The Civic is now finally legal!

I went to pass the federal inspection at Canadian Tire yesterday. The car passed. The inspection was a breeze. I had bought the airbag maintenance stickers and even changed the sun visor to a bilingual one, but the guy did not even check. I parked in front of the service area of the Canadian Tire and the guy came outside with no jacket (in winter) and looked at the stickers in the door jamb. He asked me to turn the ignition to check the daytime running lamps and that was it. The whole thing took less than 4 minutes! Anyway, that's finally done and I can stop worrying about the improper importation of my car.

Speaking of the car, what a pleasure it is. Have I assembled the perfect budget road and track car? The car has cost less than 2000$ so far. I am betting it will perform quite nicely on track as is if I throw on some good tires. I guess I'll have to wait until spring to find out...

I watched the latest episode of Top Gear (season 10, episode 9) and was happy to see the presenters participate in a 24 hour race (the Britcar 24 hours). They put in a stong effort and I applaud it. They ran a bio-diesel BMW 3-series.

Top Gear enduro car

I really, really, really, really want to run in a 24-hour event. I don't really want to drive someone else's car as I'm afraid I would have to pay somebody big bucks in the event of a crash.

Ideally, I'd be the person organizing the effort. Of course, I would choose some kind of Honda product, possibly a 88-91 ITB class Civic DX? There are only two 24-hour (or longer) races in North America: the 25 hours of Thunderhill (in California) and the 24 hours of Nelson Ledges (the Longest Day) in Ohio. The Ohio race is much closer to Montreal. My dream would be to tow the race car down there and drive down in an identical street car so we could use it for spares.

I guess another realistic option would be to slot a 160 hp B16 into my Civic and run it in ITS. It would be fun and reliable. My current 1.8 liter could probably not take a beating for 24 hours and the car would be horribly classified in its current form.

Until I have more time and money, however, this project will have to stay on the back burner.

Cool cars spotted:
Porsche Cayenne Turbo
VW Corrado G60
AMG SLK 55