Now you might look at it now and think, ew, that's gross.

But back in the day, this car embodied what it meant to be a tuner.

I'm gonna show you why this car stands out as the most important tuner car of the 2000s.

How it came to be in the first place and how it influenced an entire generation of gearheads.

I bet some of you watching right now are those people.

We're going bumper to bumper on the Civic to rule all other Civics.

This Super Street Civic Si.

♪♪

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Now, the first thing I wanna talk about is this right here.

Super Street.

Now, if you don't know what Super Street is, it's a magazine publication.

And if your car was featured on the cover of Super Street magazine, people knew you meant business and you had the tastiest of cars.

It's kind of similar to how if your car is featured on Bumper 2 Bumper, you're crushing it too.

Now, the reason this car has Super Street on the window is not because it was featured on the magazine, it's because Super Street actually built it.

So why don't we pop open that hood and see what's going on in that engine bay.

Get in there.

It just doesn't wanna go in that carbon fiber piece.

That's how you open a hood, the fast way.

So we have a lot of period correct goodies under this hood.

You have upgraded fuel rail, you got an upgraded ignition, all this piping right here, there's a little turbo under there.

Little HKS turbo power with an intercooler.

It's even got the classic kind of honeycomb, kind of mushroom top air cleaner.

You have all the matching red hoses that match the color of the car.

Even the hose to connect the reservoir for the radiator fluid is colored.

They went through and tried to make as many colored hose pieces as you possibly could.

That was a big thing to do back in the day.

But the one thing that it has that's probably the most tuner-ish thing you could ever have inside an engine bay, nitrous fricking oxide.

This is a wet nitrous oxide.

So if you come over here and see this little port right here that shoots a mixture of gas and nitrous right into your intake for a little bit of kaboom power.

Now this engine is extremely modified, but let's go to the inside of the car and see what fine little tasty touches are in there.

Yum, yum, yum.

Yum, yum, yum.

Okay, now the first thing when you get in this car, it's super tight.

I'm like a 32, 33 inch waist, I think.

And that's about as wide as you can be if you want to sit in these seats.

But they really like, you know, they really lock you in.

They're ridiculously colored though.

Red and yellow back in the day.

It's got a really cool seatbelt called a racing belt.

Oh, so much dust that just came off that thing.

Oh, I'm going the wrong way, freaking idiot.

There we go.

Okay.

All right.

That's how you quickly put on a seatbelt.

There's a couple things that are very racy about this car.

One is the huge tack with shift light.

You also got a boost gauge.

It's got the red trim along the armrest here.

But maybe the biggest elephant in the room is this big freaking bottle of nitrous oxide.

It's right in the middle of the car.

It's the centerpiece of this car.

Now this car also doesn't have back seats.

Those have been taken out.

They've been replaced with a pretty trick sound system.

Oh, also, I forgot to do this.

And how do you control this pop out screen?

Oh, well, only the coolest way that you used to be able to control the screen.

And that's with freaking joystick remotes.

If you had a remote that you controlled your sound system and DVD player with in your car, oh gosh, you just leave some for the rest of us.

Come on.

And you know what's even cooler?

This one is voice activated.

Voice activated 20 years ago.

Oh, hey, Civic, play bumper to bumper.

So this car was in the Honda storage facility for so long that people forgot about it.

They even left the freaking windows down when they stored it.

So it got all sorts of dust and all sorts of stuff that, you know, when you're in a warehouse that is just kind of stagnant, that just kind of sits on top of the car, and it got into the carpet and the seats, and you can still kind of smell the remnants of all that.

When they were trying to go make some space to put other cars, someone had the idea of, oh, well, this is a pre-production car.

We're not going to use it.

No one's going to use it.

How about we just get rid of it?

And the way they get rid of cars is by crushing them.

Luckily, there was a guy by the name of Bruce Garfield, and he knew the important history of this car and knew that it wasn't a pre-production car.

It had the title.

So this car was on its way to the crusher mere minutes away from getting smashed into one cube of red and yellow metal.

And Bruce found the title and showed them that it wasn't a pre-production car, that it had a lot of significance.

So thanks, Bruce, for saving this car.

Good job, buddy.

So because this car was put away and pretty much abandoned up until recently, a lot of its history has been lost.

And we don't even know if it'll start.

So we're going to give it our old college try, see if this thing will crank up.

Moment of truth.

Dear Civic Tuning Gods of the 2000s, please, we ask that you'll inject some sweet, yummy, ethanol-free gasoline that's been sitting in the lines for the last 20 years into the fuel rail, into the cylinder, and then that those sweet spark plugs will spark up that air-fuel mixture, and this thing will puff out some sweet CO2 emissions right into this enclosed space.

They weren't listening to me.

So obviously, the car is indistinguishable.

When you look at it, you might have even thought, hey, I've seen that car before.

And that's probably because you have seen this car.

It's been featured in a lot of video games, but it also was made into a Hot Wheel.

Like this one, as you see here.

Not only did Hot Wheels turn this car into a model that you could buy, it was the number one selling car.

Remember, this was before they were making a lot of Japanese import cars for you to buy models of.

It was mainly boomer cars like Chevelles and Camaros and stuff like that, which are sweet.

Don't get me wrong.

I like those boomer cars.

But the reason this was the number one selling Hot Wheel is because it was the first true

Japanese car to be made until 118th scale model.

Now, this one's pretty cool.

It literally has all of the exact features.

It's got the carbon fiber hood.

The sun kind of warped the windows.

It sat out in the sun too long.

But it's got the Super Street decal.

It's got the Momo seats.

The same wheels.

The same exact decals on the side.

It's got the amps in the back.

It's got the roll cage.

It's got the NOS bottle.

It's even got the little tack and shift light as well.

It's in the front driver's seat of the car.

I mean, that's crazy.

They also made a 164th scale, the little mini guys, which are just as fun.

Max, the director of this show, actually bought one.

It's right here.

Now, looking at this car in 2020, it kind of looks like a joke maybe to you.

But in all honesty, this car is super important.

This car introduced a whole new generation of gear heads into the Japanese tuner scene.

If this car wasn't made, we might not even be here at Donut.

So we want to say thank you to this car.

Thank you, Bruce, for saving it.

We want to thank the Honda Collection Hall here in Southern California.

This car is in the museum.

They let us come here and film today.

So thank you so, so much.

Please follow us on Instagram at Donut Media.

Follow me at Jeremiah Burton.

Hit that like, hit the subscribe, hit the notification.

Did this car influence you?

Did you play video games?

Did you have a Hot Wheels?

Leave a little note down in the description below.

Bye for now.