K20 Type R-powered 1996 Honda Civic Hatchback: Back On Track
Former Honda Tuning cover car passion project gets a complete makeover and returns to active duty.
After 2 decades of tearing down, swapping, tinkering, and abusing his 1996 Civic hatchback, owner Andrew Horn knows this car's every nuance. He's intimately familiar with every component that's been added or taken out of the equation and he's invested more wrench time than he can possibly remember over that time - not to mention the number of dollars involved.
Inspired by Japan's Tuners
In terms of mod-friendly Honda chassis, the 6th generation Civic serves as one of the very best in terms of versatility. A lightweight specimen blessed with considerable cross-platform compatibility and a mountain of aftermarket support; it's never been shy about being exploited in various forms of motorsport competition. When Andrew bought the car back in 2001, he did so with inspiration from the likes of tuning icons JUN Auto, Top Fuel, and others that he'd taken notice of while flipping through legendary RevSpeed books. Like them, his intention was to turn his DX hatch into a worthy contender.
At that time, B-series was king, and the K-swap was still in its infancy. An ITR longblock was the first to make its way under the hood but the experience was short-lived after dropping a valve just 5-days later. To get the car back up and running again, a more budget approach with a B16A swap was quickly taken care of and, eventually, a step up to the rarer Type R version of the B16 took its place. It was around this time that Andrew decided, after some nudging from his friend and fellow racer Andy Hope, to make the Civic a dedicated wheel-to-wheel track car. He adds, "One of the most important parts of the build would be doing the chassis/cage right the first time for safety. Andy said it would be harder to add door bars later if I wanted it to be legal to do wheel-to-wheel, so we gutted the doors and stripped the car down to do a full cage."
That cage was more than just a safety precaution, it was part of Andrew and Hope's plan to have the car compete in the NASA Honda Challenge H1 class and with the B16B on board, it would be allowed to compete at the 2,100lbs. minimum weight. The timing of the freshly completed car couldn't have been any better as Hope just began his short stint as editor-in-chief of Honda Tuning Magazine and he had the car photographed for a cover story in the September 2007 issue. All that was left to do was jump into competition and exploit all of the hard work, but that never happened. Andrew recalls, "I never had the chance to compete in NASA or any wheel-to-wheel racing as life started happening - like doing adult things. Racing wasn't a priority anymore, and I think I only took the car to the track maybe once a year or maybe year-and-a-half." In 2011, the urge to get back to enjoying the Civic brought Andrew out more often and he slowly began dialing in the car.
