out in front of you bent at the elbow palms up. Even on cars as well preserved as this one the metal bars and the screws holding them together would rust out almost immediately.

Nice CLUB bro.
I can't see a radio from this angle but there is a little cubby below the ashtray where I assume it would be. Then again there is that cheesy little speaker in the back. Maybe it's hidden?

The hood is hinged in the front so working on it requires leaning over the fenders. There is plenty of room though since the engine is so diminutive. 

That little bump above the drivers side window is the antenna so this must have had at least the AM.

Somewhere somebody's rocking the faux chrome H from the grill! That and the headlight surround are the only things missing that I can see.

I have a special place in my heart for '70s and '80s Japanese cars. I've owned several, including (very briefly) an '81 Prelude. These are fun when equipped with a manual shift even though they aren't exactly quick. Hats off to the frugal stranger out there still rocking the Civic!