Buffed the car out, came out nice.
Today I finally got to blast along Lime Creek:
Despite it's problems, mainly the bad shocks and bad lower control arm bushings (found one of the alignment bolts completly loose, raped the bushing in the process), the car is a blast at high speeds here. The 1.6 loves to be revved out, happily singing up to 7,000 rpm. It's a torqueless wonder below 3-4000 rpm, but traffic practice of heel-toeing has helped getting it down the gears in order to scratch out of turns and up some of these massive hills.
The car has ****ty no-name brand tires up front (suicide in the rain) and torn up bridge stones in back, yet it's still neutal and predictable. Roll on the throttle exiting a corner, and the rear end bites down, the car starts to rotate a bit, and it runs out of the corner at full speed. It's much lovelier than the CRX, which ran out of power past 4,000 rpm and would get mild understeer if you throttled it too early.
I maaaaay flip this car to get one that's a bit more solid though... Too many small things wrong about this car, namely little maintenance **** that's been neglected or done wrong. The trans is tired too, it's unhappy to do any quick shifting and the RPMs have to be fairly revmatched for the next gear. If I can get this gone for asking price, I have my eyes set on a much nicer '90 with a hard top and a fresh motor.
But for now, the little car has redeemed itself. Plus, fighting BMWs on these roads is a blast.