1974 Honda Civic...nearly mint! Boy, cars sure have come a LONG way.
#1
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1974 Honda Civic...nearly mint! Boy, cars sure have come a LONG way.
^Look at that interior. I can think of a few cars TODAY who's interiors arent that well made. Looks like ALOT of effort went into this car's design.
^37,000 ORIGINAL MILES!
^awww its a 4 spd! how cute
Credit for the pix: Pix came from this thread.
#3
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Coincidentally, I saw one very similar at a Honda dealer yesterday in Rhode Island. Nearly mint as well in the showroom.
Impressive and amazing that economy cars would have been purchased but barely driven. Very rare situation as such cars are specifically bought to be a daily workhorse.
Impressive and amazing that economy cars would have been purchased but barely driven. Very rare situation as such cars are specifically bought to be a daily workhorse.
#7
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Some nice pictures. I remember it well. My brother had one, and so did his best friend....and a later girl friend of mine. It was markedly smaller than its rival Toyota Corolla, and was actually the first subcompact car in the U.S. market to introduce FWD on a large scale....previous FWD Minis and French Renaults not having sold here in significant numbers.
I just hope that one doesn't have the notoriously balky Honda CVCC engine of the period (It doesn't, from the look of the underhood pictures). The CVCC engine was the only mass-produced engine of the time that could meet the upcoming 1975 emissions wihout an expensive catalyst....and could still run on low-lead gas, as opposed to unleaded. The CVCC engine had two combustion chambers for each cylinder...a small upper one for a rich mixture, and the much larger, regular one for a super-lean mixture. The smaller one fired off the larger one. It was fine when it warmed up (meaning over 140 degrees) but was awful when cold. Even fiddling with the manual choke, it stalled and stumbled to no end, even slipping the clutch.. You pretty much had to let it sit still, warming up while idling, for a while before you went anywhere. That was not as much of a problem with the non-CVCC, standard engine. Makes you really appreciate modern EFI.
I just hope that one doesn't have the notoriously balky Honda CVCC engine of the period (It doesn't, from the look of the underhood pictures). The CVCC engine was the only mass-produced engine of the time that could meet the upcoming 1975 emissions wihout an expensive catalyst....and could still run on low-lead gas, as opposed to unleaded. The CVCC engine had two combustion chambers for each cylinder...a small upper one for a rich mixture, and the much larger, regular one for a super-lean mixture. The smaller one fired off the larger one. It was fine when it warmed up (meaning over 140 degrees) but was awful when cold. Even fiddling with the manual choke, it stalled and stumbled to no end, even slipping the clutch.. You pretty much had to let it sit still, warming up while idling, for a while before you went anywhere. That was not as much of a problem with the non-CVCC, standard engine. Makes you really appreciate modern EFI.
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#11
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More common, however, especially with American-designed cars, is the automatic choke...especially after emission controls got stricter and the EPA didn't want people forgetting to push the **** back in when warm (that would cause an unneeded rich mixture and a lot of unnecessary emissions). But automatic chokes with the cam-notch linkage, and, later on, the electric chokes, where the butterfly valve opened and shut by an electrically-heated spring-coil linkage, could often be (trust me) a real PITA. With automatic systems, you often either got too little or too much choke, and/or sometimes carburator icing from the manifold heaters that often screwed up.....the systems never seemed to work correctly when needed. It was these ongoing carburator problems, and the resulting stalls/stumbles/hesitation that drove car owners nuts, that finally convinced the auto industry to convert to fuel-injection in the 1980s. IMO, they should have converted sooner...back in the 1970's.
#13
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Good flashback stuff, I've driven a later version of that gen 1 Civic, it was a stick-shift nearly new rental car. For a small car it was way ahead of its time in terms of reliability, refinement and surprisingly fun to drive.