Id like to know who actually answered his question.
I answered the question myself by thinking about the problem more carefully. I still long for the '95 Civic a bit but I have a list of reasons why I think I'm going to go with the '96+ civic.
1. I saw that a car's value is 90% by it's year and not by it's generation which in turn means that you can pickup a '96 for somewhere near the price range of a '95.
2. The headlights are apparently not that good at night which would be an issue for me since I do a lot of rural driving.
3. While there was no official offset crash test ratings conducted on this car in the U.S, from what I did see, it didn't do too well which bothered me a the most.
4. Found the idea of using an OBD-I harness conversion (or making my own conversion) for use except when getting a smog check makes the idea of a '96 civic
5. Since I'm choosing a sedan so that passengers are comfortable in the back, I definitely like the extra leg room in the '96 over that of the '95.
and finally the most important part of all which totally surprised and really influenced my decision was the weight.
6. Weight: I discovered that the weight of the '96 Civic LX is 2387lbs, while the '94-'95 is 2,403 and the '92-'93 is 2,319lb. Therefore aside from not having to have a Smog Tech hookup an OBD-II scanner to the car's computer, there is no real benefit to me getting a '92-'95 Civic since weight isn't an issue.
I understand my question in my other thread was a bit over the top even when I made the thread but I was really desperate to find something that would satisfy my fear that I couldn't get the car I wanted. I really wanted to put a VX Engine into an LX Sedan and I knew that wouldn't be possible if it was a '96 model and I wanted to be smog legal. But now I realize that while the 1.6L is indeed a higher displacement motor, it makes up for it a bit by having a higher compression ratio since they didn't change the bore but increased the stroke, technically making it more efficient, so it isn't as detrimental as I once thought. So I guess my future vehicle (hopefully) will consist of a CX/VX transmission, and a D16Y5 engine.
I'm sorry I got you guys involved into my mess but it was really bothersome to me that I couldn't achieve my "dream car" (as dumb as that sounds) simply because of it doing bad in a crash test and I wanted to make the car safer so that it wouldn't fail in such a scenario especially considering that the physical chassis isn't ALL that different but obviously different enough to do badly in the test.
this thread is now 5 star rated.
