Meet Snow Ball: 1998 Honda Civic Type R EK9

Not every car in the Ball Pit needs a cage, a lap timer or a trailer.

Snow Ball is my 1998 Japanese-market Honda Civic Type R EK9. It is not a rental car, and it is not the next competition build waiting for a rulebook. It is a mostly original street car that I take to cars-and-coffee events and drive on weekends when I want to remember why I loved small Hondas long before Ball Pit Motorsports existed.

I have owned faster cars. I have built cars with longer parts lists. Snow Ball means more to me for a different reason.

I could have celebrated a major business milestone by buying a new luxury car. Instead, I bought a memory.

White 1998 Honda Civic Type R EK9 Snow Ball parked in Texas.

Snow Ball is a largely original 1998 Japanese-market Honda Civic Type R EK9—and the quieter side of the Ball Pit.

The Space Pod Came First

In 1999, I got my first car: a purple EK hatchback with a base-model interior, manual windows and a manual transmission I only kind of knew how to use.

I told my parents my friends had taught me to drive stick. That was generous. I knew I wanted a manual, but the drive home included a lot of stalling and two very nervous parents. I kept at it and taught myself.

That purple hatch became the Space Pod. It carried me through college, became the setting for a lot of firsts and never really left my life. I never sold it.

For American Honda kids in the late 1990s, the EK9 Civic Type R was almost mythical. Honda never sold it here. We received the Acura Integra Type R, while tuner kids tried to make ordinary Civic hatches resemble the Japanese Type R they saw in magazines, videos and imported parts catalogs.

Years later, when I finally had the chance to buy the real thing, I was not shopping for the most impressive car I could afford. I was reconnecting with the car culture that shaped me.

Roshan’s purple Honda Civic EK hatchback, nicknamed the Space Pod, which inspired his later purchase of Snow Ball. The purple Space Pod was my first car, my introduction to manual transmissions and the reason an EK9 still felt special decades later.

Buying a Car—and a Memory

Snow Ball arrived at the end of an important chapter in my professional life. After a major milestone with Nexus PMG, I wanted to mark the moment with something personal.

Many people might have bought a new Porsche or another polished modern performance car. I chose a 25-year-old Honda in Japan that I had never seen in person.

On November 6, 2023, I bought the Championship White EK9 sight unseen with help from a U.S. broker. That sounds reckless when written in one sentence. It also made perfect sense to me.

The purchase was part reward, part nostalgia and part leap of faith. The car represented the purple hatch I had loved, the tuner culture I grew up around and the career milestone that made the purchase possible. It would always connect those chapters.

White Honda Civic Type R EK9 photographed in Japan before being imported to the United States.

The first look at Snow Ball in Japan—before shipping, registration and the long wait to drive it.

From Japan to Dallas

Buying Snow Ball was the easy part. Getting it home required the broker, preparation work in Japan, international shipping, import paperwork, and then the less glamorous work of making an unfamiliar Japanese-market car legal, registered, and insured in Texas.

Before the car shipped, we handled several cleanup items in Japan. Snow Ball then made the long trip to the United States—including a voyage through the Panama Canal—before arriving in Dallas on January 23, 2024.

I drove it for the first time on February 1.

That first drive closed a loop that had been open since 1999. The view through the windshield felt familiar, but the car underneath me was the version that teenage Honda enthusiasts had once treated like forbidden fruit: right-hand drive, close-ratio five-speed, limited-slip differential and the high-revving B16B.

Snow Ball reached Dallas on January 23, 2024. I drove it for the first time nine days later.

What Makes an EK9 Special

The EK9 was the first Civic to wear the Type R badge. Honda took an ordinary three-door Civic shell and turned it into a focused performance car with additional chassis work, less sound insulation, a close-ratio five-speed transmission, a helical limited-slip differential and the B16B engine.

The 1.6-liter naturally aspirated DOHC VTEC four-cylinder produced roughly 182 horsepower and rewarded commitment rather than shortcuts. Peak power arrived above 8,000 rpm. There was no turbocharger to fill in the middle and no modern electronics trying to make every input smooth.

You had to rev it. You had to shift it. You had to participate.

That combination is exactly why the EK9 still matters. On paper, modern cars are quicker. From the driver’s seat, the EK9 makes ordinary speeds feel like an event.

For a deeper technical history of the platform, read this EK9 Type R overview.

Preservation Became the Build

Most Ball Pit vehicles invite a build list. Snow Ball has taught me the opposite lesson.

The car arrived with a few Japanese aftermarket changes, including a small steering wheel and modified headlight and stereo wiring. Rather than stacking on more parts, I began unwinding those changes. I sourced an original steering wheel from Japan, removed unnecessary wiring, refinished the original Championship White wheels and adapted the battery terminals for a U.S.-market battery.

The main concession to modern life is a Bluetooth and Apple CarPlay head unit. The speakers are old and need attention, but having navigation and music makes the car easier to enjoy without changing what it is.

Snow Ball is not a perfect museum car. The paint shows its age. That may actually be useful, because I do not feel as though every drive risks damaging an artifact. I would like to refinish the paint eventually, but I also want to keep driving it.

The goal is not to turn Snow Ball into something faster.

The goal is to keep it recognizably Snow Ball.

Original Honda Civic Type R EK9 steering wheel sourced from Japan for Snow Ball’s return toward factory specification.

Much of Snow Ball’s “build” has involved removing aftermarket parts and finding the correct Honda pieces.

The Starter That Became a Parts Lesson

Owning a rare imported car becomes most educational when a normal part stops being normal.

In April 2026, I was preparing to take Snow Ball to a cars-and-coffee event when it would not start. A jump did nothing, and the symptoms pointed to the starter.

Removing it was only the beginning. The B16B uses a starter configuration that looks close to several U.S.-market B-series parts but does not share the same bolt pattern. A replacement that appeared correct would not bolt on.

I eventually found a Dallas rebuilder who combined the usable components from the replacement with Snow Ball’s original housing. On June 27, the custom refurbishment worked and the engine fired again.

It was a small failure by race-car standards. It was also a perfect JDM ownership lesson: research before ordering, keep the original part and do not assume that “B-series” means interchangeable.

The solution was not overnight shipping. It was a local person willing to understand the problem and rebuild what we already had.

Why Snow Ball?

The name came after Ball Pit Motorsports existed.

I considered carrying Space Pod forward, but the name belonged to the purple hatch and did not fit the Ball Pit. The EK9 was white, Snow Ball sounded right and that was enough.

There is no elaborate naming mythology. Sometimes the obvious answer wins.

An IYKYK Kind of Car

One of my favorite parts of owning Snow Ball is watching people recognize it.

It is not flashy to everyone. To most traffic, it is an old white Civic. But every so often a former 1990s tuner kid—often now driving a minivan—will pull alongside, roll down a window and yell, “Is that real?”

That is the audience Snow Ball speaks to.

It is also why the car belongs in the Ball Pit even though it does not race. Motorsports enthusiasm is bigger than lap times. It includes the car that taught you to drive stick, the platform you studied before you could afford it, the friends who recognize an obscure badge and the stories that survive long after the newest car stops being new.

Snow Ball reminds me of childhood, college, persistence and a professional milestone. It gives me a reason to take the long way home.

I am glad I bought it instead of the fancy Porsche.

I only wish I drove it more.

Snow Ball, a white Honda Civic Type R EK9, parked with The First Ball Mazda Miata. Snow Ball connects the Honda story that came first with the Ball Pit story that followed.