Taking my 1996 Civic 1.4iS on a farewell road trip. #blogpost

They say a car is more than the sum of its parts. In that case my mission here today is an easy one since the sum of the parts of my Civic was €1250. The following is a farewell letter to a trusty friend along with my impressions of the amazing places we visited on that one last ride.

Introduction

It wasn’t love at first sight. My first-ish car was an Acura RSX which I drove for about a month after getting my license, then I had to leave the country to further my studies abroad. And after the RSX had to go. When I came back I started looking for a car. As you can tell by now I’m quite the Honda enthusiast so I wanted one of rarest Honda’s that could be found on the Bulgarian streets - H22 powered Prelude with manual transmission and 4 wheel steering. At the time however it was impossible to find. I really needed a car. So I got the Civic and I absolutely hated it. I hated that it was so slow, I hated that they are literally everywhere around you, I even mockingly called it the Honda Golf. I drove it for a bit and the first thing that took my attention is how light it felt. The specs say it weighs 990kg dry and I am inclined to believe that. Compared to the other cars I’ve driven it felt like a feather, surpassed in lightness only by my aunts Renault Clio. Then I started taking pride in my Civic’s looks, especially considering its pristine condition compared to the countless riced and rusted out others roaming streets. I remember one day I was thinking that I might have the rarest not-at-all-rare car around here - a Honda which survived unmodified the first 3 Fast and Furious movies and two Need for speed: Underground games. As more time passed I grew fonder and fonder of my car. But now it is time for her to retire for reasons I will explain further down the lines. To celebrate the retirement me and my girlfriend took her on a one last road trip.

Planning

Since we had a single day we had to chose destinations that were “close” together and would allow us enough time to enjoy the locations. The journey would take us through the Balkan Mountains into the rolling hills and meadows of the Danubian plain to the final destination - the meanders of the Rousenski Lom river.

The trip

We started our journey from the city center of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. The heart of the city is easily recognizable by its distinct yellow brick roads and the monumental communist architecture

It’s 7 o’clock in the morning so the usually horrifying traffic is almost non-existent. The sky is steel gray and it’s rather chilly for this time of the year. We leave Sofia through one of the major city exists a 3 lane boulevard which directly connects to the Hemus motorway. Immediately I am reminded that my chariot the 1.4 litre Civic is painfully slow to pick up speed. Shift into 5th gear at anything bellow 80km/h and it feels like you are turning on the cruise control. It simply does not want to pick up any speed unless you rev the engine high. Shift at 2000RPM and you might as well open the door and run faster. The engine when new made 90hp which isn’t really bad for a 1.4. However it makes those 90hp at something like 200 RPM before the redline. So unless you step on it you aren’t going anywhere. There is no possibility of VTEC kicking in yo simply because the engine doesn’t have one. Yes this car is from the time Honda made engines without VTEC. Last month my Civic turns 20 years old and I have the sneaking suspicion that less than 50hp reach the tires.

The gray skies finally bring down some light rain. It was is early so traffic is light. I pick up some speed. For some reason there is a rather unpleasant vibration coming through the steering wheel at speeds between 120km/h and 130km/h probably an unbalanced tire. I usually keep the speed above that, however this time I decided to drive at 120km/h. Before you lose your mind over me admitting to speeding on the internet know that the official speed limit on the motorways here is 140km/h unless otherwise specified by a sign. Not that I’d want to drive above 140km/h on this particular motorway. Long story short - it is horrendous. Sudden drops and depressions, bumps and cracked road surface are just part of what’s wrong with it. To top it all off there are a few off camber corners as well. The Civic however negotiates these conditions admirably probably due to the independent suspension on all four wheels. My Civic has a slightly higher ride height than stock because I put non-OEM springs which are ever so slightly taller than the stock ones. Many roads in my country are rather bumpy with plenty of opportunities to bottom out. So for everyday normal driving a little more suspension travel isn’t really a bad thing. Naturally with so many bumps and rain there are puddles, so aquaplaning is a real threat. Yeah 110-120km/h considering the conditions is reasonable.

The motorway more than makes up for its road surface with how scenic it is. You cut through the mountain peaks going through kilometer long tunnels immediately followed by high viaducts. The highest of those is the Bebresh Viaduct over the Vitinya pass which is 720 meters long and 120 meters high

Only 167km of the planned 433km of the Hemus motorway are build. 78km of those are on our side the rest are from the other. We continue onto road E85 to our first destination - the city of Pleven. The first part of E85 was twisty but really good compared to the motorway, there were some fast turns as well several slow but very well marked ones followed by straights and more fast turns. Again I am reminded why I fell in love with the car. She doesn’t have any anti-roll bars. The body roll is atrocious. You could literally feel the frame of the car twisting as it gets loaded during cornering. And yet despite all of that she manages to find some grip God knows how. When you get the suspension loaded in a coroner the car feels confident. Maybe it’s the independent double wishbone suspension, maybe it’s the weight or even the tires I have (Falkens) or a combination of all those factors. Even when you push her too far, she talks to you, let’s you know she’s about to give up and gives you plenty of room to correct.She doesn’t understeer into a tree before warning for a good while that she’s going to do so. To be fair you have really throw her around to get her to understeer and even then it isn’t horrible. I imagine with stiffer and shorter springs the handling will substantially better. When you lift off the back rotates. And then there’s the exit of the corner and once again you find yourself wanting power the car simply doesn’t have…Feeling the car in a corner really gives you an idea why the Type R version of this generation is revered as such. This car with properly stiff chassis, better springs and dampers, anti-roll bars tuned steering and twice the power would really be something to behold.

The road straightens. We enter the Danubian Plain and immediately it’s so much different than the landscape I am used to. I grew up in two places Plovdiv and Peshtera both in southern Bulgaria. Plovdiv in the Thracian Lowlands which is as flat as it gets. Straight roads for tens of kilometers. The other place Peshtera is in the Rhodope mountains, with your typical mountain roads, passes and river valleys. Out here however it’s just endless rolling hills and meadows. The roads are straights followed by a sharp turns to go around a hill, climbs and descends then all over again. We reach Pleven and after some rather questionable route options given to us by Google Maps we finally find our destination.

Pleven was the site of a decisive battle in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878. On the exact spot of the battle the Pleven Panorama was build in honor of the fallen Bulgarian, Russian and Romanian soldiers who died for the liberation of the city. Inside of the building as the name implies there is a 360 degree painting 150 meters long and 15 meters high giving a panoramic view of the battle. There’s even a diorama part which creates a sort of 3D feel to it.

Standing at the site of a historical battle made me think of my car. And a battle she fought a while back. Some months ago I was driving back home from a weekend away. Suddenly violent vibrations shook the whole car and I felt she lost power. I was in the middle of the nowhere and I really had to get home. My phone battery was dead so I couldn’t call for a tow. With no other option I got in the car and despite nearly vibrating herself apart she managed to get me home. The next day I drove to the nearest car service. An exhaust valve was completely burnt out subsequently cylinder 3 didn’t have any compression and wasn’t firing. The 1.4 motor has a tiny flywheel and no balancing shaft so the vibrations were horrendous. But she didn’t leave me stranded. She took me home, then she took herself to the repair shop. That’s the only major issue I’ve had with her till now.

We set off but not before pulling my Top Gear tips book. I executed a brilliant handbrake turn on the empty parking lot. My girlfriend was not impressed. Thanks, very much Clarkson… At least it was wet and I didn’t pointlessly wear my rear tires…right….right?

147km separated us with our next destinations. Luckily they the roads were perfect, traffic was moderate but the lack of power and torque coupled with the elevation changes meant that I had to downshift quite often. To be fair that’s the first thing a Honda owner learns about his/hers car. Every time I even think about touching the brake I have to downshift, firstly because I would have absolutely no torque afterwards and secondly the front disks are obscenely small so you have to use every bit of engine braking to help them out.

Talking about brakes…It’s 1996. I am 6 years old, just before 1st grade. Bulgaria has been democratic for 7 years. On the other side of the world Honda makes a cheap car with one of the best independent suspension set ups. They put in electric windows, electric mirrors, electric sunroof, air conditioning, electrically adjustable headlights and airbags. You know what Honda doesn’t put in the car? ABS. Yep my Civic doesn’t have ABS, so you do have to have this in the back of your mind constantly. You cannot stop the way other cars on the road can. You have to think ahead, give yourself and the car time to react. The plus side is that the feel coming through the boosted brake pedal is phenomenal. Every change of pressure, every sign of fade (and there’s tons of it) and most prominently, every time the pad passes over the bulge of the hideously bend disk…

We get closer and closer to Rouse, a port town on the Danube. And suddenly the hilly terrain changes, cutting among the hills are the meanders of Rousenski Lom river. Most of our stops are located along that river.

In the course of hundreds of thousands of years the river has eroded the soft limestone and sandstone hills cutting the closest thing we have to a canyon.

The Bulgarians settled these lands (the Danubian plain) for the first time in 7th century and made an alliance with the local Slavic and Thracian populations against the Byzantine empire. After several battles the Byzantine empire recognized The First Bulgarian Empire in 681A.D. and it has been here since. Not long after people realized that the soft limestone could be easily carved, quarried, sculptured and inhabited.

We finally arrive.

Saint Dimitar of Besarbovo Monastery is the only still functioning cave monastery in Bulgaria. And boy is it a sight to behold. The whole area is mesmerizing. It’s amazingly quiet and peaceful. You can only hear the songs of the birds. No cars, no people, no nothing. As if time has stopped when the monastery was first constructed.

We head south. Some 20 kilometers up stream is our next stop. The euphoria of the places I’ve seen and yet to see is overwhelming me so naturally I do the only thing one can do. Crank up some medieval Slavic sounding music, namely The Witcher soundtrack (go check it out now!). The Civic however has only two speakers in the front door which are the stock 20 year old ones. There’s place for two more in back but I never bothered to put some in. I like the agricultural tractor-like sound of the D14A4 engine anyway

Next up the Rock-hewn Churches of Ivanovo. Located 32 meters above the ground there is a complex of almost 40 churches hewn out of solid rock. The churches date back to the 13th century. Only one is opened to ordinary visitors. If you want to see the rest you have to bring your climbing gear.

Inside of the church there are remarkably well preserved medieval frescoes. Including one of the earlier depictions of The Last Supper (160 years before Leonardo da Vinci’s genius rendition). The church complex was rediscovered in the 1930s and added to the Unesco World Heritage sites in the 1970s

The view out of the stone terrace is amazing. The Civic down bellow looked, small…insignificant. Was she? I asked myself. She’s not a great car. She’s not even a good car. She’s as average as they get. But the thing is she is so good at being average that you cannot help but admire her. Yes admire her. Admire her lack of effort. She doesn’t try to be anything more than what she is. She doesn’t try to be fast even though the nameplate has a capital “S” which, I don’t know, was used to invoke something like “Special” or “Sport” to me it means “Slow” and it makes sense: 1.4iS => “1.4 is Slow”. But I digress. So she doesn’t try to be fast but she gets the job done and there are slower cars out there. Normal non-car geek driver wouldn’t feel the lack of power. She doesn’t try to handle like a race car but somehow she manages to go around corners very decently. She doesn’t even try to be completely practical since the rear strut towers take up a lot of space in the trunk. And in that nihilism the Civic excels and becomes a great middle ground. The magic land where average is good. Being average across the board makes for a good all rounder. The problem is that some of the people who bought them were also average. The kind of average who go revving a one point something Civic against an E39 540i. “I COULD’AVE’GOTTN ‘IM IN THE CORNERS!” No, you couldn’t have in stock form, not in a million years, not even in an averagely modified state. Lay off the 1320 videos and come back to Earth. The car was simply not made for that. But even then the Civic doesn’t try to care, and it will serve you all the same.

We continue our journey and with my “go-everywhere-discover-everything attitude” it seems like we enter the land of stupid, sole inhabitant - me. I go off the main road onto some dirt track in hopes of finding a beautiful spot by the river to take a few photos. Instead I drive straight into in a massive mud puddle. The Civic is stuck good. The muddy water is at the door level, with one of the side skirts submerged. I try to go forward - nothing, back - same result. The car is truly stuck. I just sit behind the wheel for a moment thinking that my farewell trip for the Civic would end up on the back of a tow truck. Probably in a few days time too, since we are in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

I gather my thoughts for a while. I know about dirt tracks I’ve driven a lot of cars that should not be driven there and always managed to get through to the other side. I’ve taken Audi 80 through a rocky road, my father’s Accord through abandoned quarries, old Lada’s through rivers. Perhaps that overconfidence got me stuck in the first place. I try to remember what the said father thought me I should do in situations like this. “Don’t floor it, you’d dig in even deeper” “Be light” “Try to get the car moving using rocking motions” “Try quickly switching between first and reverse but watch the clutch, if it goes you aren’t going anywhere” So naturally I send my girlfriend to look for eventual help and get my spare tire and tools out of the trunk, which amounts to something like 50kg. It’s something…I start to shake the car back and forth. No effect. Ok plan “B” extreme rocking. I shift into first gear and give a little gas then I slam shift into reverse. After two of those slam shifts the car moves back a bit. I do it one more time and she climbs out of the holes the tires dug. Feathering the throttle I slowly exit the puddle backwards and when I feel solid gravel underneath me I get out to get my spare tire and tools. I reverse the car and go to find my girlfriend who put at least 2km between while I was getting out of the mud. She sees me and makes a surprised look. Surprised at both how I managed to get out, and why in the hell I am making this stupid.
“Why the hell are you grinning like that?”
“Because she didn’t let me down”

I open the hood and when I make sure everything underneath is ok and safe, we go towards our next destination. I shift gears a bit more cautiously than usual, fearing that the gearbox or the clutch might have taken a beating, and after I make sure it was all fine I proceeded as normal. In fact if the stick shift wasn’t so easy to use I probably wouldn’t have been able to do the quick shifts require to get out of the mud.

Compared other cars I’ve driven some renowned to have great shifters initially the Civic’s felt a bit lifeless, not enough feel coming through. But my God is it easy to use. Unless you are a total moron there is absolutely no way, you can miss a gear. It’s just so fluid with just a tiny bit of click to let you know it is in gear. None of the “reloading a Mauser 98 rifle” mechanical joy feel of some BMW stick shifts or the calculated throws of the RSX, but forgiving enough to have someone with 0 experience driving manual behind the wheel and get them shifting within 2 minutes. Yes it’s that forgiving: “Oh the clutch pedal slipped on you? it’s ok. I’ll jerk a couple of times and I’ll get moving all the same”, “What you don’t want to use the clutch for the upshift? Ok, treat yourself slam shift me”, “You want to try rev matching? Ok here’s how it’s done”. The Civic has that kind of attitude towards you.

16 kilometers up stream is the location of Orlova chuka cave (lit. translated - Eagle’s rock), which is the second longest cave in Bulgaria - 13.5km in length. It is also home to 14 species of baths, and near the entrance a pair of vultures made their nest. The cave itself was formed by underground rivers about 4 million years ago and the limestone inside really took some unusual shapes. The tour guide is amazing, like some sort of Balkan Indiana Jones he is funny and informative.

20 kilometers away lays our final destination in the area. The ruins of the medieval town of Cherven (Red). The picturesque landscape once again appears above the mud covered hood of the car.

Cherven was an important and rather big town for these lands in the 13th century. It had a whole load of churches, three quarters and a bolyar’s castle in the middle. It was originally build by the Byzantines in the 3-4th centuries later, conquered and expanded by the Bulgarians

Soon after the city was conquered by the Ottoman turks in the very end of the 14th century most of the people left the plateau and settled in the valley bellow. Slowly but surely demolishing the old town by taking its building stones to construct their new houses. To this day you can see the chiseled stones in the foundations of the houses of today’s Cherven village along with trebuchet round projectiles used as garden decorations. Only the western watchtower remained intact through the centuries. And it still stands to this day proudly adorned the flag of the Second Bulgarian Empire.

I sit on top of the ruins and enjoy the rays of the setting sun. Usually the fortress is a popular tourist attraction, with hundreds of people visiting it every day. But not today. The weather isn’t so good, it is raining on and off, so there is no one. Not a single soul. I just sit there upon the stones and think about how things change, how everything no matter how glorious falls and something new is born from its building stones…

…when it outlives its usefulness. The old fortress was just too expensive for the local folk to repair and maintain after the fall. To be fair that’s the reason I’m retiring my Civic as well.

It has a worn out oil ring, and it burns a substantial amount of oil. Running the car requires constant top ups every 1000km. An engine rebuild would set me back at least 500 Euro. A new engine with the installation is about the same. As you can see no matter which option I chose it is still half the price I paid for the car when I first got it. Besides, I’ve found and bought the Prelude. 2.2 VTI-S with a manual transmission and an ATTS torque vectoring diff. It wasn’t in great condition so I started restoring it, and it soaks up all of my project money. And as the restoration is drawing to a close it is time for the Civic to take a bow. This is not the end however. She will go in a garage awaiting better times. Perhaps like Cherven she will be reborn, live a second life as something else. Reborn perhaps with lightweight components, coilovers and why not a B16 in the front. If or rather when that happens her habitat would be the local track, making this last roadtrip really special. This trip is my western watchtower, something to remain as a reminder of the times long passed

We hit the roads again, leaving the beautiful river behind us. As you can see on the pictures there is some dirt left on my windscreen.

So we stop at a gas station to get the windows and headlights clean. Much to the amusement of others I might add

Our next destination is 92 kilometers away back towards the Balkan mountains. The sun starts setting. I’m not tired, the Civic isn’t a tiring car to drive. She keeps you awake. The steering is a bit light for my tastes, and it reacts to the slightest input which could be a bit annoying at times, but everything the tire does on the road comes back through the wheel and into your hand, which I believe some people might find annoying but I like it anyway. This coupled with the non-ABS brakes really gives you the illusion, i emphasize the illusion that the Civic is a class of car which it is not. And perhaps this very fact is her undoing. Because people mistake that illusion for reality and try to convince others it is real too. Please, no matter what your opinion of the Civic is, if you can drive one. If for nothing else then for the fact that you’ll finally have some substance over your hate. But drive her as the car she is. A cheap economy car made for hauling your behind cheaply from home to work every day for the next 20 years without exploding. Drive it as a car for people who do not like cars, because they are the original target audience. Drive her with these expectations (or lack thereof) and you’ll find that she’s so much more than a car for people who don’t like driving. And that is the moment you’ll realize you are enjoying her. You’ll enjoy the lightness with which she shrugs off the abuse you throw at it. I did…and believe me when I say that I hated the damned thing in the beginning.

It gets dark and we enter the city of Veliko Turnovo (lit. Great Turnovo). From the beginning of the 12th century to the end of 14th Century it was known as Tsarevgrad Turnov (lit. King’s city Turnov) and it was the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire. I park the car and go out to stretch my legs. I love this city, there’s a certain magnificence when you walk the streets. There’s indeed as the name implies a certain greatness, understated yet prominent.

The humble Civic has taken me to the great city of kings. And after a whole day of traveling and seeing all those amazing places to be fair I really don’t want to be in another car right now. I realize I might seem a bit pathetic when I am glorifying an economy car, a car people call am econobox or a * tbox. A newer civic 8th generation passes by me. The owner looks at the mud covered 6th generation and smirks mockingly. I remember I drove one of those not long ago, and I didn’t like it one bit. It felt heavy, it felt…sluggish. True, loaded with creature comforts compared to mine but it lost its love for abuse, its nimbleness and lightness. All of the soul of being average was replaced with the desire to overcome its own boundries, to jump in market above. The 6th generation succeeds at being decent by not trying, the 8th generation fails by trying too hard. Deduce two points of my score for the cliche, but Honda please start making cars like you did in the 90s. Please start making cars that make you feel like you are literally bolted to the steering column, cars that make you feel like you are pressing with your foot directly onto the bend brake disk, cars that have a soul by being horrible in some regards.

We embark on the return trip from the ancestral capital of Bulgaria to the current one. It’s 224km mostly on country roads then rejoining the Hemus motorway. It’s dark and we’ve had a long and emotion filled day. My girlfriend is snoozing off on the passenger seat. I’ve turned down the music. I’m listening to the road noise, and there’s a lot of it. I listen to the otherwise ugly and annoying hisses, clanks and knocks of the engine. As I said it sounds very agricultural. I listen to the usually obnoxious gearbox whine and in this moment I enjoy all of those little annoyances. Even worse, I realize that I’m going to miss them. It’s the worst when you start to miss unpleasant things. If the Civic was a girl she would not be the cheerleader everyone at school likes. She wouldn’t be the prom queen. She wouldn’t even be the best in bed, she would be average but never boring. Most importantly - she would be your first one. When you increase in value, when you jump to the market above and finally afford to be with the cheerleaders and prom queens she would step back and patiently wait. And when the cheerleaders and prom queens start making dramas, saying that they are indisposed the Civic would always be there handing you over the whip and ball gag. Ready to take you in, give you a bit of fun and listen to your rambling.

It’s 12:30AM and we arrive in Sofia. Exactly seventeen and a half hours after we set off. The city is quiet.

Epilogue

This was my farewell with what I consider to be my true first car. Thank you for sharing it with me. I’m sorry if I bored you with ramblings and side tracking but then again you wouldn’t be reading this very line if I have. One last thing left to say…

Good bye beautiful, thank you for being by my side. Thank you for all the places you took me. Thank you for never leaving me stranded on the road. Thank you for not leaving me in the mud today. Thank you for never letting me down even when I expected a lot more than what had. Thank you for keeping me alive when I was being an idiot behind the wheel.
Goodbye beautiful ‘til I see you again….

Oh yeah, and trip counter read 742km using exactly 45 litres of petrol, that’s 6.1 l/100km or 46mpg