Buying a Honda CR-X here would be asking for trouble, even if you can pick one up advertised online or on a regional car forum for five grand. In our experience the vast majority of CR-Xs in the UAE are shot, distastefully modified, with too many coils cut off the springs, fake ‘Japanese’ wheels, and butchered Sharjah-back-alley engine swaps.
But that’s not a good enough reason to ignore one of the greatest front-wheel-drive cars ever made, and certainly one of Honda’s, and Japan’s, most iconic exports.
If your heart is set on this economy sports hatch (fastback, if you prefer), your best bet would be to import one from somewhere below the American rustbelt, like Texas. Although that sounds like a lot of trouble for a little Honda that costs a couple of thousand dollars — and it probably is — with the Japanese classic car market finally picking up in value quicker than any other subculture oldtimers, a clean, stock Honda CRX would make a reliable and fun keeper for a decade, while you rack up kilometre after trouble-free kilometre and watch the values rise…
The prerogative for a classic car in the GCC seems to be a big V8, and that’s it, but the CR-X has a lot going for it. Its incredibly lightweight and stiff chassis — first generation cars weighed 900kg, and second generation models built from 1987 to 1991 only crept over 1,000kg — combined with Honda’s cylinder-head know-how made the CR-X a hot compact that could favourably dice with period sportscars. Bag a model with an Si badge
(or sometimes ZC here) and you’re looking at a VTEC lump worth 150bhp for a 0-100kph time of eight seconds. Not to mention impeccable handling and unrivalled response from the steering mechanism and slick manual gearbox.
Like every Eighties’ Honda, nothing ever goes wrong provided a CR-X is taken care of regularly, and when it does go wrong one visit to a Sharjah scrappie will yield results in exchange for a small bag of coins. If you do decide to ship one over you may as well do the right thing and source a first-generation model, and when the tuning bug eventually hits, you can stay true to the car’s spirit and take the awesome ‘Kanjo’ route or slap a bunch of wide-body Mugen parts on it.
Instant win, for less money than it takes to buy a new Honda City…
