When Josh Henning began pondering the re-design of his Honda Civic, he only had one goal in mind. "I wanted to make people's jaws drop at every show I went to," he says.
Henning bought his red 1997 Honda Civic DX in '97 because he wanted an affordable car that he could turn into strictly a performance show vehicle. He made some changes in the first few years that he owned the car, but no major alterations were made until an accident happened at a car show in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Henning's Civic was rear ended in the judging lanes by an overzealous fellow competitor. Instead of making the assorted necessary small repairs, Henning decided to tear the entire vehicle apart and start from scratch. "I wanted to go with something wild to catch the judge's eye," he explains.
He began by making a number of body modifications including changing the car's color to bright orange and adding shaved door handles and side molding. He also converted the headlights and taillights (BMW in the front and Lexus in the back) and added a custom air-ride suspension. The body mods naturally led into custom work on his stereo system
When it came time to begin the audio work, Henning did not want to just turn the car over to anyone. He contacted his friend Calvin Thomas at Hi-Fi Buys in Birmingham. "Calvin and I have known each other for quite some time, and he has done many award-winning systems," Henning says. Thomas has worked in the industry for more than ten years and is currently the Hi-Fi Buys installation manager.
Extreme fiberglass work, all custom painted an eye-catching orange, sets Henning's Civic apart from the rest of his fellow competitors. A fiberglass wave rolls between the two front seats, making up the center console running from the gear shifter to the back seat area. In fact, a large percentage of the interior features custom fiberglass work including the dash, the doors, the entire rear seat area, and the trunk. The rear seat has been completely removed and replaced with one large fiberglass piece that showcases the air tank used with the custom suspension and the subwoofer port.
Thomas says the fiberglass work on the dash was the most difficult task of the whole project. "Getting the curvature just right and getting it to meet up snugly to the windshield was a challenge," he explains. "It is definitely not the sort of thing you want to do everyday."