When you've finally got your dream car and start investing large amounts of money and time in parts and labor, you're walking on a razor's edge. Any number of things can and will inevitably go wrong, from contact with giant wheel-bending potholes to passing freak hailstorms; from improperly fitting parts that damage other parts around them to big, beefy cows standing in the middle of a blind corner.
Chances are most of us have been in the odd fender bender or have unintentionally driven into an immobile object at low speed--it happens to even the best drivers. Usually damage like this can be fixed easily, if not cheaply. Of course, the absolute worst-case scenario is that you completely total your new car. When that happens, there's pretty much nothing else to do but find a new one.
New Jersey resident Dan Callahan found himself in an ugly situation not four months after he bought his new car, a 1999 Civic hatch similar to this one. (Even though the movies were the shit, Callahan bears no resemblance to detective Harry Callahan of Dirty Harry fame. He's actually a pretty nice guy.) The incident was no simple fender bender; his hatch got messed up pretty good, wedged between an out-of-control snowplow and a sideways-sliding big rig full of steak knives. OK, maybe it didn't quite happen like that, but the car was totaled in any case and a complete loss. We can, however, attest that the incident occurred through no fault of the driver's.
Callahan went back to the same dealer days later and picked up the exact same car, a 1999 hatch. This one doesn't see quite as much street time as the last, and one only need glance over the pics to see why. He's completely worked the car over in a process that took about two years, which isn't a lot of time given the scope of the work.
The most obvious change is the Lamborghini-style door conversion, always a favorite among body enthusiasts and a guaranteed attention snare at shows. Next is a complete Bomex body kit from Japan, hooked up by Importfan.com, which includes bumpers, skirts and a slick roof-mounted wing. Obviously, all extraneous outside tags and moldings were removed and smoothed. The paint, Intense Kandy Blue, is fairly close in hue and shade to the special edition blue worn by 1999-2000-era Si coupes, and was applied by Alex Galligani in Albion, N.J.; Galligani is also the guy who performed much of the custom body work. The carbon-fiber hood was treated with a coat of clear and three or four layers of blue pearl to help it blend in with the rest of the car, but also to let the carbon-fiber weave patterns show through depending on the light that hits it. The hatch lid is also a carbon-fiber reproduction, and it was also treated with blue pearl to match it up with the hood. One mod we haven't seen much of so far is the gaping 42x35-in. hole Callahan had cut out of the car's roof. It opens and closes via a custom sliding vinyl ragtop--very sleek and unique. Other exterior additions include blue ion headlamps, specially molded door handles, a molded license plate frame, and a gas-filler door and rear-view mirrors from a Suzuki GSXR motorcycle.
Beneath, the undercarriage has been detailed in satin silver paint with special carbon-fiber accents. While he was under the car, Callahan pulled the factory springs and shocks and replaced them with chromed WEC air cylinders, which drop and raise the chassis over a set of huge 19x7.5-in. multi-piece Racing Hart CRs wrapped in 215/35R19 Pirelli rubber. Front and rear brake assemblies were upgraded with Baer hardware, 13-in. cross-drilled and slotted rotors with two-piston calipers in front and a drum-to-disc conversion using 12-in. rotors out back.
For motivation, Callahan turned to the reliable B16A conversion, dropping a B-Series motor and B16 transmission in place of the factory drivetrain equipment, with an ACT clutch assembly to mediate between the two. The engine block and tranny housing were detailed in the same satin silver present on the undercarriage, and every removable component inside the engine bay was either detailed silver or chromed and polished. Power enhancers take the form of a full Drag Gen 3 turbo kit with Turbonetics T3/T4 turbo and Deltagate, complete fuel enrichment, CTR cams and a front-mount Spearco Intercooler with an NX intercooler spray kit. A 3-in downpipe and 2.5-in Focuz exhaust pipe waste out the rear, while an AEM intake and STR Airmaxx intake manifold are responsible for expediting fresh air to the combustion chamber. Other underhood niceties encompass an HKS blow-off valve on the intake tract, various AEM caps and a polished AEM valve cover, and an LCD screen that's hooked to a miniature camera mounted inside the Honda emblem at the top rear center of the bay.
Finally, we come to the interior, and find that more work has gone into this area than most people put into their entire project cars. Callahan had a set of Corbeau CR1 buckets custom accented with gray Gucci fabric--if you can believe that shit--and placed them where the stock seats used to reside. The door panel inserts, shift and e-brake boots received the same Gucci treatment, while the door panels, center console, entire dash, and trunk space were re-sculpted in smooth, silver-painted fiberglass. The rear seat was removed entirely to make room for the ICE, naturally, and a big pair of air tanks for the suspension.
ICE components include top-of-the-line Audiobahn goods: three chromed subs inverted on a custom enclosure--which also houses a stealth-mounted PS2--two amps dropped below trunk level, mids and tweets in custom kick panels in the forward footwells, 6x9s in the rear stock locations and 6.5-in mids in the door panels. The whole array is controlled by an Eclipse head and eight-disc changer beneath the driver's seat, and Callahan keeps tabs on his under-hood goings-on with an Si gauge cluster and array of Autometer gauges, including one trick-mounted in the middle of the steering wheel.
Some people are probably thinking right now, "Gee, it's another Honda on the cover of 2NR. I hate you guys. I hope you all catch on fire and die." If that's you, do me a favor. Kick yourself in the ass, then in the teeth, then throw yourself off a second-story balcony into a spider-infested cactus patch. Then jump into a tub full of lime. This is absolutely one of the cleanest, craziest show cars we've seen yet, with a lot of well-executed custom tricks and a lot of time, patience and sweat invested. Even with the extent of work that's been done, according to Callahan the car's present state is far from static.
"It's always undergoing changes in between shows," he says, "so the judges always have something new to look at."