25 Year-Old Honda CR-Vs are beat to shit. That’s pretty much a universal truth, not just about CR-Vs in particular, but about any vehicle used almost entirely as a family commuter. Old Subaru Outbacks? Faded and scraped. Old Ford Escapes? Toasty. Old Toyota Camrys? Covered in dents (especially on the rear bumper). And yet, somehow, this 2000-ish Honda CR-V that I spotted in Santa Monica, California is absolutely mint. Let’s have a look.
It’s not easy to keep a commuter car in great condition, especially if that commuter is an SUV from the 1990s, the era of sun-fading clearcoat and plastic cladding. Between the brutal red ball in the sky and the general chaos of LA traffic, especially in the last 15 years since smartphones made distracted driving all too prevalent, keeping a commuter looking minty fresh is nontrivial.
It’s for this reason that I respect this baby seat-equipped CR-V more than I would a nice Lamborghini or Porsche or Ferrari; keeping this CR-V minty is not only challenging, but it’s not really beneficial financially. A minty supercar is worth a lot, but a minty CR-V? Well, for most of the last 25 years, it hasn’t been worth much, but with Bring a Trailer and early aughts cars catching on…maybe this owner could reap the rewards of his/her diligence.
Anyway, just look at those plastics! And that bright red paint!
The clearcoat is perfect, and those headlights! Look at how clear those lights are! Either those are new, or this vehicle has sat in a garage almost all of its life:
Behold that perfect rear bumper and spare tire carrier:
I can’t stop looking at this thing:
Strangely, I saw this perfect Honda CR-V shortly before I spotted a daily-driven Dodge Viper beater. LA is a weird, weird place.
It would make a better story if you left a note for the person and were able to chat them up about this car. I do like these first gen CR-Vs. It’s what my wife drove when I met her. I got that thing running so great before we sold it. Was a sad day indeed when we did. I didn’t regret it for long. About a month after we sold it one was involved in a wreck around here and the entire passenger compartment was crushed, killing everyone inside.
Ahhh, this brings me back. The first generation CR-V is truly the Smirnoff Ice of SUVs.
Why does the rear bumper look to be lighter than the other trim pieces?
And it matches the shade of the spare tire cover too. Which was an accessory cover, a soft/vinyl cover was standard. Makes me wonder if it got rear-ended at some point, resulting in a new rear bumper and probably back tailgate, and a repaint of the entire vehicle so it wouldn’t be obviously different shades of red. Normally that Milano Red gets quite pinkish, seemingly sooner than even Honda’s other reds, I’ve seen Fits and TSXs that would be younger than this CR-V but much more faded.
You got two posts from a quick stroll down a Santa Monica street?
You aren’t even trying anymore.
There’s a guy here who has a mint first gen Dodge caravan. It’s just as nice as this CR-V, and we live in the northeast with actual weather. Said he raised his family in it and I have no idea how he kept it in this good of shape.
I imagine that this car lived in the garage of a second home and didn’t get out much until it acquired a new owner. Any idea of the mileage?
It’s purty. 🙂
I think the first-gen CR-V is the most appealing one, even if the interior experience pales in comparisons to more recent ones.
If only they had been available with a manual. I would have one and enjoy the heck out of it.
They were available in a manual. I know because my sister had one. The good thing about the autos was that they had a column shift. So a really cool rig in both regards.
I, like many here, care about my cars. I wash them regularly, wax them from time to time, keep up on maintenance etc. But like any daily my family car has some stone chips, scrapes on the bumper from heavy stuff going in and out of the hatch, a door ding or three etc. How anyone has managed to keep a car that good for so long boggles my mind.
This is kinda what I expect from a Cali car that is even somewhat cared for. Maybe a few more chips on the nose if it has high mileage. Washing and waxing can go a long way in an area that doesn’t bury everything in salt half the year.
This is my goal in life. to buy a car brand new, keep it for 25 years and have it still look immaculate. but probably impossible to do unless you never drive it.
I had a neighbor that had a Geo tracker that looked like a museum. They had it since new kept it in the garage and never took it anywhere. She passed away a few months back not sure what they are planning on doing with the tracker but these were surprisingly cool little trucks.
Red?
Because there are so few opportunities to do so legitimately, I’m compelled to ask the following: what color is the sky in your world? 😀
Rust, obviously
The LA sky is full of smog, so the sun looks reddish? At least that’s been my experience down there sometimes.
Yes, red. I tried looking at it to confirm, but had to close my eyes. All I could see was red.
The math checks out. Please carry on. 🙂
Definitely kept in a garage. Probably has less than 50k miles. Would make a great buy for a teen or college car.
BUT
REPLACE
ALL
THE
RUBBER
BRATR?
These things will crumple like a beer can. This one was def in a garage as that red will fade easily.
Come on down to God’s Waiting Room, FL where you can find mint examples of just about anything and everything that was Grandad’s last ride. I saw a mint condition early Ford Windstar the other day. Has to be the last one moving under it’s own power anywhere. And it was utterly perfect. Needless to say, a pair of Cryptkeepers were onboard.
Heck, when my Great Grandfather died, he had a nearly 20yo MINT condition *Vega* in MAINE. Or at least as close to mint as a Vega could be – it still had rust bubbles in the sills of course, that was pre-installed at the factory. But perfect paint, chrome, plastics, and interior – because it only had about 15K on it.
Yeah, it’s crazy when you don’t have to worry about winter and salting roads does to a car’s longevity. :-p
Man, I bet that’s got the single most mint condition foldout Trunk floor table outside of Hondas own collection.
I was also going to ask the important question about the condition of the folding table but you beat me to it.
There are a lot of well-preserved older cars like this in certain parts of Florida thanks to the demographics and lack of rust. Yesterday I was admiring a well-preserved 1999-2002 GMT800 Sierra in my apartment complex lot. The owner probably saw me and thought I was crazy, but oh well.
I want to believe that this is Daily Driver Viper’s garage kept weekend ride.
haha. Gold!
Maybe should’ve blurred those plates.
They’re there for the public to see everyday on the streets!
So is your fiancé’s face. Doesn’t mean you want it highlighted on a website viewed by thousands of people whose personal motivations are unknown to you.
This would only be an issue if we knew her name, but we only know one name that isn’t hers. It will take a lengthy process of elimination to winnow hers from the thousands of possibilities.
(Nice that you wrote “fiancé” with the correct diacritical, and since you’re writing in English we’ll accept the masculine gender as neuter.)
It’s not the same.
What are you going to do? Fly to Santa Monica and scour the streets for this exact license plate number so you can personally deface the world’s nicest CR-V? Really, I’d love to understand what people like you think are the ramifications of showing plates anonymously.