Junkyard Find: 1993 Honda Del Sol

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Junkyard Find: 1993 Honda Del Sol

10 - 1993 Honda Del Sol Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin As the owner of a much-loved 1992 Honda Civic (unfortunately, I'm not the only one who loves fifth-gen Civic hatchbacks), I know how hard it is to find parts for my V8-hauling hooptie at my local self-serve wrecking yard. The 1992-95 Civic has become to the 2010s what the '57 Chevy was in the 1970s: the affordable car with great performance potential that all the 24-year-olds want. That means that these cars get picked clean within minutes of showing up at a low-price/high-inventory-turnover wrecking yard. The two-seat Del Sol version of the Civic is even harder to find in such yards; in fact, this is perhaps the third Del Sol I've seen in my last five years of junkyard crawling.
08 - 1993 Honda Del Sol Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin This one has about as much flesh left on its bones as the remains of a roadkill squirrel after a month on a highway median.
03 - 1993 Honda Del Sol Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin To carry the '57 Chevy analogy further, the 102-horsepower D15B7 engine is about as desirable to Honda guys now as was the 235 six to shoebox Chevy freaks in, say, 1976. A good, reliable engine, but pretty much worthless. My own Civic is getting a B18C1, just as soon as I knock out Items 1 through 48 on my Hell Project To-Do List.
02 - 1993 Honda Del Sol Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin If this car ever had a custom leather interior, it's long gone now.
04 - 1993 Honda Del Sol Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin During my Generation X slacker period in the early 1990s, with recession raging, I took a temp job driving brand-new '92 Del Sols from a dirt field at the Port of Richmond to a trainyard a couple miles away (the return trips took place in an Econoline with no doors). I had this job for about a week, and I drove about four plastic-wrapped new Del Sols per hour with no lunch breaks, which means my lifetime driving experience includes approximately 160 Honda Del Sols. In other words, I have driven more Del Sols than any other type of car.
06 - 1993 Honda Del Sol Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin Soichiro Honda died at just about the same time I was driving Del Sols, and I often wonder if he knew what a betrayal the replacement of the beloved CRX felt like to the generation of young drivers who worshiped the zippy little Civic two-seater. As Chrysler learned with the Neon, cuteness in a car equaled showroom death in post-Gulf War America, and the Del Sol was sickeningly cute. Fortunately for Honda, the Super Cub helped keep the company afloat.

No mention of the incredible driving-fun-per-buck ratio of the CRX in the ads for its successor.

Though, as always, the Japanese-market ads were more fun.

Still, the Del Sol was no CRX, and sales weren't so great.
07 - 1993 Honda Del Sol Down On the Junkyard - Picture courtesy of Murilee Martin