Used & Reviewed: 2002 Honda Civic LX

When did the Honda Civic all of a sudden become a hip little car? High revving, high mpg, the newest generation of Civics are happily keeping quite busy carting around both WRX-friendly high school seniors and Xanax-friendly citizen seniors.

One can now purchase a Civic Si with two things it never had before: looks and guts. Huh. The old late nineties Si's were sweet looking, but had little oomph. Then came the oddly shaped 2003 Si, with its wacky shifter and just-okay performance. If you wanted a Civic with power, you had to be a EU citizen my friend, because the Civic Type-R was the only game in town.

But that was back then. This is now. Now the Si is straight up sexy. Aftermarket house Mugen makes a boatload of fancy performance automobile parts to kit up your already sporty looking ride. On top of that, the six-speed gets you where you need to go in a more than decent amount of time.

What we really need to talk about though is one car in particular. The 2002 Honda Civic LX has been the workhorse car in this author's stable for near-as-it-don't-matter nine years. In that time the little white car that could has accumulated 165,000 miles and the obligatory rust dots from almost a decade of Vermont winters. She's simple yet very well thought out. 5-speed stick does the trick here, cuffed to a 1.7-liter straight-four engine that churns out 115 hp at about 6,000 rpm. For all you 0-60 obsessed nut-cases (and I'm one) performance is not in the dictionary here. Not with this car. With this car, you have yourself sitting in the driver's seat, a simple black steering wheel bereft of buttons, a nicely made Honda factory CD player, perfect HVAC controls, and the most delightfully high revving engine ever. It's not about speed here. It's about precision and utility.

The fact that my personal driver will happily play hard all day every day -- and only need the replacement of one oil pan and a transmission cable in all of nine years -- is astounding. This beautiful little thing, I swear, is the most reliably built and simply enjoyable car I've ever driven. Not the fastest car. Not the tastiest. But it will get you through the zombie apocalypse with nothing more then a few gallons of petrol and oil change every quarter-year. You can handle that, right?