1994 Honda Del Sol S

Ferd Natividad's 1994 Honda Del Sol S Anyone who has ever built a project car that has reached any amount of success will promise the next project will be even better. The hunger just doesn't die. If you build a car and it ends up in a magazine, then you definitely have to come back even stronger than before. It's often hard to pinpoint why, though it could be attributed to pride. Maybe you just want to prove to yourself that it wasn't a fluke. Either way, the thirst to create never really goes away. Nobody wants to be a one-hit wonder. If you can produce hits, why not keep going? There's no such thing as true satisfaction when it comes to building Hondas; people are always striving to do more or change something up. If you run out of something to do to your car, more than likely, it's time to move on to something else. Even the person who says "I'm just going to enjoy my car now" is still tinkering with something here and there.

Ferd Natividad can attest to this. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ferd, he is a member of Nor Cal's infamous ATS Garage crew. He was once the proud owner of a khaki-colored EF-style Civic, which, to this day is still one of the most memorable Civics of the current generation. After that car was sold, the Daly City, CA, native woke up one morning to the realization that his garage was missing something very important.

"I really missed my EF project," Ferd declares. "I'd get home everyday and my garage was empty. I had a right-hand drive DC2 project that I had started on but collecting parts and waiting for them to arrive became monotonous." Natividad had an itch that he just had to scratch so he decided to occupy his time by finding a new daily driver. "I came across this white Del Sol and thought that it would make a good beater because it was an S model. It had a couple dings here and there, needed a new hood and front bumper, but everything else was straight," Ferd explains.

Having a right-hand drive DC2 in the garage as a project would usually leave most with more than enough to do, but not Ferd. "I don't know what happened but the next thing I know, I have the car completely apart on jack stands in my garage-and all I wanted to do was lower it!" The original single slammer that came with the S model just wasn't cutting it. Ferd elected to replace it and quickly came upon a B18C Type R engine. He wanted the new home for the engine to be clean, so he began to scrub down the bay. 15 years of duty left the bay grease-stained and dirt-ridden so he had no choice but to get it re-sprayed. "I'm really into details so I began to plan out exactly how I wanted everything in my engine bay to look. I didn't know I was planning to do so much to the car because it was just a daily commuter. You guys know how it is though, once you lower it that's when everything begins. It helps that I have guys on my team like Ray and Jimmy, who also own Del Sols, and they really motivated me to build this thing."