When Mario Dias was 12, being dragged around car showrooms wasn’t too much of a chore. His Dad’s maroon Buick Park Avenue was comfortable enough for the family to get around in; and, for the young car enthusiast, hopping from showroom to showroom with his brothers and sister, “just having a look” at new Nissans, Hondas and Toyotas was better than doing homework. While the older members of the family compared pricing and fuel economy, young Mario was looking at power, speed, wheels and what could be changed to make an ordinary car look better.
Dias Sr had made it clear to his daughter, who after passing her manual-gearbox driving test (something of a rarity here) was keen for a new car to call her own, that something less new would be a good and inexpensive way to make the mistakes that a new driver in Dubai would inevitably make, back in the late 90s. With the encouragement of her brothers, Cutella Dias was having none of it – in 1999, having ignored all advice to the contrary, she decided on the Honda Civic LXi sedan. Her brother, Romell, decided on the Supersonic Blue Pearl, a new colour that year and available only on the Civics, and so Dubai C56170 became part of the Dias family – and has remained so ever since.
As custodian – he still does not consider himself the owner – Mario used to drive the Honda, secretly, to the driving school for his lessons, park it neatly around the corner, take the lesson in a much-less-attractive Nissan Sunny, then sneak back to drive the Civic home. During this time, he maintained a scrapbook of all the possible wheel and tyre combinations, engine upgrades, suspension tweaks and sundry modifications that could be made to his sister’s pride and joy. The last remaining days of school and the first days of college were a blur of magazines, glue and sticky tape, as the humble, mid-level Civic began to change in Mario’s imagination.
“Once the car was actually home, I started reading about other Civics,” says Mario, “and I knew they were capable of being quite quick as well as looking even better. There is a lot of kit available for these cars.”
It was not long before grubby old magazine pictures became grubby new bits, as Mario, searching high and low in whatever showrooms and backstreet garages he could find, started sniffing out the parts that would turn the shopping-trolley Honda into the led-sled custom that you see here.
By 2003, it was clear that Mario’s sister would need a new car. “I spent so much time in the Honda, cleaning and polishing, adjusting and just visualising the next modification, that it would have been impossible to let it go, and so I started college with what was then a pretty cool ride while my sister had to go and look for something else.”
Doing much of the modification and fettling work himself, at home, in the kitchen, with paint, polish, sweat, screwdrivers and a fair bit of being shouted at, the Civic of his scrapbook slowly began to take shape. Wheels first, then some suspension tweaks; bodywork and repainting of the interior took the three years of college to complete; and the seats were replaced with Recaro items. A carbon-fibre bonnet was found to finish the car off.
“I don’t use it much now, and it’s never been in an accident, and though it shows a few car-park war wounds, the Honda is pretty much the same car that left the showroom 15 years ago – well, it still has the same numbers, anyway,” grins Mario. In reality, only he knows exactly how much hard-earned part-time-job money and full-time savings have been ploughed into the “family” Civic.
“It’ll stay with me now forever, I think,” Mario says. “Though it has 165,000 kilometres on it, is well out of warranty and does not actually see much daylight, it was still my first car, so it’s a keeper.”
What starts in the family, stays in the family.
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