The Car Guy of Benchfield
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Reader's Rides
1988 Honda Accord and 1992 Honda Civic LX
both owned Brian Cavanaugh of Los Angeles, California
pictures and stories by Brian Cavanaugh
1988 Honda Accord
Auto, 4dr sedan, dark blue in/out. It was my 4th car (and my 3rd hand-me-down, when my family got together at the holidays people would say our yard looked like a used car lot). This one was given to me by my mother, after my first 1988 Accord, champagne in/out, 5spd., became unreliable (3rd car, 2nd hand-me-down). I liked them a lot - roomy, nice drivers, decent power, nice looking.
Anyway, I took these two pictures while I made my first trek out west, from FL to CA back in 1996. The one of the car facing left, taken just before dawn, is where I slept one night in the car on the side of the highway. The
thing is, the car was full. I mean full, completely, from rear window to front window, with all the stuff I could cram into it. Literally, I couldn't fit another t-shirt in it. I could only see out the driver's side window and the left half of the windshield. And I was so tired, so I turned in the seat and slept with my head on the junk beside me and my legs against the door. I'm 6ft tall. Driving the next day wasn't a picnic.
1992 Honda Civic LX
5spd, 4dr sedan, white/tan. My sister gave me this in 1997 (5th car, 4th hand-me-down) after the blue Accord was hit and no longer reliable. Ran like a humming bird. Only problem is that it didn't have a warning chime for leaving your headlights on when you took the key out. In Florida it rains a lot. Sometimes you forget, especially during the day. I remember one time AAA said no to coming out to jump me because I reached the allowed limit. Here it is parked outside Paramount Studios in Hollywood. You can see something black on the bumper, that's what I used to secure the hood. One day while having my battery changed my friend Scott tried to close the hood, not realizing it was a prop-up hood, and he bent it pretty bad. So after bending it back it wouldn't lock so I had to tie it down. When new it had a good top end (got up to 110mph on the FL turnpike!), but after a few years it had the zest of a 40 year smoker. When starting from a stoplight you had to shut off the A/C or else you wouldn't go anywhere. And getting it above 90mph was like getting a complimentary tour of Area 51: Not bloody likely.
2002 Car Guy of Benchfield