2003 Honda Civic Si and 2006 Honda S2000 - Black Sheep

You're not the only one out there if you've realized that virtually every new Honda feature we write starts out praising the longevity and versatility of the company's more tunable models. We've been doing it for years, as enthusiasts first dropped Integra, Prelude, RSX, Element, and Legend engines into their Civics, outran big-power RWD platforms at the strip and turbo/AWD chassis at the track, and sparked the trend for ultra-cleanliness among imports, among a slew of fads we'd just as soon forget spotlighting. And here we are again.

But the two white Hondas here represent more. They're front-runners on the road less traveled, each for completely different reasons. One, starting life as one of Honda's performance flops compared to its Si-badged predecessors and Type-S sister platforms (flame on, EP3 loyalists!), now boasts the power and reliability most Honda enthusiasts only dream of, all with its factory equipped engine still occupying its bay. The other is the polar opposite: an 8.1-second, drag-dedicated, badass bastardization of what was intended to be a mild-mannered, balanced handling machine, motivated today by a gigantic turbo, nitrous injection, and about 1,500 horses from an iron-block inline-six of another manufacture. Yet retaining all their interior amenities and street styling, and fine-tuned for reliability on the track and the street, each build just works.

This is Seua "Tiger" Chanthaphanij's first car. Well . . . make that his first real car. Like a lot of us, he grew up without the luxury of money. He drove an '88 Camry throughout high school, and learned to appreciate cars vicariously through his friends who were lucky enough to afford to tune more aftermarket-friendly platforms. When one friend who'd relocated to California moved back to their hometown of Murfreesboro, TN, with a built Civic in tow, the switch clicked for Tiger. He researched the tuning game, saved some money, and in 2002 took over payments on an EM1 Civic Si one of his friends could never get to run right. "It was a disaster," Tiger laughs. "It was built, tuned, and should've been fast on the bottle, but had wiring issues that I wasn't able to sort out back then. It just sat in my parents' garage and rotted away." His dad made him hawk it; a blessing in disguise. "He said that if I got a new car for a decent price, he'd help me out with the payments." The RSX Type-S, with its 200hp K20A2 and sleek coupe styling, wasn't in that range. Fortunately, the '03 Civic Si was.

"I remember when the EP Civic hatch first came out," recalls Tiger. "I hated it." But weighing in at less than the RSX, and dealer-equipped with a K20 underhood, he learned to appreciate its attributes. "I had an HFP lip kit, all the bolt-ons, wheels, and a suspension on it within a year," he says. In 2006, he got a good deal on a bolt-on Rev Hard turbo kit that he installed and ran at 10 psi with a Hondata reflash for 40K miles, before the transmission threw First gear. Like anyone getting their first taste of power, Tiger's hunger wasn't sated for long. He came up on a wrecked RSX for $800 with a cracked block and bellhousing, parted out undamaged components for the selling price, and got a K20A2 head and five-speed trans for free. A used, complete, Full-Race GT3082R kit was his next score, and the decision was made to build his stock block for high-boost power, freshen up the Type-S head, and retro-fit his stock trans with RSX internals and its comparatively lower final drive ratio. All of which held for another year, this time at about 450 whp on pump gas from 18 psi of boost, until the power took its toll on Third gear, shearing its teeth off completely. Tiger switched back to another EP3 transmission he found at a parts yard, which lasted only a few months; Fourth gear sheared off under throttle on the freeway. "That was it," he says. "I parked the car, saved some money, and called New Zealand."