Honda Civic EG 1.5 Vtec information required

[Danny S]

Hi there, a friend of mine is selling his Mitsubishi colt 1.3. He has been offered a EG series 1.5 3 door Civic and its got me interested.

This may sound sad but they were one of my favourite cars on Gran Turismo growing up, so i have always wanted to own one.

Now he said he will swap for the Civic and maybe let me have it for a good price, all i need to know is some more info on the car?

He says it has integra shocks and a few other modifacations, but the thing is i do 35-40 miles a day and in my current car i can do that for little more than a gallon, what is the Civic 1.5 like on fuel? he says it is the Vtec model..

Any other details on the car would be appreciated.

cheers
dan

[nottyash]

If your after a performance car you want a VTI UK version or a SIR JDM version in the EG6 shape.
If the model your talking of is the 1.5 VEI yes it is VTEC but it was a sought after economy model, although it still produced 100BHP it was Honda showing that you never needed to make a diesel engine to get good MPG, and yet still produce more power than any equivelent Diesel at that time.
There is a JDM VTI which is only a 1.5, not sure what engine it has but its not powerful like the UK VTI, so hardly worth buying for the added expence of import insurance.
If your worried about fuel, and it is a UK VEI then it should do you nicely

[Stoatman]

I have owned the 1.5 Vtec model and it is far from a pistonhead mobile but is surprisingly nippy after about 4000 revs and is incredibly frugal. Expect 45+ when driven very carefully. (Believe it has around 112HP.)

I upgraded to the vti version but it was a good stop gap for a commute.

[AntiguaBill]

In the UK there was only one EG model (91-95) 1.5 VTEC, that being the VEI VTEC-E as mentioned above.
This was specially designed for maximum fuel economy, whilst still being averagely quick. It has 90hp and I believe it was timed at 10s dead to 60.
In 1992 a JDM equivalent model (known as the ETi) was driven around GB for 3000 miles on an ultimate fuel efficiency run and achieved 82mpg. I beleive it held this record for petrol cars for many years.
In Japan however, they had two 1.5 VTEC's, The economy ETi (as mentioned above) and also the VTi which used the VTEC to give more high rpm power, instead of the low rpm ecomony mode of the VEi/ETi. This gave 130hp and I would estimate the 0-60 to be somewhere around 8.5s+. It's a great warm hatch, as the weight is below 1000kg so it still goes pretty well. However they are pretty rare in the uk, obviously being import only.
This is not to be confused with the UK spec model called VTi, which uses the 1.6l 160hp engine.
The other thing to bear in mind, is that they also made a few different 1.5 NON-VTEC's using twin carbs in that era. These are no where near as good as the VTEC engines (though still arguablly better than other companies' of the age!).

And just for completeness, the EK (96-00) model 1.5i LS Civic has a similar 1.5 VTEC-E engine to the older VEi, but tuned to give 112hp. This extra power and extra weight of the bigger car meant overall performance was down compared to the older VEi, but not by much.

And just for complete completeness, the JDM EK VTi has a 1.5 '3 stage vtec' which combines both low end fuel economy with the 130hp high rpm power to produce the ultimate best of both worlds. I would seriously love one of these cars, and if anyone knows of one for sale (that isn't in Cornwall!!) let me know!

[fido]

Stoatman said:

I have owned the 1.5 Vtec model and it is far from a pistonhead mobile but is surprisingly nippy after about 4000 revs and is incredibly frugal. Expect 45+ when driven very carefully. (Believe it has around 112HP.)

I think that was the next gen Civic (95-99) - mine was the 5dr 1.5LS which i bought off a pensioner. Great cars until the modified-w*rs-brigade got interested in them.