Yesterday's Audi Doody, didn't pull your strings as it, and it's $15,000 starting price, tipped the scales to a surprisingly close 54% Crack Pipe vote. Today we have a car that's not quite as old, nor quite as expensive, and not nearly as rare.

Honda. If you the type who demands the utmost in reliability, but is as yet unwilling to buy a Toyota, and hence sell your soul to the satan of boredom, then Soichiro Honda's your man. Well built, and still with a semblance of character, Honda's products have gained an envied reputation. And what a depth of products they offer- everything from lawn mowers to ATVs and motorcycles, to cars, light trucks, even business jets. And for the past 37 years they've built the typically humble, occasionally hot, Civic.

Introduced as the solution to the gas crisis plaguing the nation, the two-box Civic was the first car Honda had designed with the U.S. market in mind. Not only was it fuel efficient, but the wickedly brilliant 3-valve CVCC four cylinder- introduced in 1975 - managed to meet the new, and at the time extremely stringent, U.S. emissions standards without a catalytic convertor. Leaded gas FTW!

That first generation Civic became beloved by owners, and lasted until 1979, which is the year from which today's car hails. You still see first-gen Civics on the road, a testament to their durability and their attractiveness to their owners, but few are as nice as this three-door hatch. The seller has given the 1,488-cc powered car a full refreshening both inside and out, and details the respray in the ad for your pleasure. New Houndstooth upholstery and a rebuilt 20K-mile replacement engine complete the package in this 99,000-miler. The CVCC put out 60 ponies this year, but at less than 1,500-lbs, the car is good for both around town and, with that five speed, decent highway cruising. And it should also be good for damn-near 50-mpg on that highway.

Now, all this goodness does come at a price, and in this case that's $8,000. That's a lot of cheddar for a 30-year old econo-box, and nearly twice what the car cost new. But if Civics class taught us anything, it was that the more people find you desirable, the more they'll be willing to pony up for you.

So, are you civic-minded enough to drop eight large for this silver Civic? Or, does that price move this car out of your civic center?

You decide!

San Francisco Craigslist or go here if the ad disappears. A pop of the hatch to Spritle for the tip

Help me out with NPOCP. Click here to send a me a tip, and remember to include your commenter handle.

That means that plenty of fairly solid 1970s Civics go straight to the boneyard as soon as a $300 problem crops up. I think it's a shame, because most of the Civic's competition back in the day (e.g., Corolla, Pinto, Colt) tended to be several notches below the Civic in the "fun to drive" category, and even Toyota felt a bit threatened by the Honda's reliability. I still recall feeling humiliated, 20 years ago, that my girlfriend's '73 Civic could eat up my '73 MGB-GT in every category from acceleration to braking to electrical-system quality (yeah, the last one is a fish-in-a-barrel deal). Here's one I spotted in a nearby self-service yard a few weeks back.

Is that 97,000 miles... or 397,000 miles? The interior was pretty decent, so I'm guessing the lower number is more likely.

Infrequent bursts of fawning published in these pages will prove that the Citroën SM, in its quiet yet revolutionary way, is perhaps the most remarkable automobile ever manufactured. Yet owning one is clearly out of the picture.

Consider: if the engine goes, you’ll have to find a mechanic familiar with 40-year-old carbureted Maserati engines. Then, if anything else goes, you’ll need another mechanic intimate with 40-year-old hydropneumatic Citroëns. If you multiply the respective probabilities of finding such mechanics, you will feel the blood drain from your face.

The nightmarish nature of this scenario is not specific to the United States: contrary to popular belief, Europe does not have trees with mixed bunches of Maserati and Citroën mechanics cavorting on low-hanging branches either.

Yet the SM exerts a powerful visceral tug. Its parts are remarkable by themselves, but the SM is clear testament to the idea that on occasion the whole is indeeed greater than the sum of parts. The strange yet mellifluous 90° V6, the DIRAVI steering, the hydropneumatics, the incredible cabin: the SM’s components combine to make a car that has the ability to cruise in complete comfort at 125 MPH between fillups without breaking down.

Think about that: neither occasional bursts of speed for joy or overtaking nor a single cross-continental blitz with the result of you being on time and your car a smoldering wreck, but a grand tourer for regular grand tours.

The world has since moved on from such earthbound flights of fancy. The SM’s was a world infinitely less hostile to the automobile than ours. Its vehicular contemporaries were:

1. A hypersonic civilian jetliner flirting with time travel
2. A military spy plane made of titanium which could outrun anti-aircraft rockets
3. An air-cooled twelve-cylinder racing car with 1500 HP
4. A giant space rocket which regularly whisked American men from the gravitational pull of the Earth to deposit them on the surface of the Moon
5. The Lamborghini Miura

Yes, wow. That was four decades ago.

Perhaps we should all just forget about the Citroën SM. Ours is a world not of grand tours but of shuffling in socks through airports and molassing along at 65 MPH in plastic cabins.

Yet imagine! Just imagine a contemporary SM.

The Japanese would have to build it. The Japanese are less interested in haphazard, grandiose revolution than in taking established concepts and polishing them to perfection. The way Toyota usurped Mercedes-Benz’s lead in luxury sedans to produce the last word in personal transportation inside motorized whales, the Lexus LS600hL.

But a modern SM is not a Toyota job. In spite of occasional displays of deep petrolhead inspiration—the 2000GT, the AE86, the LFA—Toyota does not make touring cars you’d like to tour in high style in. The modern SM should be a Honda, built on Soichiro Honda’s legacy of mechanical madness and racing chops.

In fact, Honda has already made something akin to a modern SM: the NSX of 1991, a perfect, luxurious grand tourer disguised as a mid-engined sports car and generally mistaken for a Ferrari. Plus, they have taken the SM’s glass headlights enclosure and installed it on the current Civic, which is as close in chutzpah to the SM as a mass-market hatchback can be.

(And it’s not like cooperation between Japanese and French carmakers is such a long shot either. In fact, Citroën already makes a crossover called the C-Crosser on a Japanese platform, the Mitsubishi GS: a base for excellence like the Evo X and also for the abomination that is the Chrysler Sebring.)

Honda could pull it off. As for what our slow world could do with the perfect idea of the touring car executed with Japenese attention to detail, I do not have a clue. But do we really want to go down in history as the generation which has all but abandoned forward motion?

Photo Credit: PlingPlöng/Flickr, afghtiga/Flickr, Infinite Jeff/Flickr, cosmicspanner/Flickr, Ignacio Conejo/Flickr, Jim Ross/NASA, nielsvk/Flickr, Steve Kay/Flickr

It all started about two years ago, when I caught the 24 Hours Of LeMons jones, bad. How bad? Bad enough to put a team together, drop a Ford 302 in a Volvo 244, and enter the notorious Altamont "Demolition Derby" LeMons race back in early '08. With a Scandinavian Black Metal theme, the car needed to look evil! And thus began the saga of the Screaming Skulls...

Nowadays, my beater '92 Civic sports a pair of clattery, chattery "talking" skulls that use up pretty much all of the hatch area's storage capacity. When I hit the brakes, the jaws open and close (with enough force to bite through a celery stalk; yes, I've tested the bite power) and the eyes gleam a menacing- yet safe- red.

They're loud and annoying, but totally worth it. All it took was a few bucks in parts and hundreds of hours of time.

First, I needed a couple of plastic skulls. It turns out that "factory fourth" med-student skulls are dirt cheap on eBay. They're cheap because they tend to have different colors for the cap and face, or maybe some missing teeth, or just ill-fitting parts. None of that mattered for this project, so I ordered two right away.

My initial plan was to use vacuum motors, or "suck power," to actuate the jaws. I grabbed a couple of heater-vent vacuum actuators from a Chevy Astro Van and started cutting holes in the skulls. They're made of very dense, heavy plastic that's quite easy to drill, cut, and grind. I started the project by drilling out the eye sockets and cutting another hole at the base of the skull for the steel pipe that will form the "neck."

The illuminated red "eyeballs" were made from a pair of steel-and-glass Alfa Romeo warning lights, pulled from junked Alfa Spiders. Junkyard tip: always grab these lights when you see them; the quality is excellent and they're easy to mount on your homemade instrument panel projects.

The jaws on the cheapo plastic skulls don't include a reliable hinge mechanism for the jaw, so I went with a homemade rod-and-tube arrangement. Drill some holes, push the pipe through the jaw holes and a piece of tubing, then JB weld the ends in place.

Here you can see the pipe T fitting epoxied into place at the base of the skull, as well as the installation and wiring for the eyeball lights.

The Astro Van vacuum actuator goes into an aluminum spacer plate that mounts between the skull and its lid. There's a rod going down to the jaw. During high vacuum (engine deceleration), the actuator will suck the jaw closed; mash the gas pedal and the resulting low vacuum will let the springs pull the jaw open. Now repeat these steps with a second skull!

We mounted the skulls on the car's roof, hooked them up to a vacuum port on the intake manifold, and went racing. The skulls worked, but the jaws only opened at WFO throttle and it was a chore to get the springs adjusted for the correct tension. Clearly, I'd need to go to electrically-operated skulls next time!

I didn't have to look far to find electric actuators for the upgrade; most Volvo 240s came standard with power door locks. I sold the actuators that came with our car to meet LeMons budgetary requirements, so I had to hit the junkyard to get some more for the skulls. Here's a promising candidate!

Here's a mugshot of a typical Volvo 240, to make your junkyard shopping trip go faster.

First step is to remove the window crank, armrest, and door panel.

There's the actuator! A few turns of the wrench and a snip of the cutters and it shall be mine.

Voila! One more and I'm done.

My junkyard shopping isn't through yet, though; I'll need some relays and a turn signal flasher to create the "brain" that will control the skulls. Next stop is a 1980s BMW for some Bosch relays. This E30 looks promising.

There we go! This project requires three SPDT relays per skull, for a total of six. No problem finding Bosch SPDTs on an E30- just look for the ones with five terminals, including two labeled "87a" and "87b." As for the turn signal flasher, I like the old-fashioned cylindrical ones from pre-1990s Detroit cars; these skulls will use Chrysler K-car flashers.

The control circuitry is pretty simple: the power to the eyes and the coil of Relay #1 goes through the turn signal flasher (I added a taillight bulb, labeled "Load Bulb" in the diagram, inside the skull to provide enough current draw to make the flash rate a bit faster). When the coil on Relay #1 activates, it causes the coils of Relay #2 and Relay #2 to activate, which reverses the polarity of the power leads going to the lock actuators in the skulls. This causes the actuators to deploy down ("lock") as well as up ("unlock"), which means springs won't be necessary to close the jaws.

Speaking of jaws, I decided to improve the linkage with a double-jointed arrangement.

Some modification to the lock actuators was necessary to attach the jaws.

Now it's time to start playing with wires.

Here's a quick bench test of the circuitry. Hey, it works!

And it works when installed in the skull, too!

There's just enough room in the skull for the relays, flasher, lock actuator, wiring, and load bulb.

It's going to be a tight fit to get the lid installed, but it should work.

And remember, everything has to be done twice!

For Black Metal V8olvo Mark II, I decided to get some anatomically correct plastic skeletal arms (also cheap on eBay) and rig up the skulls so they appear to be backseat passengers. Add a T-shirt and it looks pretty good.

I hooked up the wiring to what became known as "The Metal Switch" on the race car's instrument panel. Pulling the Metal Switch activated the skulls and caused Opeth to crank from the in-car PA system. Oh, they'll love this at the track!

Some cheap blond costume wigs gave our skulls more of a "dead Swede" look. Add some evil black robes and spiked Hammer Of Thor V8olvo medallions and we were in business!

It looked great on the race track!

I'd be going on to a new theme for the race car, so the skulls were retired. What to do with them? I know- brake lights for my Civic! First step was to find an unused circuit in the fusebox to get some power. There's no sunroof on my car, so the sunroof fuse it shall be!

It would probably be more sanitary to tap into the brake light switch at the pedal, but that would mean running more wires to the back of the car. Instead, I'll just splice into the taillight wiring harness.

Since I've got junkyard relays all over the place, it's no problem to find one to actuate with the signal from the taillights. This will go in the spare tire well in the hatch.

A little carpentry work will be needed to mount the neck-pipes in a way that will be visible in the car's back window.

Because safety is so important, I'll use these long bolts through the spare tire (which is clamped to the floor) to hold the Skull Shelf in place.

A couple of wingnuts and it's fixed pretty firmly. As long as I don't wreck at a speed above, say, 15 MPH I shouldn't get bashed in the back of the head by 30 pounds of plastic skulls. Don't try this at home unless you find some way to mount the skulls more solidly.

I don't want the wigs coming off the skulls when I open the hatch, so a few hairstylist-approved sheet-metal screws will ensure that they stay in place.

Because following drivers at night won't be able to see anything of the skulls but four glowing eyes when I hit the brakes, I'll need to illuminate their faces. The rear side marker lights from a mid-80s BMW 7 series are just the right size, so it's off to the junkyard for some more shopping.

Some coat-hanger wire and an easy wiring job and the face lights are in place. I'll bend the wires so that the lights will be hidden below the edge of the window, out of view of drivers behind the Civic.

Here's the shelf installed in the car. I've cut holes in the hatch floor and carpeting for the mounting screws, and the wiring harness connects to the skulls via a 2-pin connector, making it easy to remove the whole unit when I get tired of the lack of cargo space.

The skulls look good installed, although the noise they make when I hit the brakes is a bit maddening. Sort of a "Ka-CLACK! Ka-CLACK! Ka-CLACK!" racket, which irritates nearby drivers nearly as much as it irritates me. The slightly different cycle rate for each skull's turn signal flasher means that they rarely sync up.

The whole rig looks quite snazzy. Amazingly, I rarely get pulled over by Johnny Law while driving this fine automobile.

My long-suffering neighbors have given up any hope of me ever driving a nice car. I like to get their hopes up by bringing home the occasional brand-new press car... which then leaves a few days later.

One skull has a ponytail, so you can tell them apart.

Here's what it looks like at night. Success! The puzzled looks I get from tailgaters are worth the effort... maybe.

Is it the beat-to-hell Civic covered with stickers and Citroën emblems? The fact that I own Project Car Hell Vehicle Numero Uno? Or the ex-parole-officer Crown Vic P71 with the big ol' cop-dazed-by-donuts telephone-pole dent in the door? Yes!

That number two contender is the Booby Prize Racing '96 Nissan 200SX, a car that the LeMons Supreme Court picked during the BS Inspection as the Under The Radar Candidate Most Likely To Contend. Looks like we guessed right this time!

In third we have the 1993 Honda Civic driven by Team "Corvette." No, we don't get the team name either.

Right behind the Honda is one of the top finishers from the last New England LeMons: the Scuderia Limoni Alfa Romeo Milano.

In fifth, we have another dominating New England veteran, the Scuderia Testa di Spillo Milano. Oh yes, two Milanos in the top five. Could this be the first-ever LeMons victory by an Italian car? Check in later to find out!

Any astute poll-watcher could have probably predicted this outcome by the resounding victory in the first round of Civic Kid Photoshop Contest voting, but now it's official, by sheer force of clever and talent, Old-timey Civic Kid wins. In the grand prize voting round, out of a total 930 votes registered at the time the polls closed at 12:00PM noon eastern standard time, it garnered a commanding 461 votes, a decisive 38% victory over nearest opponent, Back to the Future Civic Kid.

Congratulations Robert, and as promised you now have the right to the very last "I Am the Hoon Of The Day" t-shirt as well as your choice of Jezebel or Jalopnik beer pong balls. Shoot me an email at ben@jalopnik.com and let me know your commenter account name and if you don't have one, we'll award you a shiny new star along with getting your prize details all worked out.

Many thanks to all who submitted entries and good luck next time, and for those who might have missed it, click through in the gallery to view all 71 original entrants:

So here we are perched on the precipice of one of you commenters claiming victory. The polls will be open until Thursday at noon EST at which time we'll close down the voting and name the victor, awarding the grand prize of immortal glory and or a fancy commenter star if you don't have one, a set of your choice of either Jezebel or Jalopnik beer pong balls and the very last "I Am the Hoon Of The Day" t-shirts. So, with such rare prizes out there, all the voters need to anguish over their choice, really dig down deep into the artistic content of each image and compare it against other legendary works of imagination. That, or pick the one that makes you laugh. So get to it, and good luck to all the finalists.

Standard contest rules apply.

There will be two rounds of voting with all entrants in the first round competing directly against each other. Everybody gets a vote which they can apply to whatever Civic Kid they like. Then, when we close the polls Tuesday at noon, we'll pick out the top ten most popular and you can vote for your favorites out of the finalists. Keep in mind, we'll grant the overall winner immortal glory and or a fancy commenter star if you don't have one - also a set of your choice of either Jezebel or Jalopnik beer pong balls and the very last "I Am the Hoon Of The Day" t-shirts. Good luck, and may the Civic Kid be strong with you.

Click through for the entire gallery

Standard contest rules apply.

Like the original blockbuster of stupid, we've got no background on this image, just a kid in a track suit doing the old devil horns and looking like Frankie Munez with a shiner — only dorkier. He might have gotten it rolling his super-awesome Civic with J-spec seat covers, or just an onlooker. It matters not, this is an image ripe for foolishness. In fact, we've taken the bull by the horns and made the first.

So here's the deal, you guys do your worst best at creating the funny and we'll do two rounds of voting on the results — e-mail us your photoshop work to the aptly-named photoshop@jalopnik.com. You have until Wednesday at noon to submit your entries. We'll grant the overall winner immortal glory and or a fancy commenter star if you don't have one — also a set of your choice of either Jezebel or Jalopnik beer pong balls and the very last "I Am the Hoon Of The Day" t-shirts. Good luck, and make sure to keep it clean. (Hat tip to dolo54)

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

Is it possible that an Italian car might win the 24 Hours Of LeMons? Hell yes! An Alfetta nearly won the Goin' For Broken LeMons in Reno a couple months back, and the three Alfas currently running in second, third, and fifth places finished third, fifth, and sixth, respectively, in the 2008 New England LeMons.
How about a Volvo winning the race? It's never happened before, though we've seen quite a few Swedes in quasi-serious contention in the past. But the Swedes and Italians will need to get past the Kielbasa Kids' early-90s Civic sedan- you may recall that the Kielbasas finished second at the last New England race- and that looks to be quite a challenge. Here's the standings list at the end of Day One:

1. Kielbasa Kids, Honda Civic
2. Scuderia Limoni, Alfa Romeo Milano
3. Scuderia Testa di Spillo, Alfa Romeo Milano
4. Vermont Cow Tippers, Volvo 240 wagon
5. Team Pro-Crash-Duh-Nation, Alfa Romeo Milano
6. Team Submarine, Honda Civic
7. Keystone Kops, Volvo 240 sedan
8. The Crazy Swiss & Crazy Chic, Nissan 240SX
9. Rhinoceros Racing Team, Honda Civic
10. Police Brutality, Lincoln Continental Mark VIII

Meanwhile, the Index Of Effluency contenders appear to have been narrowed down to a mere two cars: UDMan's Team Trailing Throttle Oversteer '63 Chevy Corvair, which finished the day in 22nd place, versus the Adopted From Jets '71 Saab 99, 36th place.
Of the other contenders, the '74 Monaco tragically became a Ford Escort by race day, the Chard Beef Buick Regal (last year's New England IOE winner, pictured above) has suffered from a universe of mechanical woes (40th place), and the Safari Taxi Co. Peugeot 504 and Craptation Chevy Citation X-11 are out of it for the weekend (nuked engine for the Citation, massive systemic failure of all components- except, apparently, the ashtray- on the Peugeot). We've got BZR shooting photos for us, so check in later for a gallery of some sort.

That's a photo from last year's New England race, in which the Kielbasa Kids came in a strong second place; as long as that head gasket holds out- always a big question mark with Honda products in LeMons events- they ought to be the team to beat.

But there's plenty of racing left; they'll be at it until 10:00 PM tonight, and the Buffalo Knuckles '86 Supra is already breathing down that Civic's neck. In third place is the Scuderia Limoni Alfa Romeo Milano (which finished third in '08), and the fifth-in-'08 Scuderia Testa di Spillo Milano is right behind it in fourth. The fifth-place Volvo 240 wagon run by Team Vermont Cow Tippers is no doubt making the Italians quite nervous- we're all familiar with the storied white-hot drama of world-class 240-versus-Milano competition- and there's just no telling what might happen next!

We can tell you what will happen next with the Index Of Effluency contenders, however. The Adopted By Jets '71 Saab 99 blew up early and often, and now sits in 49th place (out of 55), while its team tries to duct-tape it back into running condition; that's better than the Safari Taxi Peugeot 504, which has managed to climb to 50th place between lengthy wrenching sessions. The Craptation Chevy Citation X-11, which Assistant Perp Nick Pon describes as "hands down, one of the most horrible cars in LeMons history," clanked off the track with the driver unable to see past the clouds of toxic smoke pouring from the dash- didn't GM have a Citation recall over that issue, back in the day?- but the team is totally contending for the IOE with an intimidating 44th place. The Trailing Throttle Oversteer '63 Corvair has paid some visits to the Penalty Box, thanks to its Ralph Nader-enraging handling quirks, but has remained in good mechanical shape: 32nd place!

This is the same cheapo bullet camera used to catch in-car LeMons action from the Cajun Jihad Mitsubishi and the Mustard Yellow V8olvo. I didn't bother to hook up the microphone (do you really want to listen to a D15 engine buzzing endlessly?); instead, I've dubbed in some soothing tunes from my old band, Murilee Arraiac.

The video below shows bits and pieces from the I-80 to I-50 to I-70 route from Alameda to Denver, passing through Sacramento, Reno, and Grand Junction, with an overnight stop in Ely, Nevada. The '92 Civic DX averaged 40.7 MPG for the trip, at 80-85 MPH with the air conditioning on- not bad real-world mileage, I think. I had an idea that I would drive 60 or so for long stretches, with the AC off, in an attempt to crack 50 MPG… but that proved impossible in practice.

According to Evo, Mugen will share some of the JDM components with the UKDM 3-door Type-R sometime next year. While already a quick little front-wheel-drive monster, the addition of a 237 horsepower 2.0-liter iVTEC inline-four should help push the spaztic little guy even further. Rather than add a ton of go-fast bits, Mugen will remove the rear seating, sound deadening and a few other features, while adding revised, lower and stiffer suspension, potential Brembo brakes, 18-inch forged wheels and lightweight Recaro buckets. All this in the name of going fast.

What's the reason for all this hoopla you ask? Well it seems that the RenaultSport Megane R26.R is a bit faster around the Bedford Autodrome West Circuit than the UKDM Civic Type-R's 1min29.3sec lap. Sounds like a new battle for hottest hatch will rage on come next year when the UKDM Mugen Civic Type-RR reveals its purposeful self. Now if we could just get them to release these cars in the States. [via EVO]