Honda CRX - Everything You Need to Know | Up to Speed

it's the little flat butted car that was way ahead of its time it was often found doing donuts with food trays under the back tires and delivered more pizza than any other car ever you little babies have been begging for it so here you go this is everything you need to know to get up to speed on the Honda CRX [Music] thanks to Dollar Shave Club for sponsoring this episode of up to speed everybody's got a daily grooming routine even Nolan no matter what yours is whether it's shaving showering brushing your teeth Dollar Shave Club can help you be your best self it's not just stuff for shaving I would have no need for this they also send you shower stuff hair products oral care products and butt wipes I use those on my face cuz I'm a butt face right now they have this sick offer where you can get their shave shower and oral mm-hmm starter set each for only 5 bucks they sent me all three join the club with one of their starters that's for just 5 bucks after that the restock box chips regular sized products at a regular price get this exclusive deal at Dollar Shave Club slash doughnut just the message from big bro this is a good deal you should do it contrary to what you might think Honda wasn't always the number two car manufacturer in Japan once upon a time it was number three Toyota and Nissen were kicking its little butt in the late 70s but Honda was scrappy and determined to sell more cars so they launched what were called brno dealerships in 1978 to sell slightly different Honda's to younger buyers kind of like how Toyota had the Scion brand or Nickelodeon had Nick jr. their first models were the prelude and Integra predecessor called the Quint and a restyled Civic sedan called the ballade a ballad Bilotti in 1983 Honda had started building f1 engines again after more than a decade of not doing any racy stuff a lot of people in the company were super into auto racing and wanted to make a sports car but there wasn't much of a business case for one the oil crisis was still on everyone's mind and fuel economy was really important so the new model for that year ended up being just a moderately kind of sportiest small hatchback with a tiny engine it launched as the honda ballade sports CRX at japan's verno dealers and was built to be a commuter car for dense Japanese and European seats but lucky for us the good folks at Honda R&D and America saw its sporty potential is it ready yeah that's ringing I'm gonna give it to more than one ever hey what's up Honda Japan yeah hey it's a Honda America we know you weren't gonna give us that CRX but yeah we were thinking can we have it anyway what why you didn't want our adorable four-passenger Honda City with the Moto Capo scooter in the back yeah I know man we really messed that one up because of that we definitely definitely want the CRX all right man it's on the boat okay I love you bye what was that soon after the Honda Civic CRX went on sale in the u.s it was almost like the engineers at Honda slipped a friendly little mr. Hyde in dr. jeckyl clothing through the system for all of us us car doors CRX supposedly stood for Civic Renaissance experiment it was a civic with the wheelbase shortened to just eighty six point six inches that's just over a foot longer than a smart for two's wheelbase and the same as the tiny 1972 Civic you know who your boy like small hatchbacks call me Shawn picture my car it's so cute it was also ridiculously light weighing a feathery 1,800 to 1,900 pounds depending on the trim that made it a little quicker and more fun to drive than a city already so fun it was offered in two versions the 1.3 liter 4-cylinder making 58 mini tiny baby horses and a 1.5 liter 4-cylinder making 76 slightly bigger teenage buck courses they came with a standard 5-speed manual and generally took 10 to 12 seconds to make their way from zero to 60 miles per hour in the u.s. the CRX was a two-seater but in Japan CRX came a tiny folding rear seats which is crazy have you ever seen a CRX there's no room back there the whole economy was impressive even by today's hybrid Stander's drivers easily got 40 to 50 miles per gallon and some claim to get as much as 70 what a surprisingly great handling also made up for the lack of speed the responsive steering was kind of a surprise because the CRX had a Torsen beam up front and a beam axle out back that wasn't the most advanced suspension technology okay but lightness and short wheelbase do go a long way and the CRX is racing potential was obvious it lured california-based Honda tuning specialists Jackson racing into full time competition which led them to a bunch of championships across all kinds of syriza's you've heard of them because they didn't scar the special projects department at American Honda Motors wanted in on that too so they teamed up with Megan ah to build a CRX for the SCCA GT for class at the time Mugen was totally unknown in the States but they'd been building formula 2 engines for a while Honda corporate did all the suspension tuning on Mugen built out a 1.5 liter engine making 165 horsepower they're CRX 1 it's very first race and then the 1985 and 86 GT for national championships they made the modest little car so good that it won overall at Carlsbad Raceway even beating the cars and higher GT classes not a bad way to introduce Mugen to the American aftermarket host note it is moogan moogan not Mugen not Nugent not mudgin Megan back to the show performance wise the stock CRX was already almost as good as a popular Golf GTI and it wasn't even trying it even cost about 1700 bones less than the VW car journalists raved about the little Honda's and people were buying them up like hotcakes so what if Honda made a sporty version it seemed like the obvious thing to do so in 1985 they launched the CRX with the two letters all of you USD Honda fanboy finally a little bit mo Paul barber JDM in Euro cars got the dual overhead cam 1.6 litre zc engine making a hundred and thirty Hirst purse it's a great little engine and American cars did it we got a fuel-injected version of the old 1.5 liter this time making 2 ne1 horses yes I also got a clever rear sway bar integrated to the beam axle and later it came with some hella 80s style 14-inch phone dial wheels I think I speak for everyone when I say what is a thawed dial back in the day phones used to be attached to the walls and before there were even buttons there was a wheel on it with places for your fingers in it Wow thank you Steve job for everything so the situation wasn't quite as good as it could have been but at least it was better than it was before the peeps over at Honda were just about to launch the higher-end Civic baek's acura integra in the US and they had to save that better engine for that I know none of this stuff sounds all that great on paper but the CRX is smooth gearbox quality interior and fun to drive attitude and a practical and affordable package still made it a popular little Cruiser it's one of those cars you just have to drive to understand what all the fuss is about they really are a treat and they look like little transformers [Music] the first-gen CRX was in production for only four years before Honda gave us the much-improved second-gen at the end of 1987 the body lines were smoother and more modern just like me after I coul sculpted it was shorter than a new mini and I'm not talking about those blasphemous four-door ones a vertical tinted glass panel was added to the cam back so you could actually see when you were backing up which is helpful if you don't want to hit stuff beam axles were tossed out and now every corner wore an independent double wishbone suspension setup allowing the hood line to drop and improve forward visibility and a little commuter was starting to look sporty [Music] Honda dropped the Civic name from the car entirely because CRX was now cool enough to strike out on its own hey you've been a Civic CRX for long enough but in a tale as old as time Japan got all the really sick stuff that we didn't our CRX got a metal roof like normal Japan got a full glass roof we got a new si with a 1.6 liter 4-cylinder making 105 horse power Japan got a new SI R with a twin cam 1.6 liter 4 cylinder and VTEC making a hundred and sixty Hertz purse at 7600 RPM few manufacturers realize how much this hurts us maybe they do now since Hana finally gave us a civic with an R on it but we had to wait 30 years as you guys the VTEC b16a motor was the first naturally aspirated engine to claim the hundred horsepower per liter crown and the CRX si R was the second car to get it after the JDM Integra we didn't get it in the States until later by then it wasn't even in a CRX [Music] that's not to say the stock engines the u.s. got weren't good the s i--'s mill was smooth and rev-happy with good mid-range torque combined with the new fully independent suspension and Honda had the perfect recipe for sport compact car spiciness food spicy boys second gen CRX has became even bigger key players in all kinds of motorsport from amateur and professional road racing to import drag racing future American Road race superstar Randy Pope's took a TC Klein racing CRX to his first pro championship in 1990 and the race to set quarter-mile records with front-wheel drive cars was also picking up speed in the early to mid 90s the first Honda to have to run a parachute and do a 10-second pass was a CRX built by Northern California shop owner Dave sheep in Southern California brothers Bergen Holtz Racing used a CX to be the first unibody front-wheel drive car to do nines and later became the first import to break the seven second barrier that's insane that sounds terrifying I want to do [Music] for some reason how to drop the CRX from their lineup in 92 before the sport compact scene really blew up what does half yeah Honda replaced the CRX with the target --top' del Sol in 1993 two years before post Malone was born mm-hmm and we finally got the B 16 in that car in 1994 it was a fun quick little Honda but it was every er flex here and less sporty than the CRX tuners and racers just weren't into it and the Miata had moved in and started stealing Honda's lunch money instead JDM hot boys bought up UCR X's and threw on lowering springs flap till baseball caps and grapefruit sized exhaust tips high school kids and high school teachers both wanted them long after it was gone the CRX appeared in tons of video games from Sega GT and Need for Speed to Gran Turismo and grand theft auto the CRX is like a movie but did you know decent at the box office but gained a huge cult following once it went to video [Music] yeah from the bottom of my heart thank you guys so much for tuning in every week this is the most fun to make these videos and I'm so glad that you like them check out this episode of my other show bumper to bumper it comes out every Tuesday check out this episode of my son Nolan show which comes out every Monday follow me on Instagram at James Pumphrey 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Channel: Donut Media

Views: 1,578,129

Rating: 4.9422469 out of 5

Keywords: Honda, crx, honda crx, honda crx review, honda type r, civic type r, vtec, honda crx history, honda history, history of honda crx, donut crx, honda del sol, CRX Type R, honda hatchback, civic, honda civic, Donut Media, donut, Cars, Automotive, Car Review, Car Science, Car Tech, Best Cars, James Pumphrey, Up to Speed, review, everything you need to know, automotive history, donut media up to speed, jdm, tuner, turbo, cr-x, type r, up to speed crx, up to speed donut media, b16

Id: vmR8mg3zPRg

Length: 13min 3sec (783 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ExplosiveMachine]

nice video. The US market really did get shafted with the engine options in the 2nd generation, but they did get the super-low-weight HF version, and EU/japan didn't.

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He mentions the glass roof on the Japanese cars but you could get the "Limited edition" model with a tan interior, of course glass roof, power windows (not that uncommon), power steering (not uncommon either), power folding mirrors, and AUTOMATIC CLIMATE CONTROL, in 1988 in what is basically the fancy civic.

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One more thing I'll add, the European market (as well as Japanese IIRC) got a few trim levels, the SiR was the top (or called the iVT in Europe) of course but one step down was the 16i-16, which had a DOHC D series engine (known as the DOHC ZC in the US, came in the Integra I think). That engine (also known as the 131 since it makes 131 hp) is incredibly popular in my part of europe (Balkans). Eastern Europe even got the cars without a catalytic converter or any kind of EGR - the cars ran on leaded gasoline. My CRX doesn't have an "unleaded only" sticker in the fuel door or a cat and is exempt from emission checks during yearly inspections - a big bonus if you're going to mod it, since the B16/18/20 doesn't look all that different. It also got a cool trunk lid spoiler that didn't stick out in your rear vision like the SiR one did.

[u/HiveFleet-Cerberus]

Still the greatest hatchback that's ever been in my opinion.