2009 Honda Civic Si Coupe Review

2009 Honda Civic Si Coupe Review Honda doesn't really do any macho cars. This is about as hot as it gets. That's okay. This is the Civic Si Coupe with navigation. Let's check it out. Now, the first thing that strikes me about this car is the roof on the side of my head. There's really limited head room in this guy. I guess it’s the price you pay for being arguably the sleekest roofline in its class but it still hurts. We happen to have a Civic Si with navigation package. Bottom line is we've got the nav. There it is. It is also voice command, so you can talk to it and tell it what to do. It's also a touch screen as you can see and it's close enough to be useable. I'm still not happy with the map resolution. I haven't been for a couple of years. This is in an era when we have iPhones and BlackBerrys’ and high-def TVs that all have superfine res. This just looks old and stale to me. This is also a premium audio system. In case you forget that, it's in really huge type right there on the top of the frame but it does have a lot of sources, and that has been revised and made more modern since a couple of recent Hondas we've looked at. Let's go through our various audio sources. Of course we have FM radio, AM radio, no HD radio. XM is your choice optionally. We have that activated here. Again, good display, rapid channel acquisition. It works well if it's a little bit crude in its look; it's not in its function. CD is a single-slot CD back here. Place for one disc. You can add an 8-disc changer optionally outboard but just one with the nav unit. But then after CD, it gets interesting/goofy, we have the PC Card. You saw that when I had the door down, right? I'm never going use that, are you? Yeah, I know I can get an adapter, but what? Aux is interesting. Two positions there, one is USB. I've got that USB drive right here in the console blinking away and another aux is a true aux which is right down here for a standard cable connection. Whatever you're playing, it comes out of seven speakers. One of those is a sub, so six speakers plus one and 350 watts, pretty significant for a car this small. And by the way, the nav trim level in this car also rolls in the Bluetooth hands free, hence the buttons over here. Aside from your throbbing head, you know you're in Si thanks to the lipstick red gauge illumination and on our rally red car, it's a clever match. The 2 liter 4 in the Si does 197 horsepower but drops off to just 139 foot-pounds of torque. That's only 11 foot-pounds more than a standard Civic with a 1.8. And within your first few gears, you don't need those numbers to tell you this car is a rever, not a stump-puller. The gearbox feels good but like it needs a little use to make the moves between the gears a little more sleek and that six-speed manual is your only choice. The only real problem with this powertrain is massive RPM flow. Rev up a gear, go for the next one and you could almost count to two before the RPMs come down after you put the clutch in even though you're off the gas. It makes sporty shifting a rather slow affair, unless, you're okay with using the clutch friction plate to do brute force rev matching but I was raised better than that. Once you're in the right gear, handling is just plain fun. It reminds me of the original ads for the CRX which said “Point and shoot.” Now, our '09 Civic Si with the nav package has pretty much all the bells and whistles. 24, 5 is your base including destination. There are two dealer installed options you might consider, 8-disc CD changer. I could take it or leave it, $600.00. XM radio is $300.00 more.