You've hit a page about a car.

So, to anyone who says that my little Honda -- being, by design, one of the most economical cars in the world anway -- isn't practical, I say, simply, "it is for me, so PPPHTHTPTPTHTTT!"

On a Thursday night, I did my tax return and found that I was getting some dough back. That's far from it, though, since, I thought, "I have a car; I don't need another car."

On Friday morning, I was on my way to work and passed the dealer with the Del Sol on its lot. "What a cute little car," I thought, "and it happens to be the exact amount of my combined state and federal income tax refunds!" However, I again banished the thought, thinking, "I have a car; I don't need another car."

Driving home on Friday night, I again passed the dealer, and the car was still there. It didn't matter, though. It had snowed too much to take a closer look and, besides, I had a car; I didn't need another car.

Saturday morning, I told my wife, "I saw a cool car for sale yesterday! Guess how much it is!"
"Uh, the exact amount of the tax refund?" came the increasingly hostile reply.
"Why, yes! How did you guess?"
"NO!"
"Oh, I know," I quickly sidestepped. "Besides, I have a car; I don't need another car."

Driving home from errands with my wife on Saturday afternoon, we were about to pass by the dealer when my wife suddenly said,
"Fine. Stop and we'll look at your car."
"Wait," I said. "First of all, it's not my car. I have a car; I don't need another car. However, if you want to stop, we can stop."

We stopped. I started the Del Sol. It purred like - well, like a Honda. It was neat. However, I shut it off and got back in my own, thirteen year-old Mazda, saying to my wife that it was too expensive and that it didn't matter because I had a car. (You know the rest of that statement.)

However, my wife had a very, very good idea! She said, "Why don't we go down to the Honda dealership on the other side of town and see if they have any Del Sols!" We did. They didn't. They did have a really, really cool Prelude, but it was even more money and, besides, I told her as we pulled out of the Honda dealer's lot, "I have a car; I don't need another car."

Then, I promptly hit a Toyota.

Secondly, after years of driving true shitboxes, it was about time that I got a fun car, since the rest of my life isn't as "fun" as it used to be. Again, no worries and, because the Del Sol is paid for in full, still no payments. Wahoo.

Lastly, my web server logs show me that you're here, and if you're here, there's obviously *some* interest in having a page such as this. Of course, this just proves that you have even less of a life than me, since I at least own the fun car, while you're just looking at web sites about it. (NOTE: if you own one, good for you; here's hoping you're enough of a geek to put up your own page and mail me the link to it so that I can fantasize about your car. Send a picture of you, too. Especially if you're rich.)

So, now you've read another page about this little car that Honda Motor Company only made for a whopping four years (93-97.) They apparently only sold about that many cars, too. Fortunately for me, (and you, if you're an owner,) that makes it a neat, little cult car that I hope to be driving for a long, long time. (Considering I just got mine in 2/2001 and it's in excellent shape, that shouldn't be too hard.)

I showed up at my friend's house, only to see a yard full of new Subarus! I parked my little Del Sol behind one, and, upon opening the hood to do some work, immediately got teased by people approaching, one by one, and asking, "Where's the intercooler? Where's the turbo?"

Fortunately, it was a beautiful, warm day (in January in New England; go figure) outside, and I finally took the top off and stowed it in the trunk rack. The teasing stopped almost instantly. :)

1/2002

There's something about 100 MPH at 100,000 miles that's reassuring. :)

2/2002

But the forecast is for sun and warmth, and the only thing I'll be thinking about during the training goop is how good it'll feel to be out on the highway (even in Boston traffic.)

6/2002

Also, the del sol had an, um, incident. I changed a fog light, and didn't notice that the hood latch wasn't returning to its normal, spring-loaded, closed position. So, when I closed the hood, it wasn't actually, um, closed, and it opened up on me -- at 70 mph!

The good news is that the windshield didn't break, and that the way the Honda is designed, there's no heavy-duty springs trying to keep the hood from rising above a certain level. If there *had* been, they would have been damaged, as well as whatever body hardware they would connect to. That would make this a horribly expensive situation!

The original condition of the hood after the, um, incident rendered it unusable. However, my wife had Good Idea #426 in our marriage, and suggested that, as long as I'd taken it off with the intent of leaving it on the roadside so that we could get the car home, we might be able to jump on it to bend it back into a usable condition.

There we were, standing in the pouring rain on the side of a very busy highway, jumping up and down on an upside-down, freshly-removed Honda hood. It worked! We put it back on and drove home. This is what it looks like now:

So, all I really need is a hood (and the stock OEM version is only $50 more than an aftermarket one, so that's the way to go) and paint for it! I might even have a line on a used one. We'll see.

10/2002

Now, note that I've been getting teased that I can't be a member of any Del Sol owners' club because my name isn't Donna, Buffy, Debi (with a heart over the i,) or Barb. Although I highly doubt the reality of such an absurd statement, in the case that I'm wrong and the visitors to this site really are named as such, please don't be offended by the above picture or, for fairness, I'll have to put a picture up of a similar sign, featuring a similarly-dressed errogenous area of the male persuasion. Since I don't have any model for such other than myself, and since I'm out of string and only have thumbtacks to hold such a sign in place, I *REALLY* hope that no one complains!

Besides, my wife says it's bad enough that I've built a website for my car. If we go in that other direction, and I get a positive response, (thereby proving that humanity is in the carpool lane to extinction,) I'll have to spawn yet another site. Honestly, I don't want to be there when *that* topic gets bounced around the Thanksgiving table! "Nice website, j! Haw, haw, haw. Pass the cranberry sauce..."

11/2002

It still needs painting, so the old one is currently back on it.

9/2003

Finally!

Yeah, I realize I still have to get the rubber trim piece of the front edge of the old one and put it on the new one. It requires a fork tool, which I don't have but will get soon. Life goes on.

1/2004

If this link is still valid when you click it, you'll see the first Jedi's Del Sol...

If that goes away, try this one.

The Del Sol is still purring, and I commute to work weekly with it. It makes the trip down the busiest part of the East Coast of the U.S. quickly and without complaint, and I look forward to doing it in the spring and summer with the roof off, and the wind in my hair. (I'll just have to close it back up when going through the smells of New Jersey.)

3/2004 - 147,000 miles

I got a new job, 3000 miles away from home, and as a result, had to move on relatively short notice. (It was short enough that I wouldn't have time to drive across the country.)

As a result, I had to sell my wonderful, reliable, loved, Del Sol on very short notice to pretty much the first person that walked up to me with anything near what the sign in its window said.

...And here's the part where, for two reasons, the purists will curse my name for eternity.

The one who caught the brass ring was an auto-body shop owner of about 50 who looked rough, as if he'd spent quite a few years of days under hoods and nights in bottles. He wanted the car for his son, for whom he'd already bought a Honda Civic, spent a fortune on aftermarket short springs and shiny add-on parts, and put them all together. Dad said it was supposed to be a father-and-son project, but that Dad did the work, while Son bitched about how he really wanted a Del Sol.

And finally, he got one. By the way, the kid is 12 years old, which means he will not drive it legally in the state of purchase for four more years. By that time, I suspect it'll have a negative ground clearance and will be dressed in more plastic than what's in the combined wallets of the Olsen twins.

But remember that I said *two* reasons. The above is only one.

As my new locale relieves me of the normal driving pressures - snow, rain, road salt, potholes, extreme temperature changes - of life in New England, I found upon arrival that I was suddenly free to seek something without front-wheel drive, and without a hard top.

I shopped around in the 24 hours that I had to find a car for another Del Sol, but realized that, for their age, people valued them much too highly, and I couldn't find one in equally good condition without expecting to dump dozens of dollars per month in repairs into it, all after I'd paid a premium for it initially.

Trying to remain at least somewhat of a purist, I looked at used Honda S2000's, but even used, their prices are all in the stratosphere. The same was true about (Mercedes) SLK's, which are semi-cute, but priced like a Mercedes! A Z3/Z4 has similar problems, and while the Z3 evoked images of historical Bugattis when it first came out, the Z4 is bland and boring. Both still cost too much for something recent, as does anything with the name Porsche on it, though the handling advantages of something with the engine behind the seats is very desirable to me.

What I didn't want (though I did test drive) was a Miata, as all of them seek to make one reminisce about his or her old Spitfire, complete with the door hitting one in the elbow when it's closed and the need to find the tonneau cover when one lowers the roof. Also, everyone has one; who wants a car that everyone else has? (This is also a problem with the SLK in my new location.)

So, after many years of fun with my Del Sol, I've closed this chapter of my life, and begun a new chapter, in a new world, with a somewhat new Toyota MR2.

May God have mercy on my soul.

5/2004 - 157,000 miles

The End...

...or is it?

The timing was right: The kid's college tuition was in the bank and she's halfway done with it, and some negotiation resulted in a nice raise at work. I'm still in SoCal when I'm not traveling for work and play, so there's still no need for what the weathered world would call "practical," and - as they stopped making MR2's in 2004. (The last model year 2005, but they sold about three of them that year, and none of those three ever come up for sale.)

I actually toyed with the idea of spinning the Wayback Machine of Chance and finding a well-loved Del Sol that some grandmother with failing vision had to get rid of. Then reality hit, and I decided it was time to find something built in this century.

Miatas still suck. SLK's still get crappy reliability ratings. A Z4 is still slow and bland. I drove a few 350Z's but, although the hardtops are kind of sexy, the ragtops look like an afterthought, and I could see my driving record go from 0 to 60 (points) in 7.3 seconds and hitting 100 (days in jail) in about 15 seconds. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In fairness, the new 370Z is also somewhat sexy, and the forthcoming convertible version is much nicer on the eyes, but it's still a ways out, and it'll be a lot of money for a first-year model, and first-year models are usually experiments for the Gotta-Have-It crowd.

So, what's a guy who's had a string of cutesie little, fairly rare convertibles that aren't made anymore to do?

The answer is obvious to those who smoke from the V-TEC pipe. What car is now considered outdated, out of production, and not a dime a dozen in the real world? You got it; my S2000 is parked in the garage, awaiting the high-revving it deserves!

Coming soon: http://s2000.kom.cx!