You Are Not Prepared For How Effed This Honda Civic Lamborghini Aventador Looks

For nearly as long as there have been supercars, car enthusiasts have been finding cheaper ways to replicate them. Often, these replicas look cobbled together, and it’s obvious to even someone who isn’t into cars that they aren’t the real deal. Some other replicas are so good that the average person probably couldn’t tell. There’s a car out there that’s somehow both at the same time. This 2009 Honda Civic LX was done up like a Lamborghini Aventador, and it looks, we’ll say, unfortunate. Yet, at the same time, the quality of the work is stunning. I can’t stop looking at this thing.

Something that’s great about car enthusiasm is that everyone has something they’re obsessed with. Some people like supercars, some people worship the Mazda MX-5 Miata, and I know some of you out there buzz around in microcars as daily drivers. I’m right there with you; my vices are five Smart Fortwos and unreliable German cars.

Then there’s the wonderful world of kit cars, replicas, and neo-classics. All of these cars give you the gratification of building your own car, or just owning something unique if you didn’t build it yourself. You can also do wild things that the manufacturer never did. So, right from the jump, I cannot hate this 2009 Honda Civic LX. Someone probably had a whole lot of fun building it, and I have nothing but respect for that. However, I can’t get past how this thing looks. There’s so much going on from every angle!

An Atlanta Legend

The Hondborghini, as I’m calling it, is currently for sale on Cars & Bids in an auction that has four days to go. Sadly, there are no real details that accompany the listing. Someone, or maybe a shop, clearly poured a lot of work into this vehicle, yet nobody has explained exactly who did it.

I’ve done some digging, and so far as I can tell, the Civic has been in this Faux-borghini state since at least December 2020. That’s when the dealer selling this vehicle apparently took possession of it. At that time, the state of Georgia had been notified of the car’s blue color. The Civic has been living in Atlanta, Georgia, and surrounding areas for that whole time. In 2021, Autoway of Atlanta tried to sell it for $25,000.

Since then, the Lamborghonda has made regular appearances on Facebook Marketplace with a For Sale sign in its window, and at one time, a price of $35,000. Later, the vehicle would end up parked at a shop and gathering dust. I called the number on the For Sale sign and received no answer.

Throughout all of this time, the car’s become a bit of a local legend. It has shown up on car spotter pages, on Reddit, and all over Facebook. It seems if you live in Atlanta or a nearby suburb, you might have seen this thing before.

The closest thing I’ve found to a story about this car is a Reddit post where someone allegedly called the same number I just did, and the person on the other line apparently claimed that a shop built the vehicle for $52,000 to $55,000. However, this person also allegedly claimed that their wife was making them sell it because women follow him home. Likewise, the person supposedly had an entire custom racing suspension fitted to this car, which won’t make any sense when you see more pictures of this car.

The current seller of the car is Worst Spec, your favorite social media account that posts weird and wacky custom cars. It’s unclear what connection Worst Spec has to the car, so I reached out and hope to get some sort of explanation of what’s going on here.

It Gets Weirder The Longer You Stare At It

Until then, let’s just bask in the madness of this thing. This car started life as an eighth-generation Honda Civic LX coupe, and has lived its entire life down south. It seems to have been a daily driver, too, as it has a whopping 132,200 miles on its odometer since getting scooped up by its first owner in 2009.

The body kit is said to replicate a Lamborghini Aventador and, just ignoring the look of it for a second, whoever did the work seemingly put some skill into it. The panel gaps seem to be even and not too huge, and the bodywork is not marred by random fasteners all over the place. I even like how the body is largely cohesive. A common sight with these faux-supercars is a front bumper that’s way higher than the side skirts or vice versa. This isn’t perfect, but I’ve seen worse.

My only real complaint about the body is the self-tappers holding on the rear splitter. Also, why yes, those are the headlights from a final-generation Toyota Celica.

The paint job is also pretty decent, all things considered. Obviously, imperfections aren’t going to show up well in compressed photos on a website, but it looks like whatever shop did the work performed a quality job. I don’t see any major runs, marred areas, or places where the finish isn’t as glossy as it should be.

That said, things get a little rough in some of the closer shots. In the image below, for example, you can see that the fiberglass skin for the driver door is cracking and separating, with the paint chipping off at the edges.

There’s also overspray on the driver mirror. To be fair to whoever built this, the cracking could be from neglect or hitting a curb. Further overspray can be found on the vehicle’s data plate in the driver door sill.

While we’re here, check out the mechanism used to convert the Civic’s conventional doors into scissor doors!

The interior was done up to match the exterior, sort of. The builder tossed in some quilted leather seats and random bits covered in blue Alcantara, but did nothing for the clearly Honda Civic dashboard. The worn dashboard plastic and the well-used steering wheel only add to how silly this car is.

Then there’s the powertrain. I hope you weren’t expecting any changes there. It’s still a front-wheel-drive Civic. Power comes from a 1.8-liter four with 140 horsepower and 128 lb-ft of torque on tap.

Unfortunately, a manual is not present, either. The builder did at least spice up the drivetrain with a center-exit exhaust. Now, you will want to refrain from racing anyone driving anything faster than a Smart Fortwo, because any car that can hit 60 mph in under 9.8 seconds will leave you in the dust.

There’s additional fun under the car. Remember how I said the alleged seller explained this car had a custom racing suspension? Right, so it does look like someone installed lowering springs. Then, they must have discovered that the car was too low, because they then installed spring spacers to lift the car back up. I love it.

There are other cheap decisions to be found around the car, too, like the classic EverStart Walmart battery under the hood, and the Delinte Thunder D7 tires with 2018 date codes on them. I’ve never even heard of Delinte Tires before today, and it looks like you can get these things for under $100 per tire.

All of this adds up to a car that looks rather unfortunate, but also largely has a decent execution for what’s more or less a Civentador. Well, the car looks more like a Reventón that shrunk in the wash, but I can see the Aventador inspiration. I just can’t stop looking at the thing and marveling at what’s clearly a lot of hard work just to end up with this result. It’s all so wrong and so right at the same time.The amazing part is that this isn’t even the only time this has happened. Someone in India also turned a 2009 Honda Civic into a Hondborghini.

I Can’t Hate It

I suppose the perfect buyer for this car is someone who wants to drive this thing around as a big joke. Nobody is going to think this is a real Lamborghini, but it’s so ridiculous and so over the top that I bet people would get a big laugh out of it. I could see myself parking it next to a real Lamborghini and pretending it’s the same thing.

If that sort of novelty sounds like fun to you, bidding is at only $4,000 with four days to go on Cars & Bids. I have a feeling that this one isn’t going to break sales records.

Even though this car looks all sorts of goofy, I have massive respect for whoever built this. I always raise my glass to someone who can see a project through to the end, even if it isn’t to my tastes. Someone did just that here, and weirdly, didn’t do that bad of a job. So, whoever you are, you’re just as skilled as you are mad. But maybe your next Faux-borghini should be built on something like a Toyota MR2.

Top graphic image: Ethan – @amazingcars_atl/Cars & Bids Listing