I don’t know about you guys, but I remember as clear as day the first car I ever rode in. It was somewhere mid-1980s, in Amsterdam, smelled like dropjes (black licorice for you non-Dutch people), and had the most fascinating rear vent windows a 5-year old had ever seen.
It was my grandma’s Carolina yellow first generation Honda Civic, and I loved that little car. Maybe it’s because it was my grandma’s and she would take my sisters and I out in it, maybe it was the dropjes, maybe it was something else, but it was the beginning of my love of cars.
My grandma had three Honda Civics during my youth, always an automatic, and always a hatchback: this yellow one, a white third generation, and a white fourth generation. I never much cared for the two white ones, but always looked back on the yellow one with fondness.
I’m not sure why, but recently I started thinking about that car more, and started hunting for the little Tomica after finding out that it existed. Sadly they seem to be relatively hard to find on Ebay, with the cheapest ones starting at around $30. Fintail, our resident Vintage Tomica Guru, came to my rescue after finding one at a show, and offered it up to me for a much better deal, so of course I jumped on it! Major shoutout to Fintail for being the awesome dude that he is!
Next step is to find a little bit of Carolina Yellow (or something as close as possible to it), and giving this little guy the makeover it deserves.
