Sebastian Edrada Civics n' Things

8/28/2025

In high school, there were two things I hated more than anything: Writing essays and Honda Civics. While these two topics might seem unrelated, I promise that they are very much connected in this space. I was always a very creative writer in school. I read a lot of sci-fi novels like Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War and Neal Shusterman’s Scythe (the full series). 

Artwork from The Forever War comic series. | Credit: Spotter Up

The carefully crafted dystopian worlds in those novels amazed me. Whenever there was a creative writing assignment, I would go all in on descriptions and setting, vomiting out my crazy ideas onto the paper. It was definitely messy, but my English teachers were very excited to see a student who wrote so passionately. I would’ve shared their excitement had I continued to do only creative writing projects for the rest of my life. However, high school isn’t the place for creative writing. It’s the place for essays, rigid structures, and MLA format. I loathed writing formal essays every time they came up. Making arguments for pieces of literature I had zero interest in was painfully boring. It certainly didn’t help that we had one at least twice every month. I just wanted to write about the things I liked, not cryptic character-driven whatevers.

Probably my least favorite book. | Credit: Britannica

At some point, my class was challenged to write about something we either loved or hated, arguing why we felt that way in great detail. That was my chance to let out all of my anger, all of the pent-up frustration about not writing what I wanted to write about. I should’ve seized the opportunity and made the case against argumentative writing, possibly even convincing my teacher that essays were bad, and that all high school students should solely practice creative writing. But for some reason, I didn’t. Instead, I chose to write about something completely different that I also happened to hate: the Honda Civic.

The former bane of my existence. | Credit: Motorist.sg

Because while I was reading about dystopian sci-fi thrillers, I was also flipping through Car and Driver magazines and watching The Grand Tour. Car culture had the same, if not even more, influence over my childhood as sci-fi did. Watching Cars as a baby was like a lightning bolt to my brain, altering its chemistry to form a single obsession. By high school, I had an appreciation for all kinds of automobiles. There was just one that I could never see in a good light, and that was the Civic.

It just wasn’t cool enough for my immature brain. It was small and boxy. It couldn’t drift, had low power, and when modified, was far too noisy. Its engine lacked the roar of a V8 or the violent growl of a 12-cylinder. Its puny 4-cylinder sounded like an angry hornet. To me, it was just another hatchback. There was nothing remarkable about it. And imagine my surprise when my first car turned out to be a hatchback.

You never forget your first. | Credit: Car and Driver

About a month before my Honda Civic hate essay, the Lexus CT200h was passed down to me from my grandfather. It’s a 3-cylinder front-wheel drive hatchback, a hybrid, and my first car. It was everything I hated about the Civic but worse. It made even less power and had some of the worst acceleration numbers in a road-going car. But oddly enough, I didn’t hate it. The short wheelbase made for fantastic handling. Parking was a breeze, and the fuel economy was great. The car was just plain fun to drive, which is why I began to change my mind about the Civic, and how my plan to write such a hateful essay changed course.

At the last second, I decided to instead write about how much I loved my car, but left in the Honda Civic, which was named in the thesis. As I wrote about all of the amazing pros of my car, I realized that a lot of those pros were the same as the comments I would see on YouTube about people who loved their Hondas. The adoration I had for my little hatchback was almost identical to the love that others had for their little hatchback Civics. It was a moment of revelation. After the paper was graded, my teacher told me that I had seemingly found that spark I had been missing in my writing for months, the same spark I had when writing creatively.

The 2020 Honda Civic Type R. | Credit: Stokes Honda Cars of Beaufort

With this blog, I’m hoping to continue that trend. I’ve always wanted to write about the things I like, because those are the things I can write about with passion. I intend to practice my writing ability to its fullest, whilst sharing my newfound interest in what I believe to be the quintessential hatchback. I hope you enjoy.