Junkyard Find: 1983 Honda Civic Wagon
The 1973-79 Civic was a very good car for its time (mostly because just about all the other subcompacts of the era were so bad and/or boring), but the second-generation Civic was the one that gave Honda its reputation for bang-for-buck performance and miraculous-for-the-price build quality that seemed unbeatable for nearly 15 years. The value of the 1980-83 Civics became so low by the late 1990s that it wasn’t worth fixing any problem that cost more than a couple hundred bucks to fix, and so nearly all of them were gone by the time the 21st century rolled around. Here’s a Civic wagon, painted in very Malaise-y beige, that managed to hang on for thirty years. More than a year has passed since the last second-gen Civic in this series.
Only 139,302 miles! The interior and body are in nice shape, which suggests an indoor parking space and very sparing use. Maybe the head gasket blew back in ’94 and it sat in a garage, or maybe it was an extra car that was well cared for but didn’t get driven much.
How late into the 5-speed era did bragging rights last? I’ve seen early-90s Sentras and Tercels with 4-speeds, but 5-speeds weren’t particularly exotic in subcompacts by 1983.
This car’s early years were spent in Northern California.
The first-gen Civics were just tiny, even by the standards of the time, so the added room in the second-gen cars was most welcome.
Believe it or not, this vacuum diagram was simple compared to what CVCC-equipped Hondas with computer carburetors had by 1985. Good luck getting this setup through a California smog check!
64 horsepower seemed adequate in these cars, amazingly enough.
Will these things ever be considered collectible? Hard to say— 20 years ago, very few thought that Country Squire wagons would be worth saving, and now we have legions of Malaise Era wagon fanciers.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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I had one of these my first year in school. It was a surprisingly fun car. Not much on power (it's engine really is the size of a sewing machine), but it was a smooth little runner. Mine was never happier than cruising the West Texas highways in fifth gear all day long between 75 & 85 mph. It was also a better CRV than the CRV. It didn't have the ground clearance, but you'd be amazed at some of the soft-roading and off-roading I could get that thing to do to get to a fishing hole. It was a scrappy thing. And the mpg was a major step up from the Detroit V8 it replaced.
Oh deja vu! I passed my test in my Dad's saloon (sedan). This was locally assembled as a "Triumph Acclaim" here in the UK (I know, sad right?). There was no "wagon" option though.