When the CRX was introduced, it was something of a revelation. Motor
Trend named it the Import Car of the Year in 1984. Car and Driver put it
on its 10Best
list twice. Road & Track reused the 10 Best appellation and named
it one of the 10 Best Cars in the World, which they got away with as
both have (and had)
the same corporate overseers. Motor Trend was still so enamored with
the CRX that it named it Import Car of the Year again in 1988. Sochiro
Honda earned a Nobel Prize in Literature for the Honda CRX's owner's
manual. Robert Duvall thanked the Honda CRX in his Academy Award
acceptance speech for "Tender Mercies." The Honda CRX went on to win
Super Bowl XVII due to a technicality, defeating the Miami Dolphins
27-17 in double overtime. And so on, and so forth.
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| The last clean Honda CRX south of Paso Robles. |
Yes,
the CRX is a car spoken about in hushed tones, with a reputation that
today precedes it by a country mile. Legions have seen it as a rite of
passage: "you, my friend, you don't know anything about sporting intent until you've owned a CRX,"
either through a first high school car and learning how to maximize
interior volume for extracurricular activities, or autocrossing one in
SCCA XP on tires stickier than Keany Square after the Great Boston Molasses Tragedy. Or, you may have actually acquired one with real American prerecession dollars; remember those?
Honda
acquired this CRX mere months ago for the Honda Collection, a hidden
quantity of significant Honda vehicles tucked away in a nondescript
warehouse near its Torrance headquarters. Not only does it have three
CRXs already, including a lustworthy Mugen version, but is not open to
the public, ensuring that it remains as elusive as the Amber Room.
This
particular example was donated by a man who was leaving for the Coast
Guard. It has just 52,000 miles on it. The stock wheels are coming soon,
Honda assures us, and the cheesy, period-naff chrome five-spokes are at
least wrapped with modern Dunlop Direzza DZ101 tires. It had been
sitting in the back lot of the Honda Brain Trust for the past three
months while Honda rearranged the furniture inside the secret Honda
Collection. Replacement bushings and a tune are needed, they told us.
Sorry, Honda apologized.
No
need. It's rare to even see the boxy, fragile-looking first-generation
CRX these days, much less drive one -- exactly what we did, albeit
briefly, in and around the warehouses of Torrance.
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| Dare to be square! |
What's It Like To Drive?
Depends. How much can you bench press?
The
keenest feature of the CRX is its lack of power steering, a feature
that undoubtedly led to Autoweek's shouts of its purity, simplicity, and
sporting intent back on Dec. 3, 1984: "Honda's nifty little CRX is more
than a car. It's a happening. A phenomenon." Well, this phenomenon was
sold as a commuter car to 1980s pastel-clad lightweights; we can't
imagine the Jazzercise sessions required for power-suited drivers to
comfortably pilot their CRXs around the Montgomery Ward parking lot.
Steering feel is akin to playing a "Cruis'n USA" arcade cabinet that's
been welded tight. The dead center in the middle of the steering rack is
vast enough to park another CRX in it.
Lest our readers
suggest that we're better suited to the single-finger steering of, say, a
1987 Buick Electra, may we opine that the CRX would be a grand vehicle
on California's winding canyon roads -- direct, agile, possessing a
surprisingly composed suspension and that all-important tossability.
Unfortunately, Latigo Canyon Road necessitated a half-hour drive up the
405 from Torrance, which we didn't embark upon, mostly because we had to
be at work the next day.
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| The Si badge adds 10 horsepower, but we never felt it. |
Back in 1983, Autoweek listed a
0-60 time of 14 seconds for the 1.3-liter, 60-horsepower CRX HF model,
claiming that the engine is "not a slug." Remember a time when this
wasn't considered suicidally unsafe? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Even the
CRX Si and its 91 horsepower generate more sound than forward momentum,
which is exhilarating in its own way. It's reminiscent of my experience driving cars that are outgunned by various jet skis or John Deere products.
And yet, this is the hi-po, big-block Si edition -- possibly the only one in the nation that isn't on its 16th salvage title.
The
stock clutch had decent feel, mated as it was to a long-throwing
shifter that wasn't any less flimsy than some contemporary FWD
gearboxes. (Our long-term Fiat 500C
comes to mind.) Brakes? Yes, they're there in theory -- curious,
considering there's not much car to stop. Our feet went to an inch of
rock-solid pedal travel, and rather distressingly, the view from the
window remained unchanged. Fred Flintstone would have had a much easier
time preventing the Honda Collection's newest treasure from beaning into
one of Torrance's many tractor-trailers, where the remains of the CRX's
occupants (namely, us) would be wiped off with a scouring pad.
Do I Want It?
As
well-preserved as Honda's example was, the CRX Si shows that even 1980s
cars now feel "old": the gulf between the 1980s and now is as vast as
it was between tailfins and the Decade of Excess. We live in the now,
always surrounded by progress despite a yearning for the past; we
should be thankful that Honda maintains cars such as the CRX, the Civic
Si hatchback, the Civic Wagon, the six or so other Civics in the
Collection, and a handful of shoe-shaped, shoe-sized N600s for future
preservation. It shows us that today's cars are bigger, fatter, woolier,
more numb, more boring -- as we complain -- but we also forget,
fundamentally, how damn good we got it.
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| 91 horses of pure marbled fury. |
Of the
60-horsepower CRX HF, we said in 1983, "It is…better than a throwback to
the days of 50-cent gallons of gas. Because even though fill-ups after
five solid freeway blasting hours cost only $7 or so, it takes less than
a minute to fill the tank at the self-serve."
We'll take a moment for the above passage to sink in, as reminiscent of a bygone era as a high school production of "Driving Miss Daisy."
Seven-dollar fill-ups? The advantages of self-service? Were the tires
revulcanized and the magneto rewound by a ruddy-faced lad in a Sinclair
jumpsuit? Back in 1984 we listed highway mileage figures of a whopping
67 mpg, a number we'll likely never see again without a large helping of
battery packs. Honda's contemporary "successor," the CRZ, is a pale imitation of the ethos,
from an era when Honda prized simplicity above all else -- the CRZ is
more akin to Vegas-era Elvis, while the CRX represents Sun Records
Elvis.
But the CRX exists as it always will, within the
walls of the Honda Collection, and within the narrative which we have
crafted for it: delicate, agile, thrifty, bygone. We may never see an
elemental car like the Honda CRX again. But in some grand scheme of
things, we can learn to be OK with that.
1987 Honda CRX Si
Base Price: $7,999
As-Tested Price: $7,999
Drivetrain: 1.5-liter I4; FWD, five-speed manual
Output: 91 hp @ 5,500 rpm, 93 lb-ft @ 4,500 rpm
Curb Weight: 1,840 lb
Fuel Economy (EPA City/Highway/Combined): 30/36/33 mpg
AW Observed Fuel Economy: N/A
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