Judging by some old rear dealer badging, this one was sold out of a dealership in North Vancouver, and has remained in the Lower Mainland for much of its life. The odometer reads just 87,000 km, and there’s not a spot of rust to be found. Its current caretaker is Hiroko Marunaka, herself a Japanese import, and she has dubbed it Kinjiro, meaning second golden boy. Before this, in Japan, she had a pristine Toyota Hilux from the 1980s.
The Japanese aren’t much given to automotive nostalgia, generally. Taxes on older cars in Japan are very high, and the collector and classic market is mostly left up to the big dollar items. However, at this year’s Vancouver Supercar Show, Kinjiro found himself sliding into position alongside Lamborghinis, Ferraris, classic Ford Thunderbirds, and even a very rare Toyota 2000GT.
“I was overwhelmed to see vintage cars so well cared for,” Hiroko says of her experience. “Especially very early cars from the 1930s and older – these are not often seen in Japan.”
On any given sunny day in Vancouver, you could stand on a curb downtown and hurl a rock knowing that you might hit an Aston Martin but not before it’d have bounced off two Porsches, a Mercedes, and possibly a Ferrari. The upper echelons of supercardom aren’t slightly less common, but still in full attendance: I remember reading once that 6 of the first batch of 20 Porsche Carrera GTs ended up in Vancouver.
Even so, Kinjiro has all the high horsepower stuff beat, hands down. On a warm, bright day, his gold-brown paint sparkles in the sunshine, and people stop to point and stare. A bright orange Aston Martin V12 Vantage rolls the other way, as obnoxious as a spray tan. No one even looks; the lowly Civic is getting all the glory.
Behind the wheel I accelerate gently off the line (as if I have any choice) and then upshift to second with the console shifter. All around is butterscotch-coloured cloth and vinyl. It’s a bit like being inside a Werther’s original.
It’s just as sweet to drive, too. Despite having the kind of power levels that might best be measured in Shetland Ponies, the Civic weighs no more than a hedgehog’s sneeze. It’s deeply unsafe, of course, but there’s no time to think about that. You merely zip to and fro alongside the coursing leviathans with their big, showy, chrome-laden, status-conscious badgework. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
