CraigsList Find: A Super-Clean 1987 Honda CRX for $3,500
Clean first-generation CRX in California will make Rust Belters jealous.
Clean cars from the 1980s are getting hard to find at all and that seems doubly true for Hondas of the New Wave decade. Depending on where you live, you might only find rust-bucket Civics and CRXs or you might find only half-hewn projects. However, the Golden State delivers. Yes, California has a unique way of preserving cars thanks to largely rust-free lives and if you scroll through CraigsList in a place like Inland Empire—a sun-baked corner of the world near Los Angeles—you can find clean cars galore like this minty 1987 Honda CRX for sale in Rancho Cucamonga.
Nearly everything on this CRX looks in great shape. The red-over-gray paint is the original color, although the seller says it is a repaint. On the interior, the driver’s seat has a tear on the outside that is the only obvious fault with the car. Otherwise, little things like the dashboard, parcel shelf, shifter-boot, center console, and door cards all look factory-fresh. It has a Honda-installed radio, so it likely is the base-model CRX rather than the super-economy HF or sporty Si.
Because this was still at the time branded as a “Civic CR-X” rather than its own Honda CRX nameplate, there was no “DX” trim for it. The plain-jane Civic CR-X got the 12-valve, carbureted version of the D15 that made 76 screaming horsepower at 5,500 rpm. That might not seem particularly exciting, but it was enough power with a curb weight well under 1,900 pounds.
Regardless of the specs, the appeal of this car isn’t its power-to-weight ratio but rather the originality of it. Some of the speakers are aftermarket and the seller claims the radio will need a reprogram, but it otherwise looks like better than any 122,000-mile, 30-year-old Honda should. The price seems fair at $3,500, despite being neither the bantamweight HF nor the peppier Si, if only because you’re unlikely to find one that’s been taken care of so well.