Faults:

Clutch cable snapped.. but managed to crash the box all the way home.

Occasionally leaks water from around the pump.. strange, but true.. it sorts itself out.

Nothing serious has ever gone wrong with this car.. ever.. it spends most of it's time commuting.. sprinting from one set of lights to another.. although there are signs of the clutch starting to slip when accelerating hard.

General Comments:

Interior is quite nice in half leather. Air con and power windows. Although it's a bit basic by todays standards.. not a single cup holder or curry hook!

The Rover badge must put most people off this car.

It must be my age, but I love it. Very quick off the mark if you can get traction, but suffers from torque steer quite badly.

Top speed.. when you can get near it.. is fairly astounding for age and price of these cars.. talk about bang for your bucks.

Faults:

The rear arm bushes had to be replaced with third party urethane bushes as they had completely ripped apart.

The alternator gave up and the lack of battery charge caused the computer to over-boost and blow the throttle body hose off.

The turbo coolant hose kept leaking, although that may have been an earlier repair issue.

The idler gear bearing in gearbox is noisy and needs overhauling. I'll probably fix it with a new Integra box. The Tomcat box takes very little more than the standard 200BHP and will die with any performance modifactions.

The interior trim - as an ex-Asia import to NZ - had received little attention by its first NZ owner and the leather is suffering.

The clutch cable needed lubrication, as it was real stiff. Some HHS2000 fixed this, though a hydraulic conversion would be a better idea.

The gear change was real sloppy, so a Honda Civic short shift assembled with old Prelude parts fixed this really nicely.

General Comments:

I bought the car at pretty high mileage, and it has taken a fair amount of work to get it going nice. The suspension and differential work really nicely, but only when inherent faults have been addressed.

The stereo was pretty shocking, and throwing some Sony 6x9s in the back and some 6"s with a good headunit has made it heaps better. The Japanese market version, which is all you can get in New Zealand, is pretty nice with leather interior and air-conditioning, although the key attractors are the performance and handling.

This car is a modders dream, becuase most Honda parts will bolt on if you try, and once the gearbox is made stronger by some modification, the W/T25 Garrett, 2.5" exhaust and other parts make squeezing another 50BHP out of the car really easy.

It does around 400ks to the tank if you drive normally, and if you are careful, you could probably do around 500. Thrashing the car will only result in low economy and a broken diff.

Faults:

Clutch cable

Differential.

Valves.

General Comments:

This car is a very quick car. The handling is very very good. It has all the usual tricks, but the engine is a real negative. If the engine is running well, then the car is unstoppable, but if the engine is running badly, get out your cash book.

If you are looking for a car like this, buy as new as possible, 1996 was the last and best year, and low k's.

Faults:

Alternator failure at 40,000km.

General Comments:

An extremely underrated hot hatch with performance that can embarrass more expensive and exotic cars. Fun to drive quickly and very sedate around town when required.

Spacious, well laid out and comfortable cabin with masses of boot space, especially with the rear seats folded down.

Reliability and relative cheapness to run makes it one of the best cars I have owned to date.