We all know about the Si's reign at the top of the Civic hierarchy, but it's nice when an underdog comes along and schools them all. As the Reverend Dr. King hoped that we would one day judge one another on the content of our character, so too does Emmanuel Chua wish for you to respect the inner beauty of his '93 CX hatch-after he whips you down the 1320, running 12.2 seconds at 110 mph, that is.
Hailing from Sin City, Nev., Chua fondly refers to his whip as "the nightmare." When not slanging timeshare properties on the unsuspecting for a regular paycheck, he's letting loose on local poseurs down deserted strips of tarmac. And he's doing it with full interior and a stereo loud enough to drown out the obscenities lobbed by the defeated.
Chua's love affair with Civics hails back to his childhood in the Philippines. There, he was part of the import scene during his teenage years. The most popular cars to drag race then were Toyota Corollas and Mitsubishi Lancers. Until Honda rolled onto the scene.
Honda wanted a piece of the Filipino market when it released its EG models to the islands and Chua's first car, a gift from his father, was among that early fleet. As any teenager might do, Chua lowered it and put an audio system in his four-door cruiser. At that time, USDM aesthetics were popular in the Philippines, not JDM corner lights that most American enthusiasts lust for.
Chua immigrated to the United States when he was 17 years old and brought with him his love of cars. After competing in the show scene for three years, he realized there was something more out there. Having to change your setup for every new show became unrealistic and expensive, and his growing taste in sleepers did not fit the flamboyant show scene exploding around him. He just wanted to go fast and really feel the changes to his car.
Chua's gold hatch here embodies his sleeper aesthetic, not only for the usual reasons of stoplight deception, but also because he lives in a car-snatch-happy town. He admits he yearns for the days in the Philippines when you could pay a guy a couple of bucks to watch your car while you were gone.
Chua briefly ventured into road racing with his first Civic, but got turned off by the expense, namely the costs for track time. Weighed against a night of drag racing at the local strip for $20, the $150-200 that local road racing clubs charged to get on the track made his quarter-mile aspirations a no-brainer. "It's always about the money," he says.
A friend recommended Chua to Dennis Liongson of LDL Speedshop, a pinoy mom and pop business run by Dennis and his wife, Marisa. Liongson had tuned and built cars in San Francisco before moving to Las Vegas, where his reputation followed. Originally an old-school Toyota wrencher, Liongson early on saw the potential in Honda engines and started working with Chua on basic tuning.
When Chua noticed substantial gains at the dragstrip, he went back to LDL with the intention of pulling timeslips on par with what the California guys were running. Since then, Chua and Liongson have formed a solid relationship built on trust and, of course, speed.
The pair's plan for more power revolved around swapping a B20 bottom end in place of the B16 in Chua's previous '94 EX coupe. This setup was good enough for a 13.9 quarter-mile-not exactly blinding. The 2.0-liter's heft in the coupe proved too much for Chua's liking, so he did the next logical thing. He bought another car. When he lived in the Philippines, he'd always wanted a hatch and now he had the opportunity (excuse?) to secure one.