25 Apr Project Dadmobile

Project Dadmobile: Meet the New Kid

By Aaron Gaghagen

There’s one thing all of our Projectcarpalooza project cars have in common: They’re all no longer daily drivers. Sure, they all used to be, but now they’re either too modified to motor around town with friends and family safely/comfortably/legally or too much of a theft target to expect to find it where we parked it when we come back. And that’s okay, because it gives a reason/excuse to buy ANOTHER HONDA!

We’d like to introduce you to our latest project, Project Dadmobile. If you follow us on Instagram or Facebook, then you have already seen Project Dadmobile. Random pics have found their way onto our feed here and there. It has also been in the background of various VTEC Academy videos on YouTube.

Project Dadmobile is my daily driver. It’s a 2007 Civic Si sedan. I bought it used in 2011 when I lived in Arizona. I originally went to the dealership that day to buy a Fiji Blue Pearl Si coupe with a HFP body kit, but it wasn’t meant to be. They sold it while I was driving over. I was bummed because it was the only affordable 8th gen Civic Si I could find in the Phoenix area. Then they told be they had another Si that had not added to their online inventory, a Rallye Red Si sedan. I was ecstatic because: A) I could put JDM Civic Type R stuff on it and B) Four doors meant the fun wouldn’t stop when my wife and I wanted to start a family. Guess you can tell where the project got it’s nickname from!

Project Dadmobile has been on about a dozen roadtrips to Vegas from Phoenix and San Diego. I drove it out to Minnesota when we moved there for two years and then back to California. It has been very, very good to me. It gives me Honda reliability with a K20 punch and six-speed manual connectivity. When I drive my son to Pre-K, he asks for me to “do VTEC, daddy” and when traffic permits, I oblige. However, there’s so much potential for the FA5 to be even more fun. My mission is to modify it until I have to buy another daily driver, um… No. I meant that my mission is to find more performance while keeping it as a sensible daily driver I can use every day.

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