Hello everyone! First of all, I’d like to thank the folks at Wangan Warriors for letting me make a guest blog post, I am extremely honored to be around here. My name is Bruno Dias and I come from a little country on the far southwest of Europe, Portugal. Which brings me to my main point, to show you one of the best 4th Gen Civic builds we have around.
This car was bought basically as a rotten rolling shell, even though, the last owner had it in his family since brand new, more precisely, since 1988. Hard to think that that was almost 32 years ago!
The current owner, Flávio, didn’t let this chance pass and he had to get the civic, it was a perfect opportunity to save a car from the graveyard. He had a dream to build an ED series resembling the Japanese culture, so you can think of it as an homage to the old school builders.
Flávio owns a car shop in Portugal, called Touge Racing Service, mostly know by the short term, TRS. The base/mentality of his shop is generic Japanese culture and practice, simple and effective. He make a lot of parts himself as custom parts are priceless with all these new aftermarket brands already present in the market.
Enough story, this Civic actually packs a punch and brings all the good memories to the table. It has the perfect equation of low power and lightweight, meaning that you have a direct correlation with the car, you can feel the mechanics while you shift, you can feel every compression of the roads.
I had the pleasure of driving this Civic in the surrounding roads of Nürburg and Adenau, which, for the ones that know what I’m saying, it’s basically the German standard mountain pass, call them small touges if you wish, and I felt like a proper youngster once again, I felt what real driving is all about, intake sound, no power steering, bucket seats, and open windows, that is literally, living the dream.
Ever since that moment, I wanted to do a proper photo session from his car and that happened earlier this year shortly after a trackday in Estoril Circuit back in our home country, Portugal. The mountain was just right, the sun was going away, and we had a full track just for us, what else could we ask for?
It all looks very simple from the outside and that’s the purpose, yet, the attention to detail was taken in consideration. The shell was fully restored, the D16 engine was fully rebuilt from top to bottom, gearbox, everything you can think of, the car is just as good or even better than new.
And the verdict? FUN! This car was properly run in, and since then, it did a couple of track days, Europe road trips from Portugal, to Italy, to Nürburg, and so on, went back and it still runs as a Swiss watch ready for mileage to be added.
The beauty of it is, the owner has another handful of projects in standby, mostly being for proper time attack/track day use, so keep an eye out for those.
Bruno Dias
Speclist after bonus images.
Even though the owner wants to reserve most stuff private, these are some of the parts on the car:
– Fujitsubo Legalis R
– SSR Sprinthart CPF
– Big brake kit Sumitomo
– Sparco Kevlar bucket seats
– Takata seatbelts
– Bushings kit
– Various custom parts
– Carbing shift knob