Why am I repairing over 25 years old Honda?

I have no reason to ask this question from myself anymore. Repairing this kind of a car in Finland these days can be pain in the ass. Parts are very rare and hard to find. Ebay is one source but getting parts from Germany, USA and UK usually costs more than they are worth... Happily there is always some rusted garbage piles were you can find parts. So why am I fixing this instead of getting newer, faster, and more reliable car?

It's because this car belonged to a friend that died of leukemia in 2012. I still feel that this is his car not mine.
Every time I drive this car by myself I can't help thinking about Aki.

He spent insane amount of money and time to this car. I know what this car meant to him and I teased him very much about it. "How long are you going to keep that car? You could have bought a Silvia or 180 with amount of money you have spent into that thing?"

He asked me to buy this car from him in June 2012 a week before he died. That it wouldn't become a burden to his parents.

The first photo was taken in the morning just after I heard that he had died. Looking at this car was hard for me many weeks after that. Now I think I must keep this awesome car running. It's becoming very rare model. You can see 4th and 5th generation models one in a week but 3rd... I have seen one a in year!

I started this blog because there is huge a project to get this car back on the road again. My girlfriend drove Prelude off the road on her way to work in May.

When I looked at the car after the crash I was happy that my girlfriend was fine and she didn't drive over 60km/h off the road. The front bumper was busted. Same for the radiator and hood. Plus many other little things.
But still after I had examined the damage I thought "of course I'll fix this. This won't be the end of the story".
After tearing down almost everything that was broken the car looked very sad.

I started looking at the parts and realized that I have to buy another Prelude to get the parts I needed.
Happily I found another very rusted Prelude but it had most parts I needed.

Now I can fix my friends precious car.

Aki I miss you.

Allu

PS:
You can follow the project from this blog from here. (Finnish Honda forum)
You can read Aki's last project with this car from here (same forum)