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The sportiest Honda Civic you can buy, of course, is the Type R — a stripped-down, track-oriented, 306-horsepower hot hatchback. The S, in contrast, is the sportier Civic — slotting between that bewinged sports car and the standard model. Unlike the Type R, the Si is a sedan or coupe, not a hatch; it puts out 101 fewer horsepower; and the styling is markedly less turnt. Most importantly, it also costs around $11,000 less than the Type R.
Honda gave the Civic Si a facelift for the 2020 model year, but it does not alter much: tweaked bumpers, LED lights, more driving assistant tech and a shorter final drive ratio to improve acceleration a bit. But in this case, minimal substantive changes are a good thing. For a hair above $25,000, Honda may have the best value driver’s car on the market, undercutting both the Volkswagen GTI and the Mazda MX-5 Miata on price — and those minor tweaks only add to the value.
The Civic Si is fun to drive — sometimes too fun.
Look, your jaw won’t smack against the tabletop when I tell you about the Civic Si’s potent 1.5-liter four-pot that delivers 205 hp and 192 lb-ft of torque. But, as with the Toyota 86/Subaru BRZ, power output isn’t everything. The Civic Si amps up the fun parts of driving. It has a short-throw six-speed manual; plus, the engine makes a lot of the right kind of noises, and comes to life higher in the rev range. The Civic Si begs you to hoon it around like some sort of reprobate.
The only drawback to the Civic Si is there’s no chill mode. You have to be engaged and ready to run, even when you just forgot to buy coffee and need to make an early-morning Starbucks run.
