1975 HONDA CIVIC 1200
Used car addict Keith looks back at his best – and worst – classic buys. This week, a Honda Civic that caught the attention of the world’s most optimistic criminal…
WHY DID YOU WANT ONE?
I bought this car very early on in my driving career but it provided some indelible memories. I was at the tail end of my A-level studies and needed a car after I parted with an Austin Maxi to raise some much-needed funds. I spotted the Civic round the back of Blackpool’s longdeparted KG Cars – the type of bombsite that I loved to frequent back in those days. It was bright red, had some lovely chrome wheel embellishers on it and a natty black vinyl roof. The paint had seen better days and the odometer was on the wrong side of 100,000 miles, but it looked honest enough and I reckoned that it would be a hoot to drive. There was no price in the windscreen but I imagined that it would be available for my sort of budget. I made a cheeky offer of £150 without even driving it and guess what? The salesman ripped my arm off…
WAS IT A JOY – OR A NIGHTMARE – TO LIVE WITH?
I thought I’d done very well with this car. It had a few months’ MoT left on it, the black vinyl interior was almost unblemished and its eager little engine fired up instantly and pulled like a little terrier, feeling eager and responsive in a way that no other car I’d owned up to that point had been capable of. Arriving home, I was pleased with myself for picking up such a nice little supermini for not much dosh. I soon realised that I hadn’t imagined those faint whiffs of oil when I checked the dipstick and found it hovering on the minimum, despite looking in reasonable health at the dealer’s pitch. Oh well, a quick service would soon put that right… wouldn’t it?
WHAT’S YOUR ABIDING MEMORY OF IT?
It was a fab little car, but I soon found myself in the habit of topping it up with oil on a near-daily basis. I knew deep down that something was badly amiss but figured that it would keep on going if I kept feeding it oil. Wrong. Another struggle it had was a sticking starter motor, which caught me without tools the first time it clicked lifelessly when I tried to fire it up. However, it was a cinch to start – so much so that I could get it going myself by giving it a push, jumping in and bumping it into life. That was before I took to leaving a rubber mallet and a wooden block in the boot to ‘encourage’ the starter into life. As much as I was enjoying the Civic, though, the affair came to a grinding end one autumn day in Blackburn. I was on my way to an assignment in Yorkshire when the oil light came on and the top end started making a horrendous noise. Game over. As luck would have it I manged to coast it to a local bombsite dealer who took it on for free in exchange for a lift to the bus station. And that was that. Or so I thought, until the police rang me three months later wanting to know where I’d been the previous night. It turned out that ‘my’ Civic had been involved in a ram-raiding incident. I had an alibi, but to this day I can’t help wondering what sort of criminal would think that a 50bhp Civic with a duff starter motor would make a good ram-raider…
WHAT ARE YOUR TOP TIPS FOR BUYING ONE?
Like so many cars of the 1970s, most Civic MkIs have long since gone to meet their maker following catastrophic corrosion. If you’re lucky enough to find one for sale, you need to check the sills, suspension mountings, front valance, wings and wheel arches. The jewel-like engine doesn’t give much trouble but has a real appetite for cambelts, so check that it’s been done at least every 45,000 miles. The interior suffers from cosmetic wear and tear, so make sure that it’s all in one piece. Overall, though, these are joyous cars to own – find one that’s been untroubled by rust or interior wear and you won’t be disappointed.