Well, it's official: the Integra has gone on to Honda heaven. I'll miss it.
I bought it post-deployment in 2008, stationed in Germany from a contractor who I believe worked for the on-base Fire Department. I didn't even know how to drive it, but figured it out eventually with the help of my wife. It was very forgiving to learn on.
It saw the Autobahn, making lots of runs to Rammstein Air Base for food and shopping. I did my first mod, upgrading the stock alloy wheels to Enkei EDR9's wrapped in Yokohama S.Drives, making a noticeable difference in grip compared to the balding all-season Kumho tires it came with. I also replaced the power antenna with a S2k-style clone after a horrific leaving-it-up-in-the-automatic-car-wash accident. The basic CD player was swapped out with a Kenwood unit in the name of having an Aux port, taking me on my first journey through taking out the center console and figuring out the wiring harness.
It was a joy to drive. I'll never forget the time a friend sat shotgun and flipped off a Murcilago, prompting him to effortlessly smoke us. It whisked us back and forth to Pizza Hut, for Pizza and Archer on Sunday nights. I encountered my first snowfall with it, gingerly braking and skidding around abandoned parking lots.
It was never a beauty queen, but I spent many Saturday nights at the car wash, making the deep green shine as best as I could, scouring the plastic and pleather clean.
We parted briefly as I began to separate from the Army, waiting several long months for it to return stateside. It did finally and I took my first long trip - Dallas to Albuquerque. Due to a title issue called not having one, it proudly continued to wear shipping plates as I fought with the MVD.
Extralegal or not, it happily toted me to school or up as far north as Durango, never giving us any mechanical trouble till later down the line, when the radiator quit. I got my first taste of towing with the Silverado then.
It took parts in moves farther and farther east, to Clovis, Fort Worth, and Houston. Fairly normal upkeep was needed. I did my first brake job on it, taking well over 12 hours and costing the life of my first iPhone. It taught me the difference between all-seasons and summer tires the hard way as I dug it up an on-ramp at 4 in the morning, foot by foot, during the big DFW ice storm in 2013.
After moving to Houston more problems started rising. The SRS and ABS systems began to fail and I worried it wasn't safe anymore. The driver side door would also no longer open. After getting confirmation and pricing from the local Honda dealer, I set out for a junkyard specializing in Hondas, finding a new door mechanism and taillight, with the safety systems next on the to-do list.
Maybe a week after installing the new taillight and door mechanism, it was hit as it sat parked outside my house. The offending driver ran, but generous witnesses took his plate number and the police were able to track him down.
The front passenger fender was destroyed, along with an axle or steering component, bent from the hit and no longer drivable. The impact pushed the car back and up onto my brothers' car, parked behind me. If SRS had been working, I suspect the airbags may have deployed. Before it was towed, I took the shift knob and driver's side floor mat as souvenirs.
I'm sad to see it go. I tend not to be very materialistic, but this little machine, for all its faults and shortcomings, was an excellent car.