It Took Greg Morgan 6 Long Years And Countless Frustrations To Piece Together His Monument To The Integra Xsi. For His Pains He's Come Up With A Well-Manicured, Daily Driven Track Car That Prioritizes Function Over Form.
If gold is considered the standard, then Gregory Morgan's Midas-touched '91 Integra is the paragon of JDM pimp. Sprayed a hue that closely resembles another famous J-spec shade of flaxen, his erstwhile LS is assembled to be an immaculate rolling tribute to the XSi, a performance oriented trim released only in Japan between 1989 and 1993. The chassis that Morgan focused on specifically was the DA6, a 3-door variety of the XSi and first to carry Honda's venerated B16A mill.
While the car may look too clean to beat on, Morgan didn't build it to just be another pretty whip. In fact, the generally humble dude has choice words about rides built as trailer queens.
"I'm not knocking them, but a lot of the really nice cars we see in the industry aren't even driven," Morgan points out. "People are really shocked to hear that I daily drive this car. That was the goal with my DA, I guess. I was just trying to make it different. Everybody can have the little JDM knickknacks, but few go all the way to try and convert a car completely to JDM, as far as you can go without changing to right-hand drive. I wasn't trying to outdo anyone; I was just trying to build it so I'd be happy with the car."
That personal happiness would come from creating a vehicle that celebrated the OEM JDM aesthetic, in addition to being a reliable daily rig and track car. The tough part was that it took 6 years and a cool 10 grand to find the right balance between beauty and utility. Read on to see why Morgan picked an aging DA Integra to build, and the can of worms he opened in taking on the project.
Honda Tuning: There's no denying your interest in the XSi trim DA; indeed, your Integra is pretty much a shrine to the JDM DA6. What is the curiosity with that particular model? Why does it appeal to you?
Gregory Morgan: I've always wanted a right-hand drive, but with the difficulties in bringing one over, I didn't want to take the time to make it happen. So I picked up my LS just to drive daily as a street car, and I would take it drag racing every now and then. After a while, after getting in a small accident and collecting little bumps and dings here and there, I got tired of it, so I just started collecting parts.
One part turned into several more, but it was never really about the JDM thing. Before I went all Spoon Sports, I was going to go all MUGEN, go 5-lug and everything, because there are only a few 5-lug DA's out there. I changed it up after I realized that MF10 [wheels] are pretty expensive and I really didn't want to spend 2 grand just on rims.
I started collecting the Spoon stuff, and I had a list of what I wanted to do with my DA from back in the day when I used to work at a shop. [The parts list] started out pretty small, but after a while essentially I had every part you could get for the [3-door DA] XSi. It didn't start off as an XSi project, it just turned into that.
HT: Is that why the car took 6 years to build, because you were wrangling up parts?GM: That, and both money and time. I'm not rich; I work, just like everybody else.
HT: I'm guessing you did a lot of the build yourself.GM: Yeah, myself and close friends. Everything was done either at my house or the shop I used to work for.
HT: From the looks of your tech sheet, it seems the only work you outsourced was paint and body.GM: Actually, I did about 90 percent of the bodywork myself. I've known Steve [at T&L Autobody] for about 4 or 5 years, and he knew what I wanted to do with the car. The gold just sort of came together because I wanted something different. At first, I wanted that flat mustardy color, like on M3s, but my guy said it would be too hard to mix, so I picked something else. I chose the gold from the Top Secret Supra, found something similar in the color books, and Steve just started mixing away. It's as close as you can get to the Top Secret shade.
I told Steve from day 1 that I wanted to learn to do most of the body work myself, because then I would know for sure it would come out right. If you half-ass it, you have only yourself to blame. I must have taped off the car like 3 times. I did a lot of the sanding, with the help of friends, down to the base and then primered the car before I took it to my paint guy. When I put something together, I'm the type of person that likes to make sure everything's done right.
HT: What would you say was your greatest challenge in putting this project together?GM: I wanted to give up several times throughout the build. I was done with the car so many times. Little things would happen, like when I went to a friend's house to pull out my cruise control and the timing belt jumped a tooth. I started the car not knowing the belt had slipped and ended up bending a valve. The car wouldn't start, wouldn't turn over, so I changed the distributor cap, rotor, plugs, wires, everything, got it started and drove it to the house, but it still wasn't running right. I figured out the belt had jumped and a valve was damaged, so I pulled the head off in my driveway.
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