From the factory Civic VX front grill block
 

I don't know if it has been discussed on the forum before, but I was looking foward to block my front grill on my VX. But suprise suprise, it has already plastic blocking, a would say 75 % at least of the grill. The only place that isnt block is for the connector of the block heater. Even the 2 air entry at the extremity are blocked. I would like to know if all the VX are like that.

Anayway I was really pleased to see that and once again, I don't regreat to own this civic over a SI let say...

Can you post a picture for us to see ?

my old kadett also has the top two grill rows backed off from the back...
some other cars also come with a partial factory grill block on some models that's a bit more obvious...

like the citro?n c2 or the audi A2..

https://www.fuelly.com/attachments/fo...1622147c2f.jpg
https://www.fuelly.com/attachments/fo...a772bf317f.jpg

still there's something visually resembling a grill on most cars even if the actual ar intake is located somewhere different...

This actually says and shows a lot about automobile design and marketing. There's less and less need for a grill where one has "always" been, but they keep putting it there anyway. One day soon we may see a black or chrome panel there, with no grill at all.

Same with rear wheel cutouts. Full skirts would be more efficient overall. Removable wheel skirts would be easy to manufacture. But they make wheel cutouts because we expect them. Dang.

that thin plastic grill block is listed in the honda parts list as a stock part, it wasn't very well made so they often came off I think, and if the car had A/C then it didn't have it at all.

I picked up some wing nuts at Menards recently, so I can convert my 66.67% grill block into a ~100% one when the weather gets cold, by adding the center aluminum sheet panel in an easy-to-remove configuration. I am really excited to see the mercury dropping. Perhaps I will put up some photos sometime.

I believe they blocked the grills on the late 80's cars; i can see an Olds and a Ford Tempo in my head, with solid "grills". I'll see if I can snap a pick next time I see one. I'm sure they reverted to real grills because, as Bruce said, 'we expect them".

Note the fake grills on the Citroen and Audi above - A waste of material and probably extra weight, but they look like "we expect them".

i've noticed this too... these cars seemed to have much smaller to almost no grills comlpared to curent examples... does this mean modern grills are oversized. is it because airco is more common or are modern engines getting hotter? i don't know


yes and no. at least the citroen is also available with a full grill depending on the engine. and i believe the audi too, although i'm not fully sure on that one. it's a good thing they block them of... just keeping the full grill would be easier for the manifacturer, but i'm quite sure manifacturers are aware of the benefits of grillblocks so it's virtually free preformance and emission improvements for them to list. this also shows that a grillblock is something to put fairly high on the list of "gassaving mods" one can do.

on the other hand both cars have their "main" grill in the lower bumper wich is a good place but it's still a big hole, and not much smaller than the average car grill... both cars could have a normal sized air intake and achieve a very smooth frontal section with little effort... yet it would lack "character" wich is a bigger selling point than a cd of 0.25 (wich the audi has btw )

on the other hand it seems peoples idea of what a car should look like is some sort of distorted caricature of a 30- 50's car. chrome, big grills, shiny wheels covered by big arches.

most radical concept cars with super low Cd's are very often regarded as ugly.

it's frustrated how people collectively seem to make the wrong choises based on "expectations" and esthetic impressions in a time when science and information are so readily available with so little effort.

In the late 80/early 90's, car manufacturers were still concerned about getting good mpg, so with some models (Saturn, Civic) they eliminated the traditional grill openings above the bumper and retained only the grill openings below the bumper. As we went into the 90's, they stopped being concerned about mileage and went back to the traditional grill style.

The traditional style grill opening is the size optimum for the less efficient, low-pressure radiator/mechanical fan setups they had in the 20's and 30's (when a radiator overheating and boiling over was not unusual in very hot weather or when climbing a steep hill at low speed) so a lot of radiator area was desirable in that era. But modern cars with their more efficient, high-pressure radiator/fan setups require only a fraction of the traditional radiator area and opening.

It is interesting comparing the 92-95 Civic, which only had a below bumper grill opening and got mid 40's mpg, to the 96-99 Civic, which had a traditional radiator and got mid 30's mpg. Also compare the grill openings of the VW Jetta and Golf to that of the new Beetle, all 3 models of which have the same engine options. The Jetta/Golf have the traditional grill, whereas the Beetle, which is mimiking the appearance of the grill-less, air cooled "bug", has only a small grill opening below the bumper.

Another interesting variation of grill opening is that found on the 90's Camaro, whose radiator opening would be hard for the average person to locate. The opening is a thin slot on the upwind side of the air dam under the nose of the car.

Does anyone have a picture of the stock VX grill block?