Year:    1990
Make:    Honda
Model:   CRX Si
Bought:  August 2005
Sold:       December 2006

This was another in a string of $500 craigslist cars I bought in college. One of the better purchases, I found it in mediocre but stock shape for $500. Even at the time it was rare to find a CRX Si that hadn’t been attacked with aftermarket stickers/bolt-ons/idiocy.  I immediately had to pay $600 for a distributor, but otherwise it was mechanically solid.  The interior was best described as ragged, but was more or less all there. The body wasn’t much better, with a number of dents and rust starting in the traditional Honda spots on the rear arches.

It did burn some oil, which led to an incident when I loaned it to a friend of mine for a weekend. My admonishment to check the oil had little impact, and a few hundred miles later I got back the car with a bone dry dip-stick. It burned oil more rapidly after that, but still never left me stranded. During the same period when I wasn’t driving it regularly, it was parked on the street in Boston, which required the car to be moved every other week for street cleaning. I managed to lose the keys immediately prior to one of the street cleaning days. Since the tow and resulting fees would have cost close to what the car was worth, I took a drill and a screwdriver to the ignition to get it mobile. Took much longer than expected, but the operation didn’t get so much as a glance from anyone passing by.

After sitting unused for several months, I finally threw it on ebay and sold it for just about what I paid.