1975 Honda Civic wagon

Rare little car...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1975...295578&lgeo=1&vectorid=229466&forcev4exp=true

 

hmmm

My Dad got the "two door coupe", in pumpkin orange with black interiour. Partly because, one of the commercials for these explained, with the tools provided under the dash and the instructions in the owner's manual, you could adjust the engine to run on alcohol. The alcohol used in the TV ad, was a case of gin or vodka. Good little cars. Honda was one of only three makes of foreign car that met the same smog and safety standards American cars did, before the 1982 model year, when they were required to by law. VW and Volvo were the other two.

 

My uncle also had an orange (with black interior) 2-door Civic in the 1980s! My grandmother (in her late 50s/early 60s at the time) loved driving it more than anyone. lol. I remember my uncle was rough on cars (still is, lol) and the car was virtually bulletproof.

 

---memories---

My Dad had his for over ten years, then gave it to my Mom, who had it until a pick up truck smacked it.(Mom was fairly okay, had broken bones in one hand) It would probably have gone a bunch more years, if that hadn't happened to it.

 

I don't know what ever happened to my uncles, he may have finally blown the engine, lol. I think his was a 75-77 model, maybe a '74. I think '74 was the first year was a big upgrade from the car it replaced. lol. I think '76 was the first year for the Accord and it was like a Cadillac compared to the early 70s Hondas.

This is how I remember his...



I remember seeing some black on this car... maybe it had this "Honda" decal on the bottom?

 

oh man

a few stories along those lines; a long while back, ten or fifteen years, one of the car critics at the LA Times ran an op-ed about 70's cars. Seems she hated her parents for buying a Pinto "in pumpkin orange", and making it so she had to show up in an uncool car that was going to explode without notice. And, all her friends got to show up in cool cars, like Toyotas and Datsuns and Hondas. Which came in cool colors. Like "pumpkin orange"!!! Went to a car show in the early 80's, two of the cars that were at this show, were a four door "stretch limo" Corvette and a "stretch limo" Honda Accord. This car critic also hated station wagons. Main reason, the seatbelts for the back seat were confusing. More confusing than in a sedan or coupe, apparently.

 

Those Civics had two different engine types. The first generation had the all-aluminum, cross-flow 1200s and the later ones opted with the 1400 cast iron block types. I had the 1200 which was a smooth-running engine. The problem with those was that you had to baby them. They couldn't take much abuse. Except for the sheetmetal and engine, every thing else on those cars was indestructable. I had a bunch of them and ended up with a collection of struts, driveshafts and transaxles which never went bad and I couldn't sell them because of that.
I built one of those, by bolting on a Dell'Orto side-draft 2-bbl, had the cam built up and ground for performance and then bolted on a set of 4 in 1 headers. I got quite a bit of low-end torque out of it. But, the combination of the 3 wasn't matching and the carb would ice up, on the way to work in the morning. I had to always pull over and let the car sit for some 10 minutes, until the ice would thaw. It then ran without problems until I reached my destination.
After failing to install a sheet metal plate between the headers and oilpan, the engine eventually quit, because all four pipes would narrowly pass under the pan and overheat the oil