- This car right beside me is the peak tuner car
of the early 2000s.
Now you might look at it now and think,
"Ew, that's gross."
But, back in the day, this car embodied
what it meant to be a tuner.
(upbeat music)
I'm gonna show you why this car stands out
as the most important Tuner car of the 2000s,
how it came to be in the first place,
and how it influenced an entire generation of gearheads.
I bet some of you watching right now are those people.
We're goin' bumper to bumper on the Civic
to rule all other Civics,
the Super Street Civic SI.
(upbeat rock music)
Thanks to Ridge for sponsoring this episode
of Bumper 2 Bumper.
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(upbeat synth music)
Now the first thing I want to talk about
is this right here, Super Street.
Now, if you don't know what Super Street is,
it's a magazine publication,
and if your car was featured on the cover
of Super Street Magazine,
Mmm, people knew you meant business
and you had the tastiest of cars.
It's kinda similar to how, if your car's featured
on Bumper 2 Bumper, you're crushing it, too.
Now, the reason this car has Super Street
on the window, is not because it was featured
on the magazine.
It's because Super Street actually built it.
So why don't we pop open that hood
and see what's going on in that engine bay?
(gong)
Get in there.
Just doesn't wanna go in that carbon fiber piece.
That's how you open a hood the fast way. (laughing)
(upbeat music)
So we have a lot of period correct goodies
under this hood.
You have upgraded fuel rail,
you got an upgraded ignition.
All this piping right here,
there's a little turbo under there,
a little HKS turbo power, with an inner cooler.
It's even got the classic, kind of honeycomb,
kind of mushroom-top air cleaner.
You have all the matching red hoses
that match the color of the car,
even the hose to connect the reservoir
for the radiator fluid is colored.
You know they went through and tried to make
as many colored hose pieces as you possible could.
That was a big thing to do back in the day.
But the one that is has that's probably
the most tunerish thing you could ever have
inside an engine bay, nitrous frickin oxide.
This is a wet nitrous oxide system,
so if you come over here and see this little
port right here that shoots a mixture of gas
and nitrous right into your intake
for a little bit of caboom power.
(upbeat music)
Now this engine is extremely modified
but let's go to the inside of the car
and see what fine little tasty touches are in there.
Yum, yum, yum (laughs).
Okay, now the first thing when you get in this car
it's super tight.
I'm like a 30, two, 33 inch waist, I think
and that's about as wide as you can be
if you wanna sit in these seats.
But they really like, you know, they really lock you in.
They're ridiculously colored though,
red and yellow back in the day.
It's got a really cool seat belt,
called a racing belt.
So much dust that came off that thing.
Oh, I'm going the wrong way, freaking idiot.
There we go.
Okay, all right, that's how you quickly put on a seat belt.
(laughs)
There's a couple of things
that are very racy about this car.
One is the huge tach with shift light.
You've also got a boost gauge.
It's got the red trim along the armrest here
but maybe the biggest elephant in the room
is this big frickin bottle of nitrous oxide.
It's right in the middle of the car.
It's a center piece of this car.
Now this car also doesn't have back seats.
Those have been taken out.
They've been replaced with a pretty trick sound system.
Oh, also, I forgot to do this.
And how do you control this pop out screen?
Oh, well only the coolest way
that you used to be able to control a screen
and that's with freakin joystick remotes.
If you had a remote that you controlled
your sound system, a DVD player with in your car, ah, gosh.
You just leave some for the rest of us, come on.
And you know what's even cooler?
This one is voice activated.
Voice activated 20 years ago.
Oh, hey Civic, play "Bumper to Bumper."
Goodbye.
So this car was in the Honda storage facility
for so long that people forgot about it.
They even let the frickin windows down
when they stored it so it got all sorts of dust
and all sorts of stuff that, you know,
when you're in a warehouse that is just kinda stagnant
that just kinda sits on top of the car,
and it got into the carpet and the seats
and you can still kinda smell the reminance of all that.
(upbeat music)
When they were trying to go make some space
to put other cars someone had the idea
of well, this is a pre-production car,
we're not gonna use it, no one's gonna use it,
how about we just get rid of it.
And the way they get rid of cars is by crushing them.
Luckily, there was a guy by the name of Bruce Garfield
and he knew the important history of this car
and knew it wasn't a pre-production car.
It had the title.
So this car was on its way to the crusher,
mere minutes away from getting smashed into one cube
of read and yellow metal,
and Bruce found the title and showed them that it wasn't
a pre-production car, that it had a lot of significance.
So thanks Bruce for saving this car.
Good job, buddy.
(upbeat music)
So because this car was put away
and pretty much abandoned up until recently
a lot of its history has been lost.
And we don't even know if it'll start,
so we're gonna give it an old collage try,
see it this thing will crank up.
Moment of truth.
(engine cranking)
Dear Civic tuning gods of the 2000s,
please we ask the that you'll inject some sweet,
yummy ethanol free gasoline that's been sitting in the lines
for the last 20 years into the fuel rail,
into the cylinder and then let those sweet spark plugs
will spark up the air/fuel mixture
and it'll, this thing will pop out some sweet
CO2 emissions right into this enclosed space.
(engine cranking)
They weren't listening to me.
(upbeat music)
So obviously, the car is indistinguishable.
When you look at it you, you might have even thought,
"hey, I've seen that car before."
And that's probably because you have seen this car.
It's been featured in a lot of video games
but it was also made into a Hot Wheel,
like this one as you see here.
(upbeat music)
Not only did Hot Wheels turn this car
into a model that you could buy,
it was the number one selling car.
Remember this was before they were making a lot
of Japanese import cars for you to buy models of.
It was mainly boomer cars like Chevelles and Camaros
and stuff like that, which are sweet,
don't get me wrong, I like those boomer cars,
but the reason this was the number one selling
Hot Wheel was because it was the first
true Japanese car to be made into a one 18th scale model.
Now this one's pretty cool.
It literally has all of the exact features.
It's got the carbon fiber hood.
The sun kinda warped the windows.
It sat out in the sun too long.
But it's got the Super Street decal.
It's got the Momo seats, the same wheels,
the same exact decals on the side.
It's got the amps in the back.
It's got the roll cage.
It's got the nous bottle.
It's even got the little tach and shift light, as well.
It's in the front driver's seat of the car.
I mean, that's crazy.
They also made a one 64th scale, the little mini guys,
which are just as fun.
Max, the director of this show, actually bought one.
It's right here.
Now looking at this car in 2020,
it's kinda looks like a joke, maybe to you.
But in all honestly, this car is super important.
This car introduced a whole new generation
of gearheads into the Japanese tuner scene.
If this car wasn't made, we may not even be here
at donut, so we wanna say thank you to this car.
Thank you, Bruce for saving it.
We wanna thank the Honda Collection Hall
here in Southern California.
This car's in the museum here.
They let us come her and film today,
so thank you so, so much.
Please follow us on Instagram @donutmedia.
Follow me @jeremiahburton.
Hit the like, hit the subscribe, hit the notification.
Did this car influence you?
Did you play video games?
Did you have a Hot Wheels?
Leave a little note down in the description below.
Bye for now.