First, the pre-Rex era: my first car when I turned 16 was a hand-me-down 1988 Ford Ranger pickup from my dad (he got a new 96 S-10 to replace it). Drove it for awhile, got it painted at Maaco because the stock metallic brown (ugh) had the peeling clearcoat issue. A quick-lube oil-change place failed to pull the old filter gasket off the block when replacing the filter, leading to the engine self-destructing shortly thereafter. Took the check that they gave me and bought a 1966 Ford Fairlane and a swap kit, yanked the 289 V8 and threw it in the Ranger with tons of bolt-ons, and drove that incredibly fast death-trap around for awhile until the engine blew (I was dumb and spend money on speed parts without rebuilding the engine).
I was a sophomore in college at this point, and decided I wanted something quick but reliable with decent gas mileage...a good college car. I'd been reading about CRXs and was on an old email digest thing for CRXs (anyone remember that?), and I tracked down my first color choice, a 1989 Barbados Yellow Si, in Detroit (about a 5 or 6 hour drive away). This was in early 2000, and I paid $3000. Got the car with 104,000, drove it until 133,000 or so when the stock engine threw a rod through the block (the first real sign of the Y-49 curse). I was working full-time as an intern with a 1-hour commute, and needed the car back fast...so I paid a local shop to swap a DOHC ZC into the car along with a new clutch, etc. Drove the car for awhile like that, facing various results of the curse, like the car getting hit twice in a parking lot while parked. The second time that happened, I got a pretty fat insurance check due to the quarter panel being deeply dented, so I took the money and had a friend of mine, who worked at a bodyshop and did work on the side, repair the damage, install a Wings West bodykit and CF hood, and repaint the whole car. While the car was being repainted, I picked up a $2000 Silver 87 CRX Si with just over 100,000 miles to drive in the meantime and play around with.
It was only a few months after I got the car back when, driving home to my parents house for Christmas in the snow from Chicago (where I was living at the time), a Suburban pulled a bonehead move where he almost changed lanes into me, freaked out and overcorrected, and ended up sliding sideways in front of me on the interstate. I tried to sneak around him in the emergency lane, but I just didn't have the room and ended up sliding down into the median. No big deal...except there were trees in the median on this stretch of interstate. Trashed a fender, messed up the door and front bumper a little, and bashed up the hood. Since I had just spent a bunch of money on the car and waited while my friend painted it in his spare time, this really pissed me off -- to the point where I didn't even want to deal with fixing it.
I sold the Y-49 with about 170,000 miles to my friend and future roommate, and decided to pick up something fast to go along with the 1G CRX. I found a good deal on a modified 1G AWD turbocharged DSM (Talon), which was incredibly fast but unreliable and a pain in the butt. I only owned it for a few months before selling it and buying a 1991 Integra LS with only 74,000 miles for $3200 from a dealer in the Chicago suburbs. I sold the 1G CRX shortly thereafter. I drove the Teg for probably a little over a year before I got the CRX fever again, and traded it straight-up about 8 months or so ago for my current car, a black (the color I've wanted for a long time) 91 DX with a SOHC VTEC ZC engine swap and a fair amount of mods. And that's my CRX story!
