Paul Armstrong's '93 Civic DXThroughout History, many lopsided trades have taken place. Babe Ruth for $100,000, Vlade Divac for Kobe Bryant, or the kid on the playground who traded you his slap bracelet for your prismatic Pog slammer. At some point, someone's gotten the raw end of the deal. It's like trading a night of sobriety for a lifetime of STDs. If we told you that Paul Armstrong's Civic was bartered for a CRX, you might think it was the deal of a lifetime, but as good as that may sound, Paul still had his work cut out for him in order to tip that scale in his favor.
Paul acquired the hatchback from a fellow Ohio native back in 2005. The deal that seemed too good to be true almost was. "When I arrived to make the trade, the Civic didn't look too bad from a distance," Paul says. Further inspection revealed a poorly mounted rear bumper, a bunch of door dings, and a bad crash repair. The rear had been hit and then repaired with about a gallon of putty and paint. Even so, Paul loved the idea of having a Civic so much that he agreed to make the trade anyway. "I ended up doing the trade without even driving the car because I wanted a Civic that bad," Paul says. That moment of haste would come back to bite Paul in the butt two weeks later though, when the stock D-series took a crap on him. "It was my daily grinder that I had to get back on the road," Paul says, "So I bought the D16Z6 off of my friend who totaled his coupe and got it running." Thinking that he had the Civic running perfect again, he traded dailies with his fiance who commuted more than Paul. Everything seemed to work out fine until the future Mrs. Armstrong called and informed Paul that the Civic he loved left his wife-to-be stranded in a bad part of town. It was around this time that Paul decided something drastic needed to be done.
A bit of research led Paul and his fiance to a K20A2 swap in Michigan that also seemed too good to be true. "We were kind of skeptical because of how cheap they wanted for it, but they said it was a whole complete dropout with everything intact so we ended up leaving the next day after work and driving seven hours to Michigan," Paul says. Nothing sounds as sketchy as driving that many hours to buy something that may or may not be a bust, but Paul is a man of chance. Either that or he loves to play with fire. "When we got there the place looked empty, like they had already closed up," Paul says, "So after about an hour of beating on doors and ringing bells a guy finally came out to help us." The driving and waiting paid off. The K was complete and even better than advertised, so Paul paid up, packed up, and headed back to Ohio. "It was a long trip and I only got about three hours of sleep before I had to be up for work, but having the swap sitting by the car in the garage made everything worth it," Paul says.