1997 Honda Civic CX Hatchback

HT: After all those, what brought you back to Honda, especially to the Civic hatchback, a car that most start with and then progress away from?

JB: Well, I knew Hondas best after having owned so many, and had a clear idea of how to build it to make it a sick fast street car and occasional street-class dragger. Plus, there are so many parts out there for these cars that it just seemed like a lot less headaches.

HT: We all know there's no such thing as a problem-free build, though. Care to elaborate on any horror stories you have?

JB: Oh, there are so many. I owned the car for a while before having enough time and money to take care of the body work, so when I did, I made sure to take care of it all at once. I pulled the engine, harness and chassis wiring, interior, dash, glass, stripped the car down to the bare metal, and had every inch of the body gone over prior to paint. The entire process took months.

When we were re-assembling everything, a friend of mine who was in charge of re-installing the engine harness and ECU couldn't fit the junction cap through the hole we made for it in the firewall, and since I had no idea that it actually served a purpose, we threw it away. A few days later we went to start the car and nothing happened. We racked our brains for days, trying to figure out what the problem was. We went over the entire swap, but couldn't get it. Finally, I called another friend who owned a shop, and within five minutes, he had the problem sorted out.

Then just a week after that, the first day the car was on the road, it got backed into at an intersection by an intoxicated driver, ruining the hood, bumper, radiator support, HID's. Needless to say, we didn't laugh at that one.

HT: At that point, you were making some pretty serious power on your setup. What did you have then, and how was it different from how it sits now? And what are you expecting to get out of it?

JB: I had the engine pulled and the bottom end replaced with a fully built '95 B16A block, and mated back to the original '88-91 B16A head. I had a Garrett T61 turbo on it then, with a log manifold. The body didn't change much, with the exception of adding a cage a few months back. Just before the [photo] shoot, I replaced the turbo setup with a bigger T67 and tubular manifold, added the nitrous and re-tuned it. It made 463 wheel hp with a street tune on pump gas. With the nitrous and on race gas, I want to tune it for just over 700 wheel hp.

HT: Is the build reliable?