After a four week wait my new plates arrived. It took a long time to make up my mind but in the end I settled on kind of a “sleeper” personalized plate, which at first glance might look like a state assigned pattern. But once decoded you’ll find it’s an excellent 2-word description of the k20z3.
Ok I love your cars, but really, GG. Now I have to figure out how to disconnect my electronic e-brake sensor.
Finally received my csx console, comptech short shifter and alcantara shift boot so yesterday I installed them all at the same time. I ended up ordering the console from north shore acura in vancouver, bc for about $95US delivered. The color is an exact match to the dashboard, a honda color called gunmetal metallic, whereas the old console was black. I would have liked the console to be black but it honestly looks factory either way. Also the handle on the sliding door has a chrome finish that matches the shift knob, which is nice. The storage bin is slightly smaller than the stock si one but still large enough to fit plenty of stuff. The shift boot fabric is a slightly lighter black than the seats but still looks wayyy better than stock. Not much to say about the short shifter except that it pwns.
A tip on how to clean the exhaust tip. Pun intended.
what a day! check out my sweet new car:
just to set the back story a little bit, i first fell in love with the civic si when i was in high school. at the time it was offered in black, red and electric blue and had a 160 hp, 1.6l vtec engine. i remember first reading about it in car and driver and being blown away by the fact that honda had figured out how to get 100hp/l from such an economical car. i lusted over it obsessively for months and begged my dad to come see one with me. he finally did just to shut me up but of course nothing came of it since the land yacht was ultimately serving its purpose of getting me from a to b…
they say you never forget your first love. based on how quickly i fell in love with the nighthawk black pearl 06 civic si i’m inclined to believe that. unfortunately, finding one at a reasonable price turned out to be quite a hassle. starting my search near the end of the model year i expected to find many on closeout or clearance before the 07′s arrived. not so. disappointment began to set in as salesman after salesman told me “it’s a hot car right now,” “nobody is selling them for under msrp” or “we just sold our last black one but how about a red one?” honda of bellevue wanted $2k over sticker for theirs and every other dealer in the puget sound that had one refused to deal.
unwilling to accept defeat, i expanded my search radius. soon i had located one in sacramento and after several phone calls got them down to $1k under sticker. i was feeling slightly relieved but for the fact that the sales manager wouldn’t agree to hold the darn car for me, even with a deposit, until i had purchased a plane ticket! i mulled it over for a day and thought about the logistics of flying down and driving it back alone. should i ship it back? bah whatever it’ll be a fun road trip i thought. all set to purchase a one-way ticket to sac-town, i called the dealership one last time only to discover that it had been sold out from under me. @%^#!
hardened from the sacramento experience but undeterred, i continued my expanded search. finally i located one in beaverton, oregon and was able to negotiate them down to $750 under msrp. thankfully the salesman working the deal was a nice guy and didn’t seem to mind me calling his cell phone five times a day to reassure him that i was indeed coming down to buy the car. with everything squared away at the dealership i moseyed over to amtrak.com and purchased a $40 one-way ticket from seattle to portland for saturday.
this morning i awoke and caught a metro bus to the amtrak station downtown. i made a point to arrive early since i really didn’t know what to expect having never ridden amtrak. well, i definitely didn’t expect to find out that the train was going to be 4-8 hours late! so much for plan a. i cancelled my train ticket and for a moment considered renting a car and driving down but i didn’t want to face potentially exorbitant pricing since i’m not yet 25. within seconds plan b was hatched: seattle-tacoma international airport! i whipped out my trusty iphone and found out which bus would get me there. less than 30 minutes later i walked right up to the horizon air ticket desk and bought myself a $119 one-way ticket to pdx.
not being a big fan of turbo-props i spent most of the flight daydreaming scenic drives in my new si. i can’t wait!! touched down and found the max, which was actually pretty nifty. for just a couple bucks it got me from the airport to within 5 blocks of beaverton honda in like half an hour. and that’s pretty much the story of how i got my civic si . the rest is a blur as all i could think about was getting behind the wheel of my first new car. thankfully i kept enough of my wits to not get sold on any extraneous crap. holy moly that extended warranty pitch seemed like it would never end.
as for the car, it is blissful. that’s all i have to say for now. i have a feeling we’ll be inseparable for quite a long time to come…
I'm Andy Assareh. By day I'm a systems engineer working on the Boeing 787 program. By night I'm a troublemaking fiancé, son and big brother. In this blog you'll find a variety of technology links and tips that I find useful, along with other randomness. Feel free to share by leaving a comment!
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