Winston’s DC2R | The Eternal Youth of the Nineties

Try playing contemporary music to your elders, and expect “music today is so garbage” on repeat as you attempt to convince them that Drake is what Nirvana and Red Hot Chilli Peppers were to them.

Whether you believe it or not is up to you, but the truth of the matter is that the best from each era are the only ones remembered. The biggest hits stand the test of time, in ten years who is going to remember Tootsie Slide as a banger? Bring in the top fifty songs of 2020 at the conclusion of this year, and in two years you’ll probably remember the first ten at best.

This is original paint… there’s a bit of fade here and there but for the most part it scrubs up well.

Owning a clean older vehicle is a bit like this. The mediocre and average models have died off, only the best have survived the conversation and will continue to be the vehicles that are appreciated for decades to come.

A strange phenomenon though, is the lack of development for the modern classics. What were considered entry-level go-tos ten, fifteen years ago are still the same ones that younger drivers lust after in 2020. Is it because human nature dictates that we want things that others can’t obtain? Or is there more than what meets the eye?

Yellow Recaros, saw them on OzHonda recently and apparently they’re worth mega bucks!

Winston is still on his provisional licence, and swears by old Honda life. He admits that he “lucked out” when it came to obtaining his DC2R, but it’s a steal only in Honda terms. The money he paid was more than enough to purchase the vast majority of modern legal vehicles, but here he is driving around in a twenty-something year-old, Honda sports car.

“All the newer cars never interested me” he told me during our shoot out in Western Sydney. He’s 22, and remembers distinctly when he became enamoured with Hondas, “ever since my sister got an EK when I was in year 6, I began to research online and think about cars”.

The world would be a better place if more people embraced the fat wang.

You can’t make that up, a small primary school student perking up his interest in cars, because of a then-fifteen year-old grocery getting econo-shitbox. Can’t exactly say that an i20 will have young kids dreaming of building their own!

Let’s not get it twisted here, the DC2R IS a classic vehicle from an objective standpoint. B18C7 from factory, the “best handling FWD ever”, and performance credentials that would put the majority of vehicles in its class from its time to shame. However, an EK Civic?

Running in the 90s… wish people were open to purchasing bright OEM colours like they once did!

We’ve seen a sharp increase in the prices of base models that maybe shouldn’t command such a high number. Supply and demand, that’s the logical reasoning. As these cars become scarcer, the demand may remain the same but as there is less to be had, people are willing to pay more to secure it.

It makes sense for performance vehicles. In JDM, you see the rising prices for S2000s, S-Chassis, Lancer Evolutions and older Subies, while European marques have experienced appreciation or sustained value too, think older M cars.

I always liked the JDM front, but the four-eye is slowly creeping up as an attractive look too…

Even so, how do the same principles apply for entry-level, base models? At least in Australia, the older, cheaper vehicles are not being built again by the same people from ten years ago. New kids are on the block, but the same cars still command attention. This didn’t really happen for models built in the eighties, and nothing from the noughties spring to mind. They’ve come and gone, but aftermarket suppliers continue to provide for your nineties build.

All of this points to the staying power and influence that the nineties had on contemporary culture. The development of multiculturalism, extreme advancements in technology and cultivation of globalisation and world movements, all condensed into ten years.

For many it represents the perfect meeting point of the wonders of the human mind, mixed with the quality and precision of computer-aided technology. Video games from the era continue to be remastered for today’s platforms. The Nike Air Max generations are reiterated season after season, and have built a worldwide, mainstream following. American sitcoms from the decade remain must-watch for new audiences, while most hit songs of today can trace its lineage to the techno and/or hip hop that blew up thirty years ago.

Peter wanted to grab some rollers, the sound the VTEC on a B18C7 is orgasmic.

Today’s young adults can’t relate to the eighties, grew up in the noughties and twenty-tens. They didn’t experience the nineties. Yet, for most of the milennials and Gen Zs there is a sense of familiarity and comfort in the values and attitudes that embodied this time. The world before- and after- technology, bridged by this span of ten cycles around the sun.

All these traits manifested in the vehicles that graced the showrooms during that time, regardless of their place in the pecking order. Cars were relatively easy to drive, but retained strong mechanical connections without the compromise of reliability and quality. Vehicles remained just that, a product designed to move you from one place to another.

Many vehicles from the nineties continue to stay user-friendly even as we’ve hit thirty years since 1990. The 80s car became redundant as strictly an appliance by the noughties because of everything they lack, while the cars from the turn of the century have become dated, superseded by vehicles with more tech, more infotainment and incessant gimmicks.

Kurt Andersen from the NY Times called the decade “just the right amount of technology”. We’re only going to get further from that period, but the perfect cocktail of that era will eclipse the boundaries of time. Advancements were made to complement the human life, not add things we didn’t foresee needing. From here on out, as we evolve technologically, the quicker new becomes redundant, and our standards ever more specific.