Today, November 3, is Classic Car Day in Japan. It commemorates the founding of the Classic Car Club of Japan in 1956 by Professor Tokutaro Hama. Hama was the first prominent scholar in Japan to argue the merits of cars purely as works of art rather than something utilitarian. The goal of the CCCJ is “preserving [classic cars] as historical and cultural heritage, while ensuring their proper use on roads and circuits and passing them on to future generations in good condition.” This feels like as good a time as any to ask:
What types of cars should be preserved?
The most entertaining comment by next week will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “What is your ideal Honda Civic build?“.
The vast majority of your dream Civic builds hailed from the DWE, or Double-Wishbone Era, but there were several of you nutty enough to want an SB1, like Jacob B and Kyuusha Corner with a B-series swap, or Dave Patten with a RWD K24 and King widebody kit.
Other took iconic Civics from history for inspiration, from TheJWT‘s street-legal JTCC Mugen Motul Civic Si to ra21benj‘s JTCC Supertouring-inspired EG sedan to エーイダン‘s Hot Wheels Super Street EM1.
Naturally, K-series engines made for a popular swap. Taylor C. put together a killer Orthia with K24A and EK9 suspension. Nick‘s K-swapped EF sedan sounds pretty sweet, and miked‘s EF hatch would add a Wagovan AWD system to the setup. Alan would just stick with the Shuttle to begin with and drop in aK20. Dan‘s overlanding K24A AWD Wagovan sounds insane in the best way. And dankan‘s ninth-gen Euro-market Civic Tourer with FL2 powertrain is something we’d love to see happen.
Finally, many pined for period correct builds straight out of the Honda heyday, like Nigel‘s EF Civic Si, or Taylor C.‘s EG hatch with B18C swap, both on TE37s, naturally. Alan‘s ITB’d EG hatch sounds glorious, and streetspirit kept it really real in an EA with A18A Prelude swap.
Like many commenters it was hard to pick just one Civic, but the winner this week was returning champion Land Ark, We hope one day this car gets the engine it needs to return to the road!
My friend has a stricken EG coupe that someone put a ridiculous turbo in and promptly blew everything up. The first time I saw it in his shop 6 years ago I fell in love. It’s Paradise blue/green with a lip kit and wheels that are the right size and a bronze-ish gunmetal that complement the color perfectly. I want nothing changed other than the motor. My friend goes through many motors he wants to put in, turbo, whatever. No, it needs a 2000 period correct lightly breathed on B18C1, naturally aspirated, and lightly wire tucked (nothing crazy, I’ll still need to work on it from time to time). Subtle, clean, drivable, reliable until the heat death of the sun.
I’ve made it clear that I would pay an obscene amount of money for it since he has the ability to access and install the motor with my help. But, alas, I have no indoor parking for it currently so he justifiably won’t sell it to me.
Omedetou, your comment has earned you a set of decals from the JNC Shop!
What types should be saved?
Anything that floats your boat. As an enthusiast I naturally lean towards the sporty models, and value trends in collector circles do point out that the sporty/high performance models, and open cars, are the cars that retain, and often gain, in value over time. That said I feel that even a lowly base model four door sedan with an automatic is worth the effort if that is what you love, and moreover, it will give people in the future a more balanced look at “what they drove back in the day”.
Save the car that makes you smile, regardless of type or where it was made.
Cheap, but true answer: All of them.
Very of-their-time modified cars. How many amazing kaido racers, vans, dekotora, etc…from the 80s and 90s have been dismantled or are rotting in junkyards?
They all deserve preservation, in their own way. Every car – from the humblest kei van to the bone-stock NSX-R – forms part of our shared industrial and cultural heritage. However ordinary a car may seem in its own time, attrition inevitably turns the familiar into the fascinating.
Supras, Centurys, RX-7s, and Skylines will always stand as artful masterpieces of Japanese design and engineering. But their brilliance is defined, in large part, by the world that surrounded them in their own time – by the Corollas, Bluebirds, and Odysseys that filled the same streets and parking lots. Those everyday machines provide the texture of an era: the soundscape, the rhythm, the living context that lets us fully appreciate how advanced, audacious, or beautiful their exceptional counterparts truly were.