Daniel Pund
Stinking Horkbug
A ballad for an uninteresting and unexciting car that changed the
world and really deserved a much better owner than me.
The Horkbug in repose. Never would it look, or smell, this good again.
I once converted my bone-stock and notably
shabby 1982 Honda Civic hatchback into a
sweet rally car. This was a simpler exercise than you
might imagine. After all, I had plenty of time to do
it. As it turns out, when you’re a college freshman,
nobody cares if you show up for class. How cool is
that? Well, nobody cared but my parents, that is.
But they wouldn’t know about it for at least several
months, so what the hell?
Here’s how I transformed my eight-year-old daily
driver into a rough-and-ready dirt monster: I would
depart my dorm with my friend, who had a similarly
laissez-faire approach to attendance. We’d get into
ZfPVTN_RaaRObaaN[Q\QNO\aaYR¼YYRQ0VcVPN[Q drive about 45 minutes north to a wooded area near where I once served as the least gregarious coun- selor at a church-sponsored summer camp. At that point, I would simply drive as fast as possible on a random selection of lumpy, root-and-rock-punc- tuated dirt paths in the woods, occasionally glanc- V[T\ßa_NVYVQRa_RRAUNaμVaAURd_YQdN`Zf
special stage. Well, the world in the immediate vicin-
ity of Hastings, Michigan.
It was monumentally stupid. But stupidity with-
out meaningful consequences is known simply as
“fun.” And apart from my education, there were
no meaningful consequences. The Civic, which
had earlier gained the name the Stinking Horkbug
for reasons that escape me, never faltered. It never
broke. Or at least not in a way that prevented it from taking more
NOb`R.[QVa_RZNV[`aUR¼_`aN[Q\[YfPN_6μcRRcR_[NZRQ
because that’s a weird thing to do.
Perhaps its grit had something to do with the fact that, by
the time I got it, it was sort of prebroken. It had already lived a
rough life. It was painted Rhodes Red, which wasn’t actually red
but more of an orangey, dusty-rose sort of color. Except for the
driver’s-side door, which was actually red. Under the rear seat,
I found a sheet of shattered glass held together by a sticker from
the local hard-rock radio station, WLLZ.
In my care, the ignition switch stopped locking, so I could
pull the key out when buzzing down the expressway. It became
my favored parlor trick. I would secretly pull the key out of the
ignition when my passenger wasn’t paying attention and say,
“Hey, can you hold this for a second?” They would then freak
out and I would cackle. Never got old. Not to me, any way.
The Civic’s three-speed automatic could be shifted into or
out of any gear, including park and reverse, without having to
press the button on the knob. That made the zone around the
shifter the only place in or around the car that needed to be
treated with care, lest one of my moron friends bump it into
reverse when we were traveling at 80 mph.
The three cars I’d had prior to the Civic included two exam-
ples of ’70s American junk and a 1971 MG Midget, so reliability
and durability were foreign concepts to me. As were practicality,
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YN[QNba\][\_¼[VPXf@BPN_Ob_Ra\_`
And though I certainly didn’t realize it at the time, the Hork-
bug was my entree to the Car and Driver mindset. This journal
was forever extolling the virtues of clever
N[QR¦PVR[aR[TV[RR_V[TFR`aUR_RdR_R
plenty of sports cars and the occasional
bloated Oldsmobile in the magazine back
then as well. But at its consumer-focused
core, Car and Driver of that era was a cham-
pion of smart cars. And Hondas were hon-
est, well-built products, designed by and
consumed by smart people.
The teenage me suspected that might
just be bunk. That is, until I owned one.
Until I raced one. And commuted in one.
And though the Horkbug made closer to 50
horsepower than 100 and was saddled with
an automatic trans, it was light and lively
and agile and quick-witted. It deserved a
better owner than the college-era me. But
it taught me more than my professors did.
Or than my professors might have.24 APRIL 2020 ~ CAR AND DRIVER
ILLUSTRATIONBY^ BRETTAFFRUNTI