Bitten by the JDM Bug... The 1st Annual BC CRX Meet

Fujimi Model Kit

In 1998 I was in Richmond BC, browsing in a hobby store called Herby’s Hobbies when I stumbled upon a Fujimi model kit of a CRX. Of course I bought it right away… I’d never seen anything like that for a Honda before. All I’d ever seen were model kits for Muscle Cars and classics. When I got it home and opened it up, I discovered that Japanese CR-Xs came with rear seats (and in Japan it was called the CR-X) I wanted a back seat. I wanted one real bad… but I had one problem: I don’t speak Japanese and didn’t know the first thing about how to go about getting parts from overseas.


Later that summer I attended the 1st Annual BC CRX Meet. It was there I met a man named Will McQueen who had a back seat in his CRX. I’d never seen one up close and in person and I thought it was just about the coolest mod ever done to a CRX before. He said bought it from his cousin in England, and when I realized they were not only standard equipment on Japanese CR-Xs but also on European CRXs, I saw an opportunity for me to get one since now the Japanese language-barrier that prevented me from obtaining one had been removed...

Will McQueen's rear seat in his CRX (taken at BC CRX Meet, 1998)

I didn’t have a computer or the Internet back then, so the following Monday I got up at 4am and started calling England. I phoned information, and got some phone numbers and talked to Honda dealers and junkyards looking for one. Honda wanted $1500GBP ($3600 Canadian) and the junkyards I managed to get ahold of all said they didn’t have one. It was an expensive and painful process to say the least but I told myself to be patient. I would have one someday…

…Fast forward to Y2K. The world had not ended, I was now living in Calgary and this thing called the Internet had really taken off. I was working at a local jobber store that had a computer with a DSL Internet connection. I decided to go there on one of my days off and scour the Internet until I found myself a used rear seat for my CRX. I was there for almost two hours reading and researching, but I hadn't found anyone in the UK selling a rear seat for a CRX. Just as I was about to give up and go home, I stumbled upon a website run by a guy named Asuka Kuroda who lived in England. His site showed a lot of the different items from European and Japanese that he had for sale. There were SiR clusters and power window kits and yes, back seats.

The JDM fever had begun.

Remember, this blog was written in chronological order so, you will need to click OLDER POSTS to move forward in time, and click NEWER POSTS to go backwards.