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.
We have a 2000 CR-V SE that we purchased as a lease return in 2003.
It now has 200,000 miles on it. Not as perfect as this one but still very good. It was originally a Texas car that we used in Colorado up until 2020, not Gulf Coast Alabama so rust is minimal. It has its share of minor chips and one crease dent on the left rear curve. The metallic Gold paint on the roof and hood is thin.
SE’s were leather and the drivers seats always failed. Some years back I took a good passenger seat from a salvage car and swapped the upholstery so ours is still nice. Also, you can mount an arm rest on the passenger seat as the frames come set up for it so that was a nice addition!
Many others have come and gone over the years but this sweet little Honda is dear to us and barring the unforeseen will carry us to the end.
I have written on the Autopian’s swinging cousin’s site, Opposite-lock, about the automotive hero who I have never met who parks a perfect Escort ZX2 and on alternate days a similarly mint Ford Contour.
How do I know it is the same guy, the plates are from a county over, and it is always the same spot. Too many coincidences there when you add the minty pedestrian Fords from the nineties into the equation to dismiss.
Totally agree with the article. A perfectly preserved Ferrari…yawn…everybody does that. A perfectly preserved low end commuter car, who does that?
Faded wheel center caps (typical Honda) are about all that betrays its age.
So we “cast” the Viper, what about this car?
I’m imagining a period-piece coming-of-age story set in the late 1990s. where the protagonist’s youth is narrated by his adult self in the present day. This is his mom’s car, it replaces an Olds Cutlass Ciera wagon with woodgrain halfway through the first season when Mom has a midlife crisis, and he ends up learning to drive on it in the third season.
Love it
Well no matter the car some people even if they aren’t car people take care of their vehicle. We need to salute and interview these people. This might be a one family car. You mentioned a car seat. Well new parents, not Jason with Otto, are unlikely to trust a used up VW Beetle or Reliant Scimitar to transport their progeny. Yeah with JT genes maybe not a concern. So yes they look for the best condition vehicle available and maybe mom and dad’s well treated hand me down. My dad god rest his soul upgraded my mom’s Cadillac every 4 years. He had the old one one and new used one both Sedan DeVilles and blue in the garage at the same time. I couldn’t tell the difference without deep inspection.
Does this have clear coat? Reds of this era were sometimes still single stage which means they can be brought back to life with a buffer. I remember a friend of mine buying some faded red ’90s cars to fix up and flip and it was very satisfying to see the paint shine and color come back with a buffer since there was no clear coat.
I think hondas flat paints were, I had a red one like this but significantly bustier, and it seemed to brighten up rather easily.
I’ve never heard a Honda described as busty before, but I’ve never owned one with 4 wheels. Nor was it red.
Lol, rustier. Yay auto correct.
Ive had 4, a civic, integra, an accord, and a crv all 90s ones
Agree. My Corolla 4wd Alltrac goes from down on its luck beater to lusterous quirky retro car with a hand polish as the buffer tends to rip to much paint off it.
Weird story about your namesake and avatar. Back as a kid growing up in Australia in the ’80s my uncle owned a motel, and I have a clear memory of sitting in the motel lobby watching TV, and somehow the Doctorin the Tardis music video was on. The image of Ford Timelord driving around in the video stuck with me for some reason. I didn’t know anything about Doctor Who so that connection was lost on me.
Also lost on me was that the song was a cover/mashup of Gary Glitter’s song. Later when I moved to America, I’d hear Rock and Roll Part 2 played at sports events and immediately be reminded of The KLF song, thinking theirs was the original.
For years I had a clear memory of seeing this video, but had no way to find it. It wasn’t until the advent of the internet around 10 years later that I finally found it and learned its connection to Doctor Who and Gary Glitter, solving what had turned into a longtime unsolved mystery for me.
Ford Timelord was the first and only car to have a Number one hit attributed to it in the UK with ‘Doctorin’ The Tardis’. Which was originally a prank song that turned into an earworm.
The whole KLF story is hilarious check out the doco ‘who killed the KLF’. I’m not exactly into their music but their pranking and punk ethics were way ahead of what anyone was doing.
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.
It has a car seat dude would prefer a nap
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.
You should see how many posts I can get from an auto show
We have, although I bet there are still a few more to trickle out before the end of the year.
Who knows. The LA Auto Show on Thursday should bring some more, too.
Looks like Torch slipped up and disclosed your secret booth attraction earlier today.
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 believe we had this story in year one.
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 will keep looking, then! Even in Japan (on the SBT website) only 8 of 194 have a manual transmission. Thanks.
Theyre quite tricky to find, as there was a fwd and awd variant.
Maybe a 10 percent take rate on em per year?
And they’re a weird trans too, a combination of b series and prelude parts.
Don’t discound a fwd one either. My wife’s was FWD and was way simpler to work on than an awd would have been. I replaced the rack and pinion and it was so much easier than it would have been if it was awd.
If one lives in the south, absolutely.
I noticed on mine how much tighter certain things are to get at with them because of the rear drive shaft.
We put 4 studded tires on the thing and it was a tank in the snow, like most FWD cars are when equipped.
Ohh certainly, there are some things that do require an extra drive set, but usually not, as with the crv and it’s tag in/out awd
Can confirm. A coworker dailies a first gen CR-V with a manual. It is really rough compared to this sweet ride, though.
Baby on board you need an automatic
Absofuckinglutely not.
One of my good friends in HS had a first gen CR-V with a manual, it was a nice little trucklet. I think the manual AWD system is commonly used for AWD civic, integra and CRX swaps too
They are, however the b series ones can’t take alot of horsepower stock, but can with some parts, the k series ones were alot stronger.
Wished I kept mine and my old hatchback, to make a Frankenstein lifted awd civic
We bought a new manual CR-V EX AWD in 1999. It was a unicorn even then. We had to get it through a dealer swap and we didn’t get our first choice of color. It was roomy and reliable, but not very exciting to drive. It was slow, noisy, and softly sprung, so it didn’t handle very well. The AWD system was a bit disappointing, because it only kicked in the rear wheels after the front wheels started slipping.
I seriously loved that first gen CR-V, even though I never owned one. I just dug the packaging. Honestly the CR-V was the first car to make me realize that a subcompact CUV could be a fun daily driver. Before that I never would have considered one for myself. Subcompact CUVs were pretty novel at the time, and none of them were quite like this. Clearly Honda tapped into something with the buying public, and today we are still seeing the effects that this first model had on the market.
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.
I care about my cars, but it gets washed when it rains. I’ll touch up the chips to keep the NE gremlin of rust at bay, but it’s a DD and the less attention it gets on the roads or parked, the better IMO.
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.
My big concern: crash worthiness, not so much. I was going to do an off road build on a ZR2 Blazer. Then I saw crash vids. Newer stuff is so much better.
Please don’t put anyone’s children in 20+ yo cars.
??
We shouldn’t drive 20 year-old cars?
What magic clock makes a car suddenly become unsafe? One day it is, and the next it’s not?
You can do it, but I just would rather trust a teenager in something much newer. Cars have gotten a lot safer in the last 15 yrs.
I can’t agree. All of the safety-cell crush-zone stuff happened 30 years ago, and the full-airbag stuff happened 20 years ago. The only thing that makes a modern car safer is the techno-nannies, and those only apply to crappy drivers.
I don’t consider a car that jerks the wheel out of my hand “safer”.
Well you’d be wrong my friend. The small overlap test has really pushed cars to be better in front-end collisions. Also roof strength has dramatically improved in that time. Like I said earlier, a whole carload of folks was killed in one of these things down near JBLM here in the Puget Sound when it rolled in a crash. They just aren’t as strong. My Sienna has a crush strength of over 50k lbs. A lady around here walked away from a semi landing on her late-model Altima which has like a 30k lb crush strength. No car from the 90s is that strong. I’m not saying you are nuts to let a kid drive an old car, every situation is different, but cars today are definitely safer structurally.
We’re talking about a circa-2000 CR-V, that’s 24+ years old. That is old, whether by actual years or by automotive safety metrics.
“The only thing that makes a modern car safer is the techno-nannies, and those only apply to crappy drivers.”
This reads like someone who has very little experience driving a car with these actual features.
No it isn’t the only thing and no it doesn’t only apply to crappy drivers. Things like lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring indicators, collision detection at low speeds, and the various cameras help everyone.
There are plenty of modern features on cars I DON’T like (emergency braking, higher speed collision detection, start-stop, push button start, etc) but I wouldn’t argue modern cars aren’t safer…. because it’s a losing argument.
“What magic clock makes a car suddenly become unsafe?”
It’s not a clock, it’s technological advances in safety and increasing standards.
“One day it is, and the next it’s not?”
Well yeah, that’s how technology works. One day cars have cranks, generators, and fins, and the next they have seat belts, laminated glass, and crumple zones.
A ’97 CRV is not where you want your kids to be in a crash if the alternative is something from this decade. I DD an’ 07 vehicle, and even that is much improved over a late 90s vehicle based on the safety targets they had to hit and the crash videos that are out there as evidence.
Classic cars are great, classic car safety is not. Why would you put inexperienced young drivers in them when there are much better alternatives? There is no upside.
But if you want to grab a late 90s vehicle for a weekend cruiser…. Sure.
Technology doesn’t advance at a constant rate. It happens in fits and starts, with periods of plateau in between.
And of course, the safest car to be in is the one that doesn’t have any collisions. This factor makes all others moot.
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.
You’ve heard of the Chicago Cutlass? I think its’ opposite number is the Villages Voyager, produced in the armpit of DaimlerChrysler-era cheapening-out but still somehow gleaming like a new car 20 years later.
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.)
Or David really threw us for a loop and made us think Elise Not Her Real Name is a pseudonym, when in reality it actually is her real name! Hiding in plain site, he’s fooled us all.
It’s not the same.
No, it is not the same.
You don’t put your GF’s face (or name) on this site because you expect some privacy. Even though she goes outside every day, occasionally adjacent to you..
You did put the immaculate CR-V owner’s parked their car hoping for the same.
The info is easily available online.
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.
There are A LOT of car people in the LA area. People commonly blocked there own plates in pictures when posting online while I lived there.
It is very easy to get the owner’s name and address online.
I’m genuinely curious what you think someone is going to do with a plate number found on a website. Being in the public realm, like a public street, you are provided very little right to privacy. If the owner has reason to hide their car, they are doing an absolutely terrible job.
A very good friend was murdered by an ex-boyfriend who discovered her location when a picture of her car was innocently posted online by a local news station. Using nothing but readily available search tools, no hacking involved, he was able to link the plate to her address, then stalked and killed her. It’s true that anyone could see the plate on the street and who notices license plates in ordinary situations anyway , right? But when the image is frozen in time and posted on line, the information in that image is highlighted. If it happens to be viewed by the wrong person, the consequences can be tragic. Posting on line heightens the likelihood of that happening, even if only fractionally. The proliferation of search engines, including facial recognition, make it more possible for those with bad intentions to find victims and the sheer amount of freely shared and stolen corporate information on clients that is now extant on the web (including DMV info that most states sell to insurance companies) makes all of this easier than ever, requiring no special skills, training or tools. Due to the circumstances above, I’m undoubtedly more sensitive to the issue than most. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Hope this addresses your curiosity.
Highly motivated people are going to find out what they want anyway, and I’m not sure someone driving and parking a unicorn (at this point) car is looking to blend very much.
I never really understood the reasoning for blurring out plates on most shots and I still don’t. On Google maps where addresses are readily available…. Sure. On a random post where the author simply mentions California….. who cares? Now if the pics had EXIF location data….. okay maybe.
People get bent out of shape about a lot of stuff though, some people won’t post hard drive serial numbers online in an image or screenshot….. Not sure who or why we should gaf about those.