Civic "Value Edition"

So this is a story... I expect no comments, but must come clean somewhere.

A coworker was getting a new car. We are buddies and he knows that I enjoy a good flip. He was willing to trade in his 2004 Civic Value Edition for way way less than challenge money, but offered it to me for the same amount.

That morning, I came to a conclusion that I had lost some cash from my not-quite-a-wallet over the weekend. I was fine with it and figured I had positive karma points and really made the finder happy.

So the sale offer was what I thought was the karma coming back to me. I could buy it, clean it up and flip for a profit in a couple of weeks.

Move forward a week. I got the car home and all of the legal work done on it. I had a plan to make a fairly quick $1500. I cleaned the car and went for the interior. While I had the shop vac out, I figured I'd sweep my wife's car out. There I found it: the lost cash. I decided immediately that the civic wasn't good karma and it needed to go ASAP even for little profit.

So I decide to drive it across town on my walmart run (because the ghetto walmart always has better produce!). On this drive I discovered that it needed a clutch and was making a bad noise out of the right front.

I went to work the next day and offered it to a car guy at work that I knew needed a winter beater. He picked it up today and said it was nicer than his beater from last year, despite the bad clutch.

I made almost nothing on the deal, but all 3 parties are happy. I am only telling this story to get a couple karma points.

By the way... the 2004 Civic Value Edition is one of the worst cars I've ever known. The only redeeming thing is the manual transmission, but it is even made bad by the lack of a tach. No tach, manual windows, manual locks. This particular example had some of the worst paint I've seen. Every panel had been painted at some point with a very rough texture. 

I'm sure its new owner will put tens of thousands of miles on it without issue, but I have never been so nervous about a car flip than this one.

Some of us like manual windows. I helped a coworker find one of these for $500. It's a good little commuter.

Yeah I don't mind manual locks and windows. The rest of it sounds horrible to me but I generally loathe civics.

The dealer I worked at sold a ton of the VPs back in 04-05.  In 03, if you bought a DX (manual door locks, manual windows, no tach, no AC) and added dealer installed air conditioning it came to slightly more expensive than an LX with AC standard.  Plus the LX got the power stuff, CD player, and cruise.  The VP filled the gap.  It was basically a DX with standard AC and CD player.  I must have PDIed a bajillion of those in between replacing Odyssey transmissions.