The 1984 Mugen prototype was packed with go-fast gear including the company's own engine and exhaust tweaks, revised suspension, and a clutch-type LSD. Additionally, the still-handsome body was given a body kit that enhanced the little hatch's profile as well as high-speed stability.

Now compare that to the Honda Fit with Mugen accessories and Honda Accord with Mugan accesories. There are plenty of dealer-installed custom floormats, gear shift knobs, and unappealing fascias and spoilers. What's lacking? Anything to make these two vehicles go considerably faster or drive any better.

We've got 40 years of Honda ads here, from North America, Japan, and Israel. Civics that love leaded gas, 600s that force towns to resize all their parking spaces, and NSXs marketed with Honda nameplates. Just click on the thumbnail to head straight for the original post.
When you're done here, you might enjoy our favorite VW ads, then continue your car-advertising overdose with the Datsun, Toyota, Renault, General Motors, British Leyland, Ford/Lincoln/Mercury, and Chevrolet ads.

1984 City Turbo	1988 Cyber Sports CRX	1969 1300
1978 Civic	1978 Civic	1971 600
1994 VTEC	1991 NSX	2004 Civic
1988 Cyber Sports	1995 Civic	1986 CRX

All three cars are LeMons veterans; the Spearmint Dyno Honda CRX is leading at the moment, closely followed by the Arse-Freeze-a-Palooza-winning Metro Gnome Geo. The real shocker is the performance of the Italian Stallions' Fiat X1/9, which is blowing away a lot of high-powered machines on this so-called horsepower track. Will the Fiat's head gasket stay intact longer than the Honda's? Will the Metro-Gnome's brakes catch on fire, the way they did at the Goin' For Broken LeMons? Check in later!

Thanks to Myke Toman, Nick Pon, Zerin Dube and Speed:Sport:Life, Anna C of Bikini Racer, the Norwegian Slaabs, Saabs Gone Wild, Prison Break Racing, Team Beermer, LeMons Supreme Court Justice Lieberman, Jackson Williams, and others for their fine photographs.

This car knocked off the fastest lap at Arse Freeze '07, and their 1:34.878 time at this race was pretty damn good as well. 8th place, just 21 laps behind the winner. You may know these guys better as Fantasy Junction- yes, they're the folks with the '38 Peugeot for sale.


A 1:37.347 best lap makes yet another statement about those screamin' Integras- seriously, the fastest cheapo car you can get- but the 51st-place finish indicates some trouble with broken parts and/or black flags. Check out their Flickr page.


The Slow Santas weren't really slow at all, coming in 6th overall. A 1:39.081 best lap, too; how can you not love a car that gets 45 MPG and goes like that on a race track?


The Lebowski crew is back, this time with movie-correct bowling shirts and a car built to represent The Dude's favorite bowling alley (last time we saw them, their car was set up to look like the cut-off toe with green nail polish from the movie). They came in 38th place, which is pretty good when you consider their radiator was spewing water faster than you can pour a White Russian.


The Krider guys got righteously busted this time around, apparently thinking they needed to add something extra to the car after winning the SF '08 race. Without the 1,500-lap penalty, they'd have won this race by a long shot… but they had a great time and took their punishment without a single whine. Here's what Rob Krider has to say about the experience:

We deserved it!!!”
After winning the 24 Hours of LeMons SF at Altamont in 2008 we gave our car a new theme, “Surfs up” mounted a surfboard to the roof, donned some really tight wet suits (showing everyone our packages) and headed off to technical inspection (known as BS inspection) at the LeMons Championship race at Thunderhill. We were feeling good, we brought the judges some wrapped Christmas presents (Mechanic’s Gloves) a few bottles of high end hooch and had with us a binder filled with receipts. Everyone seemed glad to see us, smiles were all around and then Jay Lamm said, “Yeah uh, you guys are big time cheaters, let’s go ahead and impound the car right now.” Uh oh…wipe out.
The car went up on jack stands, spark plugs were removed, and outrageous internet rumors began to spill about. At first our receipts were holding their own. Then Judge Lieberman and the man himself, Jay Lamm, both got down on the ground and climbed underneath our car. It turns out these guys know a few things about automobiles and they quickly saw we were full of crap.
We compete in a few different racing series and ST Suspensions is a full time Krider Racing sponsor. I can’t really say how it happened exactly, but somewhere along the line some very nice ST Suspension’s components (springs, front sway bar, camber adjustment and urethane bushings) just sort of landed on our LeMons Integra. Yeah, Jay wasn’t buying that either. We were boned and we totally deserved it. After some debate and haggling we all agreed on the LeMons penalty record of an even 1,500 laps. We became the Big Kahuna of penalties.
Impounding our car and taking an extra careful look turned out to be the absolute correct call by Jay and the Judges because at the end of the race we completed 336 laps, where the legal and legitimate winner Team Geo Metro-Gnome completed just one lap less at 335. Congratulations to them, they raced a clean fast pace and deserve the honor. I, like a lot of people, thought that motorcycle engine contraption would never finish. Good job.
To keep competition tight the SCCA SPEED World Challenge has something called Rewards Weight. You win a race, the next week they throw a few hundred pounds in your trunk. At the 24 Hours of LeMons they have penalty laps. You win a race, the next event chances are they are going to take a good look at your car, and rightfully so. You probably spent over $500 just like we did. We didn’t mind the penalty, we knew deep in our hearts that Smokey Yunick was looking up at us from hell saying, “Sometimes they catch you, but then again, sometimes you win.”
See you guys next year, and no, we won’t bring the Acura. Rumor has it Jay is mandating that Krider Racing can only compete in an MG.

More LeMons veterans. We were disappointed that Blanco Basura managed just 75th place this time, after their car broke early in the '07 Arse Freeze, but there's always the next race!


You can always spot an Altamont veteran by its bashed-to-hell bodywork, and this car is a good example. The functional stack exhaust setup was a huge hit with the crowd, and their best lap time of 1:38.420 should make all CRX owners proud.


More LeMons vets! This bunch of alleged CalTrans workers came in 6th at the SF '08 race, though a blown transmission held them to 47th at Arse Freeze '07. This time they came in 58th, with a great 1:37.289 best lap. Their "Grinch Stole LeMons" theme was most impressive.


We saw an Obamanation-themed CRX at LeMons South, and the topical themes continue with Team Stimulus Package. 77th place.


This car has been in so many scrapes, wrecks, and space-sharing incidents at so many LeMons races that we're surprised it has any body left at all. 14th place at SF '07, 26th at Arse Freeze '07, and 14th again at SF '08, the D.I.L.L.I.G.A.F. team is a factor in every race. This time they finished in the top third, with 33rd place.


We heard quite a bit about the 25-lap BS penalty that Judge Lieberman handed to these guys, especially after they nuked their engine, transmission, and probably a bunch of other stuff and had to spend all night fixing the car. But who cares about lap penalties when you take home the much-envied Most Heroic Fix award? Congratulations!

I saw the post about the rotting Come From Behind Racing Probe and wanted to share the sole picture I have of our team's car awaiting the crusher.

Though I'm pretty sure that the yard didn't know what to do with a 1972 Lincoln MKCRXXX, they did take the liberty of destroying the only decent part of the car that we left on it; the windshield. Altamont 2008 was the Eyesore Racing CRX's 4th and final race. Too many nasty collisions left the frame rails too bent to repair, though a blown carburetor gasket that spewed engine coolant into every part of the engine (resulting in lots of steam from the air cleaners and crank case vent) is what ultimately led to the overheated death of our proud team mate.
The head gasket was fine... until we ripped it out for replacement in the last hour because we thought that it might be the problem. There is a coolant line that runs into the carb on those EW1 Honda engines (none of us know anything about carburetors, so this was all voodoo to us) and some gasket or line inside the carb body sprung a leak and followed the air into the engine.

Could we have fixed it? Maybe. But that would have taken a lot of work that should be put into our new car. A single tear falls from my eye... the memories! (fist shaking in the air)

This was found in the Western Addtion, on Lyon I think it was. Looked like they used old bowling lane or basketball court wood flooring for the majority of the constuction. It was covered in a layer of thin fiberglass in an effort to water proof it....??? I took 2 fotos at different times of day. I particularly liked the little wagon doors in the rear with small round windows!

Honda was still branding the CRX with Civic emblems in the mid-80s, but the little two-seater felt like a totally different car. The HF got a mere 58 horses from its 8-valve 1300 (compared to 91 in the hot Si's fuel-injected 1500), but 58 horses is plenty with a 1,713-pound car.


I've had a couple of these cars, and they'll keep going forever if you don't blow the head gasket (i.e., don't overheat it), change the timing belt when the time comes (interference engine), and can get it to pass the smog test (mind-bogglingly complicated emissions gear). The two-seater part is somewhat limiting, but it will haul plenty of stuff; I've used a CRX to bring home large items of junkyard loot, including a Chevy 350 short block and a variety of transmissions, and you can fit 8' long 2x4s in the car with nothing sticking out (run them from left rear corner to right front corner, between the seats).


That settles it- I'm going shopping for an HF right now... and I'm gonna convert it to run on propane!

Editor-in-Chief

Check out Eddie's cool CRX dirt track racer. He picked the car up for $100 and has invested another $1000 to make it race ready. Mods include a Corbeau Baja SS seat, RCI 5 gallon fuel cell, RCI 5 point racing harness, Exedy clutch and a Competition Engineering (Mororso) 8-Point roll cage. Those are Bear Claw ATV tires for the front. Looks pretty wicked. His MySpace page is pretty hilarious, too, and has more details on the Redneck Rally Racing League, which runs at the Fossil Bowl in Clarkia, Idaho.

We were happy to find that the Carpet Pissers will be racing, though the Pissers themselves were nowhere to be found; perhaps they were rolling a few frames. Give us ze money!


We saw this Mazda racing at Altamont in October (they came in 37th), and here it is again. Team members were too busy with a welding frenzy to chat with us.


Team Nerd Herd was hard at work prepping their MR2- looks like they failed the decibel test and had to add a muffler. Nerd Herd was playing it smart, with a parts car in reserve.


Speaking of parts cars, how about this '91 Nissan SE-R? Team Krider Racing brought a clean-looking 4-door Sentra, and they were just gearing up to pluck all the parts they might need to swap during the race tomorrow. Front Wheel Drive Hoonage Potential!

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Sure, the Carpet Pissers had some difficulties (not the least of which was losing that great "Abide" graphic when the hood got torn off the car) but they persevered and finished in the Top 44 cars. Be sure to check out their still photos as well.

The Honda CRX is small, fast, handles well, and can be had dirt freakin' cheap if you don't care what it looks like. We like the looks of this '89 CRX, which is priced just at the $500 LeMons ceiling, but that ceiling is obviously made of very stretchy stuff, plus the seller will not refuse any "RESONABLE" (sic) offers, meaning you'll be able to provide some highly effective downward pressure on the price. So ya get this car, put in a cage (safety equipment is not covered by the $500 limit), and then start looking for a cheap Integra engine to drop in. Oh yes, and some railroad-tie bumpers. Sure, a car that's been slammed, abused, and beaten like this one so obviously has will need a bunch of stuff fixed before it's ready to race, and the Integra swap involves Fun With Axles... but you need to go through Hell before you can chase the checkered flag, right?

Yeah, there were more CRXs contending at LeMons than you could shake a broken connecting rod at, but what kind of car finished first and second? That's right, BMWs. They may not be able to squeeze all CRX-like between the Buick Century and the Nissan Maxima in Turn Two, but they can take a lot more punishment then Soichiro's cut-down Civic and they're pretty quick. Not only that, you can get this '79 528i for a mere $250. It needs a head gasket (and, hell, maybe the head and/or block have great big cracks to boot), but you'll be able to deal with that while you're figuring out a way to turbocharge the engine on a $200 junkyard budget. The hell will come in when you're trying to sort out all the funky electrical problems you're sure to find- never mind that you're tearing out most of the wiring- and then start on the process of building a full-on race car on your three-figure junkyard budget.

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One thing we should make perfectly clear to those of you who haven't actually attended a 24 Hours of LeMans race: this is real racing! Don't be fooled by the $500 spending limit (which, uh, we think may have been exceeded by a few teams) or the often-whimsical appearance of the cars- the contending cars drove fast, spent a lot of time sideways, swapped a lot of paint with other cars, and left a trail of broken parts in their wake. Right, now on to the winnahs!

#16: Edge Motorsports 1 Spooky

I couldn't figure out what was the deal with the black pompom on the roof; apparently some sort of Halloween reference.

It's hard to take the CRX seriously as a late-night mean cruisin' machine, oozing menace and so on. Blacked-out Mercedes full of Yakuza heavies with suspiciously bulgy overcoats and wafer-thin watches, yes. CRX, no. Yet, here's Honda, selling the 1988 Cyber Sports CRX with exactly that image, to a late-80s-cheeze version of "I Ain't Superstitious" for the Japanese market. Still, seeing one of the later CRXs makes us all depressed about the whole Del Sol fiasco. – Murilee Martin

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