Stolen 1993 Civic hatch with aeromods... Update: FOUND!
 

As hard to believe as it may seem, someone has stolen my car.
Why hard to believe ? Just look at it !

I have been waiting 6 hours for the police to show up to file the report.

I had the idea from TV that you tell the police that your car was stolen, they get the plate number, and then call an APB to alert other police to look for the car.

In the real world, i guess that is just not the case.

I was looking forward to testing the NACA ducting on the car's box cavity using throttle stop testing.

Oh well.

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That sucks... :(


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Oh no! Hopefully you get your car back soon! Can't imagine they can take it anywhere with how unique it looks, fingers crossed it doesn't take too long to recover. Have the police shown up yet?

That is absolutely bananas.

Hope you get some good news soon.

Keep us posted!

Approaching 8 hours now, and I have to be to work at 3 A.M.
Not even a call from the police with an ETA.
I have posted to Instagram and did my first post on Reddit.
( Not sure if it worked though )

Of all the cars to steal, this one ??

But it was pointed out to me that this is a straight, rust free car that is popular with hot rodders.

( Hot rodding ? That's just the opposite of what I was trying to do with the car. )

I was actually laughing at the thought of someone stealing this car.
How is this even possible ?

Unless its a nearby chopshop or some kids doing a prank.

I have all my contact information on the car.
( just look at the door - @ATXARTZ and telephone number )
I do art as a hobby that would like to be a business someday.
I hate the thought of these guys cutting off people and racing around making me look bad.
Maybe someone will call me.

I keep wondering what were they thinking ???
This is a 1993 Civic DX automatic.
I has to be a prank. Surely.

Last week, I planned to add some channeling to the NACA ducts, and mocked it up with cardboard.
I left it in place, since I wouldn't be driving the car.

It was just slid in place and held on by a slot in the cardboard.

So needless to say, pieces were falling off the car as they drove off LOL.

This is so almost comical !

I have said several times in the past " Well at least I don't have to worry about someone stealing this car ! "

Small consolation, but they must have liked it.

Reminds me of when motorcycle couriers in my country intentionally made their motorcycles look worn-out as they believed it would be a theft deterrent. Sometimes it worked.

Call again?

Civics through the 6th gen (2000) are quite popular with the ricer community and are probably one of the easier vehicles to steal. Did you by chance have a battery cutoff switch somewhere to prevent them from starting the engine?

Seems like any 2-door Civic has its appeal with the ricers.

He's right, you just grab the door window and pull it out to jimmy the latch and then have a 'shaved' key.

They gather at night behind big box retailers and trade stolen cars for plausible deniability.

" Call again ?"
I called and was tranfered to 911 five times. I gave up and went to bed.
I met them at my job at 3 A.M. and filed the report.

Battery cutoff switch ? I thought the crazy paint job would keep any thief away.
I'm baffled !
I'm still laughing at the thought of someone driving this car, since the temporary cardboard mock up I had in place no doubt fell off as they sped away. :D

I can imagine the comments about the NACA ducts -
" Brah like WTF ! He has air ducts that lead out to nowhere !
( I have the air channeled into the wake to reduce it's size )

I had that car twenty one years.

I hope you get a nice insurance payout!

I thought my car was stolen once upon a time, but it was just towed. That's almost worse.

I remember when it was usual on some small cars in my country, even though more often done to steal the radio or valuables left unattended aboard.

Only a manual transmission will do that. :-D

Was it insured for theft?

Also: 21 years! Wow. I've had my Firefly for 15, and I thought that was a lot.

The car was only insured at the minimum.

( " I mean ..seriously, what kind of fool would steal a car that stands out like this ! " )

Boy was I wrong !

I'm just hoping to not have to have the car towed home. $$$

BTW, I have been aeromodding the car since the day I bought it 21 years ago.
Basjoos beat me to it, but I planned a full boattail on the car even before Ecomodder existed.
I never got around to actually just going for it and going all in.

One memory I have of the car was when I sealed the front hood gaps with soft clay. This was summer, and the clay melted - oozing from the front of the car, and looking like the car was vomiting.
At the time, the car was in perfect shape ( perfect paint and interior etc )
People actually walked up to the car in the parking lot, totally bewildered about what was happening.
Nowadays, people would have had their phones out, taking video of it, but that was so long ago that there were no smartphones then.
I've had a lot of failed experiments with the car over the years too.
I made an engine plate ( partial bellypan ) using sheet aluminum riveted to aluminum bracing.
It worked great until I started the car ! Lol
Even at idle, the thin sheet aluminum rattled loudly.

It was a fantastic car.
I'm looking at newer ( used ) vehicles now, and keep coming back to this car as my ideal car.
I even love the "missing" mirror on the passenger side ( less frontal area ! )

I'm getting a vision of them pushing it down the driveway and pop starting it to save the battery, pulling away really slowly using only their big toe on the gas pedal, shifting at like 1800 rpm, a bunch of EOC on their getaway route . . . they can't be far, man!

I don't know how many cars stolen in the U.S. are taken abroad, such as being taken to Mexico in exchange for drugs, but a similar phenomenon happens in my country. Many cars stolen in Brazil used to be taken to Bolivia and Paraguay in exchange for cocaine and weapons.

I bet a bunch of frat bros got drunk and stole it as a joke. Can't imagine a serious thief doing it.

No word yet from the police.
I think I've decided to just not own a car.
That's a savings of over $600 a year for insurance.

In an emergency, I could hopefully get an Uber.
That would be my only need for a car.

I have agoraphobia, and live across the street from my job.
I walk there.
Walmart is next door to that, and that is where I get my food.

The only drawback, is that my "safe zone" keeps getting smaller and smaller.
It's all hanging by a fine thread.
My rent goes up every year, but my pay stays the same.

Good excuse to bike.

If I didn't work the next town over - however close it is - I could get away with a bike/ebike/moped 99% of the time. The distance/jaunt on the highway is prohibitive. (And, of course, if you want to get there without doing highway speeds, you have to add about 25% distance, and 100% more time. The highway cuts straight through, whereas there are no roads that do.)

It sucks that this happened.

It is the perfect excuse to make an electric velomobile though.

I'm all too familiar with the growing disparity between prevailing wages and living costs. A minimum wage earner in 1968 was able to afford as much food/housing/utilities/transportation per hour of work as I was able to as an electrical engineer in the 2010s making more than 3x the minimum wage. And it's only getting worse. Throw in education and healthcare costs, and the minimum wage earner of 50 years ago possibly had things better than me. When I was gainfully employed, I lived in the hood and deprived myself of nice things to pay my student loans off, and this is after scholarships covered the overwhelming majority of my tuition. The Consumer Price Index is gamed with "hedonic adjustments" so thoroughly that it fails to accurately represent changes within the economic/financial reality that people within the U.S. are living. The middle class and rich, combined composing the wealthiest quintile of the population, have been mostly insulated from this and it seems that most of them readily believe whatever the media/government tells them about the economy. The bottom 80% of Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck and many of them are in crippling debt to pretend they are middle class(IF they are among the better paid half of that demographic who make enough to even service said debt! The rest scrape by an existence in their urban ghettos and rural methvilles one medical emergency/car breakdown/job loss/arrest/missed paycheck/ect away from destitution).

My velomobile requires no insurance, no registration taxes, no titling fees, no fuel taxes, no license and its associated fees, and is cheaper than a moped to operate while being faster, more comfortable, and better-suited for inclement weather. In terms of travel time, it is comparable to a car on city streets while obeying the speed limit. I can go 50 miles on less than $0.05 of electricity. My single most expensive operating expense on a per-mile basis are high-quality bicycle tires, which cost me about $0.01/mile. Including the build cost of the vehicle, the total operating/ownership costs so far in more than 52,000 miles of use has been about $0.07/mile(rounded up to the nearest cent), although admittedly, almost 50,000 of those miles were purely as human powered transport before electric conversion and about half of those miles were as a trike without a body shell. Cars are really something for the well-off. This is greatly cheaper than as well as more convenient than even public transportation!

I should follow your example. I've got three, one streetable, one driveable and one roller.

I generally have divided my needs between a car, the bike and the Local Transit District. I use the bus less while masks are a requirement. Here the bus pass is free for age 55+.

I can't use Uber because I don't have the thing in my pocket. Not that thing, the other thing.

Be careful you don't poke someone's eye out with that thing!

Who's Uber and where can I get her phone number?

Just get the other thing out and see. I bet she will drive you crazy!

Now that even the upper-middle class in my country is resorting to cars that fall under the "popular" category with 61cu.in. engines for lower taxation, it makes me consider a small-displacement motorcycle with either a sidecar or a tricycle conversion as a reasonable option. I did the math, and this approach can cover easily 99.9% of what I would do with a random econobox.

You could buy a KMX framekit, put adam333's from Endless Sphere's front and rear suspension kits on it, and build a velomobile out of it. Using a small 49cc gasoline engine, you'd probably get around 500-1,000 mpg depending on how much drag the shell has, and top speed would be dependent upon gearing(albeit, you probably wouldn't want to cruise at more than 40 mph in it). You'd only need a 1/2 gallon fuel tank. Total cost would be around $3,500 in parts if you get everything new AND include a bicycle drivetrain with hydraulic brakes, and significantly cheaper without the bicycle drivetrain.

If you have the know-how, workspace, time, and tools you could even build your own frame design for significantly cheaper.

A vehicle with the form factor, drag, and weight of a velomobile, even if there is no bicycle drivetrain, is the key to the cheapest possible operating cost. Less loading not only means less energy consumption, but also less wear and tear on parts.

Wouldn't be so easy to import those to my country.


If I were going to build a velomobile as you suggest, I would consider a 125cc Cub-type Honda engine, attempting to make it also roadworthy. Well, even though a 150cc motorcycle with a sidecar won't pull like a 14 with a Playboy, it could still cruise legally in my country and some neighboring ones such as Uruguay or Argentina.

Cd: any more news on your AWOL Civic?

No news.

And bad timing too.
My parents had just bought me a GoPro ( off brand actually ) camera to do testing with for my birthday.

I was really looking forward to doing some throttle stop tests, and I would have loved to do testing using the GoPro.
The car was more if a geek toy than anything.

Now I can have that Geico Geko saying " This fellow just saved over $600 a year on car insurance . How did he do it ? He cancelled his insurance ! - Bloody brilliant ! "

Silver lining?



But still a big bummer.

Update - I just checked the DMs ( junkmail ) on my Instagram.
99.9% of it is always porn, so I just delete it.

But one stood out as a name i remembered, so i clicked on it.

Some guy saw it parked on a dead end street in downtown last Sunday.
He said it even looked the same.
Image that ! The thieves drove it around complete with the aeromods still on it.

But that was a week ago !!

I'm such a fool for not checking my social media DMs.

If it is still there, i have to go get it.
Wondering if i can even drive it using my key now.

I called the police, but just get voicemail.

So the good news, is that it may have been some kids just doing a prank.

My anxiety is so bad that i was considering abondoning the car there rather than go there to get the car. ( agoraphobia )


I really hope this works out. Wish me luck.

Hire a bounty hunter/personal bodyguard to ride along with you.

Kids may be dumb but they aren't fools. Like the people that stole GAGA's dogs: the dogs were un salable so were let loose.

I didn't even know she had dogs, but anyway, even a mixed-breed dog like mine might stand out enough to get tracked and returned safely.

I hope you get it back, undamaged.

Does anyone here know how to hotwire a car ( I'm half serious ! )
 

My stolen car was found.
The steering column is destroyed.
I could connect random wires together to try and start it, but I'm afraid of accidently firing off the airbag.

It looks like the kids that stole it had a miserable time with the car and abandoned it.

They tried to rip off the kammback / box cavity, but I built it to withstand really strong winds.
It looks like they bashed it loose with a hammer, and in the process smashed some of the roof and side if the car.
What was left was dangling, and it looks like they used some yarn i had in the car for a tuft test to hold it up.
There is yarn tied to the side of the car too, and attached to the door. I wonder what they were doing !

It cost me $ 450 to get my car out of police impound and have it towed back.
The police never contacted me to tell me the car was going to be taken to the impound. Every day adds another $20 to the initial $277 fee.

[EDIT / ADMIN NOTE: this post was made AFTER the above announcement, which I merged here after the fact]

If you've got bad agoraphobia, use social media to get people to confirm it for you.

I bet Austin has some FB groups or subReddits where posting "HELP ME FIND THIS CRAZY LOOKING STOLEN CIVIC" would be not only appropriate subject matter, but probably eagerly acted upon.

I should have posted my last post here.
I was just trying to inject a little humour into this.

( " Does anyone here know how to hotwire a car " )

Not sure if I should ask you guys to delete it and have me just repost the pictures here.

OOoo! Fantastic!

I'm going to move that post & pics over here. Let's not splinter this suspenseful topic!