The best car, rally driver Jack Pullen says, is the one you have–and the one he had was this Honda Civic LX. The base model. Not even an Si. Jack and his newbie co-driver Chris Zoni won their class in it at the recent Southern Ohio Forest Rally.
It was no fluke.
He also scored the class victory at the McCreary Gravel Rally earlier this year, with a different co-driver, Christian LaPrad.
“We’re definitely not the fastest car out there,” Jack admits. “It makes no power, but nothing’s going to break. When everybody else DNFs, we’re there, just trotting along in our little fart cannon of a Honda.”
Co-driver Chris Zoni and driver Jack Pullen. Photo by J.A. Ackley.
His competition at the ARA’s Southern Ohio Forest Rally included three E36-chassis BMWs, a Ford Fiesta R2T and a Volvo 244. None completed all the stages. But Jack’s Honda did. The same held true at NASA’s McCreary Gravel Rally.
Photo by J.A. Ackley.
Besides the standard safety gear plus rally wheels and tires, Jack’s upgrades are few. His 2015 Civic retains its original SOHC R-series 1.8-liter inline-four rated at just 143 horsepower. Jack runs a Hondata to raise the rev limiter and adjust the throttle response. At the Southern Ohio Forest Rally, he found the Civic tops out at 97 mph in third gear with the stock five-speed manual transmission.
Photo by J.A. Ackley.
Jack also installed single-adjustable Yellow Speed shocks, the only off-the-shelf option he could find. “I discovered if you stiffen the front at all, you start wheel hopping,” he says. “I leave the fronts at full soft and adjust the rears depending on if there’s a jump or I want a little more oversteer or understeer.”
Jack disabled the traction control and stability control and deleted the ABS module entirely. “You don’t want any of those things in rally,” he explains. “Even modern factory traction control and ABS systems struggle with dirt and gravel. Not having them gives you much more control over the car and the angle you can drive it at.”
Photo by J.A. Ackley.
The Civic LX came with drum brakes in the rear, which Jack quickly discovered in his first rally were grossly inadequate. “Even at driving-your-grandmother-to-church pace, we had no brakes after 5 minutes,” he says. So he swapped in the stock Honda brake system from the automatic Civics, yielding discs all around and bigger front rotors.
Photo courtesy Jack Pullen.
Lastly, Jack’s Civic features more robust, custom-made engine mounts. His sole DNF resulted from those mounts failing. “We sheared our engine mount clean in half,” he says. “We couldn’t get the car restarted because it moved the engine so far back in the bay that the intake tube popped off. Honda has a fail-safe if there’s a mismatch between the MAF and the throttle, so we DNF’ed on the first stage, and I was pretty sad.”
Photo by J.A. Ackley.
Oh yeah, there’s one more mod: rear fender flares. These were installed before Jack fully took ownership of the car, but the fender flares bumped him up from the limited class to the open class. (Yes, he’s beating much faster cars.)
For his next great mod, Jack’s eyeing a more powerful Si engine and removing the fender flares. This will drop him down into the limited class. In the meantime, though, he’s perfectly content competing with what he has.
“More people should come do rally,” he urges. “It really doesn’t take much to build a car that will finish. The most important part is getting out there and getting the miles in–it’s the driver mod. Just get a car, even if it’s a stock Honda Civic like we run.”
Photo courtesy Erick Huertas/American Rally Association.
Comments
“We’re definitely not the fastest car out there,” Jack admits. “It makes no power, but nothing’s going to break. When everybody else DNFs, we’re there, just trotting along in our little fart cannon of a Honda.”
You know what? That’s a pretty solid strategy, especially in a series like rally that can be punishing for cars.
It reminds me of the time I discovered the B-Spec Honda Fit rally car (I drove the heck out of a digital version in the first Forza Horizon):
I think this might be the 250,000 mile Honda that needs minimum maintenance to get there. No turbos, no power, no horsepower…..the last of the basic Honda Civic stick shift 2.0 liter car…..
Somewhat related: I think the latest Civic Hybrid could make for a pretty competitive autocrosser, seeing as it puts out similar power to the Civic Si.
Its CVT and lack of a limited-slip might be working against it, though I’m also curious how many parts from the Si (or even the Type R) could be swapped over.
But now my real question is whether or not I could take it rally racing, though. 
Now that’s a unicorn!
That’s our strategy with our Accord in Champcar. Just keep going, it def works out better in the longer race vs. the shorter 7 hour events.
I wonder if Honda will ever realize that if they go back to their bread and butter of simple cars with a manual trans in their base models, that they might not be in the predicament they are in at the moment. Only being able to get a manual in the most premium trim Civics and Integras is wild to me. Gotta sleep in the bed you make and hope they are suffering in their CVT/EV purgatory.
DirtyBird222 said:
I wonder if Honda will ever realize that if they go back to their bread and butter of simple cars with a manual trans in their base models, that they might not be in the predicament they are in at the moment.
They could probably sell tens of vehicles!
In reply to Colin Wood :
I was shocked when I read the hybrid is quicker than the Si. You could be on to something.
My hybrid experience is limited, but I’m betting its quicker for about 15 seconds. On a 70 second autox run it probably falls on its face.
It would be neat to see what a Honda team could do with it if they were targeting autox performance. Torsen + some specific tuning with autox in mind might make a tremendous difference.
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