One problem that comes up frequently when I’m, say, disassembling a complicated German dashboard to extract a cool car clock from my local self-service car boneyard is that there’s no good place to set your toolbox in a junkyard. Fortunately, the first-generation Honda CR-V, sold here for the 1997 through 2001 model years, comes with a spare-tire cover that doubles as a little folding table, and those cars have— finally— begun to wear out (Hondas tend to hold together for maddeningly long periods on the street) and show up in junkyards in large numbers.
Just as was the case with the Pontiac Aztek a bit later, the North American marketing for the CR-V emphasized its civilization-in-the-outdoors appeal. Would you rather chow down on a crunchy, bug-juice-packed cicada in the steaming jungle… or eat fried fish from a CR-V picnic table and then look sharp after a fresh shave?
I extracted a CR-V table at my local U-Pull-&-Pay a couple of years ago, just to use as a place to set my toolbox, and then I decided that such a useful little table deserved to go home with me.
Most self-service junkyards have standardized price lists, so that you pay the same for a door yanked from a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith as you would for one from a Daihatsu Charade. Since this table is a spare-tire cover, the price was just $4.99 with no core charge; keep in mind that the interpretation of the junkyard cashier as to a CR-V table’s definition may vary with the attitude of the cashier that day, which is why it pays to be memorably nice to all junkyard employees you meet.
I worked at the Colorado 24 Hours of Lemons race last weekend, and our physical-distancing regulations meant that we couldn’t have the traditional potluck dinner in the paddock on Saturday night. That made the CR-V table ideal for cooking a solo meal of soup on my Coleman stove. Next time I’ll bring my Aztek center-console cooler.
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