After posting the instagram pic of my Civic last night, I thought about it for a little bit and I don’t think I’ve ever posted the set of my Civic up on my blog before, nor have I gone back to re-edit ALL the pics since I shot them. Who knows – maybe I posted it a long time ago, but this doesn’t seem familiar to me. So I thought it would be a great winter filler post lol

Looking back at these pics really makes me miss the way the Civic used to be and how it looked. It went through so many stages – unlike the two cars that came after it – the STI and now the LS460L. The Civic was the starting point of it all for me. The modding, the addiction, the empty wallet, the photography, and blogging. Everything that I “am” today all started with the Civic. I went through a bunch of phases… The first phase being the cheap, whatever looked good, whatever I could afford phase. It was arguably the most embarrassing part of my life with the Civic. MOMO shift knob, no suspension mods thinking stock height was “low enough”, a muffler weld on thinking it was bad ass. I cringe as I write it out because I can’t believe I did that… But at the same time, I didn’t know any better. I was young, broke and excited to mod a car – don’t tell me you didn’t all go through that too.

I quickly found out that parts can’t just look good on their own, rather they have to look good on your car. A set of expensive wheels might look good on the shelves, but if it doesn’t suit your car then it can be straight up ugly. I think I went through about 4 different sets of wheels and other various parts before I figured out what I really wanted the car to look like. Instead of wasting all this money buying useless parts, I sat down and decided what I loved and what I liked, I got rid of what I just “liked” and then moved on from there. Would it suit the car? Would it match what the look I was going for?

Eventually I came up with wanting a “race-inspired” look. I’ll admit, at the time – which was almost 5 years ago – GT wings and anything of the sort were really foreign to the scene. Stance was just becoming popular because I remember all of these guys asking if 17×7 +42 is aggressive enough and chuckling to myself. So anyone that went out and did some ridiculous fitment was either crazy or wanting to get hated on… Let alone put a GT wing on a FWD car. It took a winter for me to gather all the parts, I began switching out shitty parts for better ones, finding the best possible solution to get it done. It wasn’t much really but it was enough to change it entirely.

My favourite shot from that day was this. The J’s Racing wing was my favourite piece on the car and trust me – if I could afford to just keep all my parts, I would have just kept them with me and let them collect dust for all I care. It would just be nice to keep that collection.

Nowadays – GT wings are becoming more acceptable. I’m willing to bet the one guy that hated on me out there is now wanting a GT wing himself or already has one. I really don’t care about the FWD, RWD bullshit – it looks bad ass. The Spoon diffuser from the S2000 was also one of the first to go on an 8th gen civic. Thanks to Paul over at (the now closed) Speedtech worked his magic and retrofitted it to my car. I originally got the idea from Dal and his K20 Integra who also had Paul retrofit a Spoon diffuser to his car.

It really helped complete the back end of the car. When I took the diffuser off, it just looked so naked…

The front of the car just had a J’s Racing-style lip. At the time, J’s Racing apparently stopped making parts for the 8th gen Civic and so it was admittedly harder than I thought to find a genuine lip. I’m not sure what happened with that whole situation but that’s what I ended up with.

Loved rear end shots of the car. Super aggressive and the lines are so good. The 8th gen Civics are probably my favourite model after the 2000’s. Even now, they’ve got weird lines and it looks awkward to mod.

Side note: I remember posting this on the 8thgencivic forums and had multiple comments about how there was too much camber. That was -3.5 degrees of camber… Now no one bats an eye at -11 degrees of camber. How times have changed…

The roller I made into a canvas that still hangs in my house. I do wish the wheels were spinning a bit more (now that I know how to properly take rollers) but I still love it. The paint is so perfect in these pics…

Can’t forget the sticker roll call down the rear windows. It’s dying now, but you still see it around… I feel like it’s turning into the livery-type decals and larger styles on the sides of the cars.

The shot I posted on instagram last night. I love the Meisters so much – it is my favourite wheel of all time. Corey still has them from when he bought them from me after I parted out the Civic and we’ve all been trying to convince him to just make them fit on his S2000 – they’ll fit with a little work, but I still think he’s adamant on getting rid of them. They are just so perfect though – everything down from the sizing to the colour IMO. PLUS they are now discontinued and WORK has moved onto the S1R’s…

Close up of dirty wheels (but awesome wheels).

The J’s Racing wing from Dal’s Integra that he traded with me for my old Volk TE37’s paired with Titanium ballerbolts that are also now on Jackie Law’s S2000.

Ah… the memories. I do miss the way it looks, but I don’t miss it… Mainly because it’s my winter car now and it has just hit 150,000 KM’s. How baller would it have been to keep it as is for winter? Dumb… But awesome.

Anyways – hope you guys who are lucky enough to be living anywhere in Alberta right now are enjoying this deep freeze of -40 weather. I love it (sarcasm). I also love that everyone is posting how cold it is out there (sarcasm). Shout out to the people who are posting themselves sitting in traffic and of the snow in their front yard (sarcasm).

Morale of the above paragraph: We get how cold it is. We know traffic sucks. Don’t post dumb shit.