Rusty But Trusty

Imagine you always wanted an Alfa Romeo Junior Zagato. And supposing you didn’t have the $25-50,000 to purchase one of those. Supposing you only had $10,000. Well, for a mere $6990, my friend, you too can have both the style and the exotic twincam powertrain of that more expensive car. And what’s more is – get this – you get two whole cars in the deal! Now, you might think I’m suggesting you take the guts from the spider, and put them in the CRX, but that would be crazy. The CRX is a great car in its own right, even if it cribbed its styling from an obscure early 1970s Alfa, and the spider is an underrated classic. The CRX is up in Kent, WA for $3490, and the spider is near LA in Diamond Bar, CA for $3500.

Check out this CRX, with its awesome side graphics. Strip those, though, and you’ll have a pretty nice, original CRX. It looks like the rear bumper might be slightly tweaked, although the dead-on rear shot in the listing does not show any damage. It takes quite a bit of digging to find a CRX, especially an Si, that hasn’t been tuned to the nth degree with dropped suspension, obnoxious paint, and an engine conversion. But this car looks like a pretty honest survivor for a reasonable price.

Check out the interior. It’s actually pretty clean, without any of the junk or dirt you usually see on affordable cars. It’s got 158,000 miles, which isn’t obscene for a car that’s 24 years old. Even with that mileage, you’d expect cracks in the dash and maybe some wear on the seat bolsters, but both appear to be in good shape. Check out the awesome CRX inscription on the door panels.

The spider is nice too, with new black paint and a European bumper conversion, as well as a new top, water pump, and alternator. At this price point, the condition is pretty remarkable – the bumper conversion and clean interior are worth a large part of the asking price, and that doesn’t even take the shiny exterior paint into consideration. Is there hidden rust on this car? Is it an overspray queen? The seller does mention there’s a salvage title due to a theft over 10 years ago.

Looks like the turbina wheels need refinishing, and the dash is a little cracked up. At last count, a refinished dash is about $700, and refinishing the wheels is $600, so for $4800 you’d have a pretty immaculate looking car. It apparently even passed smog easily, so if you’re really lucky that’s a non-issue.

Tags: alfa romeo, Feature, honda, italian, japanese

This entry was posted on June 1, 2013 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.