Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Honda is named for the Sun. This one’s supposed to be pretty hot too, owing to its B18b swap, but you have to determine if that makes its price a bright idea.
Honda’s first generation CRX was a pretty big hit. Basic, efficient, and well engineered it was one of those rare cars that was entertaining to drive slow. The follow up was a far more advanced design, bigger, more ambitious, and not quite as endearing. The marque’s entire blueprint was wadded up and tossed in the wastebasket with the introduction of the replacement del Sol, as was its legacy of cheap and easy performance.
The del Sol takes its name from the Latin word for Sun a nod to the fact that its entire roof is removable allowing our nearest star to ride along with you wherever you go - during the day at least. The thing of it is, once you remove such an integral part of an automobile’s body structure, you need to beef up the remaining portions to make up for the loss, lest the car fold faster than Superman on laundry day.
That means that the del Sol - on average - tipped the scales at around 250-lbs more than a comparable second-gen CRX, and that affects the giddy-up, the whoa, and the going around the corners. Today’s 1993 del Sol seeks to compensate for that weight disadvantage with a B18b swap and complimentary B16 5-speed gearbox.
Stock, the hottest del Sol motor that we Americans could buy was the 160-horse B16A, and that wasn’t until the 1996 model year. This ’93 would have topped out at 102-bhp for the S and 125 if it had been the hot Si. It now rocks a B18b out of an Integra LS, and that 1,834-cc DOHC four was factory rated at a splitting the difference 142-bhp.
You should note that the B18b is not a VTEC mill, so you can stop waiting for it to kick in, yo. That will give you the opportunity to give this Captiva blue a once over. The first thing that you might notice is that it’s been dropped like the bass on Skunk 2 coilovers, and that it rolls on black steelies with purple anodized extended lugs. It also has yellow fogs cut into the front valance and a number of minor war wounds here and there.
One thing is for certain, the del SOl better have a damn-nice personality as they never were particularly good looking cars, and in fact their rear three-quarter view demonstrates its suitability for twerking it in a Sir Mix-A-Lot video.
Popping inside, the car is equally tidy, featuring the stock seats with their handy penis positioner fabric design. Not stock are the shift lever and steering wheel, but neither looks out of place or excessively embarrassing so that’s no big deal. Based on the odo in the IP pic, the car has 218,297 miles under its low-slung belt, but there’s no mention of how many of those were made with the current mill, or what went on in its life prior to doing del Sol duty.
Also possibly giving you a sad are the effed-up glovebox door handle and A/C that seems to have gone out on disability. Aside from that the ad claims that the Texas title is clear, and the underhood appearance is in line with the rest of the car, looking okay and without any evidence of the engine swap having been done by monkeys or something.
The seller originally was asking $3,800 for his del Sol, but has reduced that to three grand, possibly seeking to expedite the sale. What do you think about that price to see this SOl rise in your drive? Is that a deal, or do you see this del Sol as one black hole?
You decide!
Houston Imports, or go here if the ad disappears.
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