MT GARAGE
Arrival: 2020 Honda Civic Si
EPA City/Hwy/Comb Fuel Econ
26/36/30 mpg
“Seems I always miss out when we have a Civic in our fleet. This time, finally, the keys are mine.”
Scott Evans
Base Price $25,930 As Tested $26,130
Fun, practical, affordable, and fleeting, a Civic Si joins our long-term fleet.
Sometimes in this line of work, there’s that one car you just never seem to drive. Not some million-dollar exotic no one else will drive, either, but something totally normal and common. For me, that bogey always seems to be a Honda Civic. The universe has made a sudden course correction because I’m now responsible for our Honda Civic Si HPT sedan for the next few months.
In keeping with the pattern, though, I won’t be driving this one a full year. Let’s see what we have to work with then.
It’s a short and sweet list, but it requires a little decoding. The Si is Honda’s storied midtier performance subbrand, focused more on handling and driver involvement than raw power. In this case, it means the 1.5-liter turbocharged I-4 has been tuned up from 174 to 205 hp, and it only comes connected to a six-speed manual transmission. Crammed in the middle of that gearbox is a limited-slip differential and a slightly shorter final drive ratio, helping put the power down better and improving acceleration. Stuffed under each corner of the car are adjustable adaptive dampers. All in all, that is some pretty serious hardware for a car in the Civic’s price class.
At each corner are the high-performance tires that account for the HPT part of the name. In this case, that’s not a euphemism. Honda has fitted Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2 tires, the same tire fitted to a 455-hp Camaro SS. As pure summer performance tires, they come with an explicit warning not to drive on them if it’s snowy or icy. To you, that might sound a little overkill for a compact family sedan with barely more than 200 hp, but you haven’t driven a Civic Si. When cars handle well, they need tires that can keep up.
Honda typically makes each trim level of a
