The curse of the yellow CRX

The little car is stone dead, not even a single crank or click from the starter. The cables are attached, the battery hooked up, and electricity crackles through the corpse. The engine bursts to life and the windshield wipers thrash madly, refusing to respond to the controls. It’s aliiiive! Alive . . . and cursed!

“That’s so weird, it’s never done that before,” says owner Riley Ouwerling. Just 21, Ouwerling picked up this 1989 Honda CRX after a long hunt. It’s been sitting for over a year while he finishes other projects, and it’s acting a bit spooky after being resurrected.

However, it’s still a Honda. After a moment or two, everything’s again functioning as normal, the 1.6-liter D16 purring away happily. Being Canadian-spec, this 1989 Si has a sunroof, but almost no other options. The interior is a pure Golden Age Honda blend of spartan yet sensible layout, and it is surprisingly roomy despite the car’s small footprint. However, the exterior is where we run into some trouble.

Talk to any fan of the second-generation CRX, and they’ll tell you that Barbados Yellow, Y49, comes with a curse. CRXs painted this color get in more accidents, they have trees fall on them, they’re stolen and never recovered. Honda discontinued Y49 for the 1991 model year, and the rumors swirl as to why. Was it unlucky? Radioactive?

There are plenty more well-known stories of cursed automobiles, from the accidents that seemed to trail parts taken from James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder, to strange tales about the 1911 Gräf & Stift Double Phaeton in which Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. But most of these stories are just that: fictions created long after the car in question was taken off the road. Most of this stuff is just plain made up, as we all like a good ghost story.

What’s weird about the “Curse of the Y49 CRX” is that it is a myth about a more modern car—and a relic of the old internet. It persists thanks in part to an old, undead Geocities site, which is why Ouwerling, who was born 13 years after his car was built, has heard about the curse (albeit after buying his CRX).

First, a quick snapshot of the second-generation CRX, because it is a terrific modern collectible. Launched for the 1988 model year, the second-gen of this thrifty little Civic-based coupe featured a wider track along with Honda’s much vaunted double-wishbone suspension at all four corners. At first, Si models offered not much over a hundred horsepower, but that just meant drivers could thrash that fizzy small-displacement inline-four for everything it was worth.

With a thoroughly satisfying five-speed manual gearbox, the CRX Si was and is a huge amount of fun. By today’s standards it is refreshingly simple, a relic from a time when you didn’t need a minimum of 300 hp to qualify as a hot hatch. The only real problem is the former ubiquity of the Civic and CRX from these generations, as familiarity bred contempt. They were snapped up on the cheap and driven hard, modified, and then suddenly cheap Hondas weren’t around any more.

Values are thus on the rise. And you might expect to pay a little more for a Barbados Yellow CRX, as it was only available for three years, and on the Si model only. But what if your buying considerations were less financial, and more supernatural?

The story around Y49 is a pretty good one. According to internet lore, the issue was specifically with the paint, which contained radioactive elements. The radiation wasn’t enough to cause any harm on the car, but continued exposure on the assembly line allegedly caused workers to become sick. It was their vengance from beyond the grave that created the curse.

There is, of course, no real evidence of any radioactivity. And this theory is further eroded by the fact that you can currently buy a rattle-can of Y49 Barbados Yellow paint off eBay for about $50.

Where the “curse” really seems to come from is a now-defunct website called Team Why-49. Their tagline was, “Not so much a team as a support group,” and the curse seems to have been created as a sort of inside joke. Online car forums are less robust these days, but 10 to 15 years ago, they were thriving communities with members helping each other out, creating updated FAQ posts for newcomers, building how-to lists, and generally sharing enthusiasm. As is typical of internet culture, they also created a whole new framework of jokes and memes. The curse of Y49 is just one example.

It remains, however, a fun story to go with a paint code, and Y49 is a pretty attractive color. Yellow Hondas have a special significance, especially when they are the hue used by legendary Honda tuner Spoon. When Honda wanted to create a limited edition of the previous-generation Civic Type-R, it chose yellow as the color, although Phoenix Yellow rather than Barbados.

There is also a nice epilogue to this story of a supposedly cursed Honda. Despite his young age, Ouwerling already has a wide interest in cars, and he also owns a last-of-the-breed 1996 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon with the factory towing package. It’s a whale of a thing next to the little Honda, two bookends that show the variety of what the word “car” can mean.

And among the stickers on the back window of that Roadmaster is one that says, “Support your local gun owner,” with a picture of a paint gun. Ouwerling works at a bodyshop in the paint department, and he is quite skilled. In high school, he won gold at a local competition, and was then awarded the bronze in car painting at the Skills Canada National Competiton, aged just 16.

If there’s anyone who can break the curse of a Y49 Honda CRX, it’s someone who knows his way around a paint booth. For now, though, with winter on the way and plenty of projects and work to keep him busy, Ouwerling tucks his CRX back into its crypt, alongside a Chevy Silverado and a Datsun 620 with a skeleton in the driver’s seat.

As he does so, the wipers on the little Honda go berserk again, seemingly with a mind of their own. But the curse was just a story. Right?

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