THE 2025 HONDA CIVIC SI GETS BETTER WITH AGE

Now in its 11th generation, the Civic Si is just as good as it’s always been.

The 2025 Honda Civic Si is "new" in the same way that the New Year is new: With every flip of the calendar, we strive to make each year at least slightly better than the last. The 2025 Civic Si, like the New Year, is a minor evolution of what already exists. It’s the car you’ve always known, but improved. That’s what makes it great. 

The Honda Civic Si has been around since 1986 and sits right below the top-end, 315-horsepower Type R performance model. The Si looks and feels like a Civic in most respects, but unlike the pricier Type R, it gives enthusiasts a more practical performance option. For 2025, the Civic Si starts at $29,950.

The Civic nameplate is in its 11th generation, and just like last year, the 2025 Civic Si has 200 horsepower and 192 pound-feet of torque from a turbocharged 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine. Also like last year, there’s a standard helical limited-slip differential and a six-speed manual transmission sending power to the front wheels. There’s no automatic transmission available, and there are no foundation-shaking changes from the last car—just tweaks in the right direction. 

The most-relevant updates include a revised rev-match system to cover downshifts from second gear to first, along with a new 10.2-inch digital driver-instrument cluster that adds shift-indicator lights from the Type R. Parts of the suspension, subframe, and doors are more rigid than the outgoing Si, with “retuned suspension dampers [to] take advantage of increased body stiffness,” Honda says. 

The Civic Si comes in four colors for 2025: red, black, white, and gray (pictured, and new for this year). The white and gray cost $455 extra, while the black and red are standard colors. Get the red.

Pros: Looks Great, Drives Even Better

I’ve driven many iterations of the Civic Si and Type R, and each time, the experience feels familiar yet novel. The novelty isn’t in their evolution, because they don’t change that much. It’s the fact that each time I drive an Si or Type R, I remember how practical and accessible some performance cars can be. 

The Si is a blast to drive. It’s quick but not earth-shatteringly fast, stiff enough to enjoy every corner, and comfortable enough to drive every day. The shifter has a light, buttery throw with a teeny thunk as it passes into each new gear. The steering feels weighted and responsive, gliding into each corner while not being overly twitchy for a daily driver. 

The Si is almost as fun to drive in a city as it is on a twisty rural two-lane, because the beauty of a hot hatch is that it’s meant for every road. Flipping the car into sport mode and putting my foot to the floor in second gear makes me cackle every time. The limited-slip differential puts the power down, and the Si leaps forward.

The new shift-indicator lights adopted from the Type R, which light up yellow and red based on RPM to indicate when to upshift, make slamming the car into gear feel like a movie getaway scene. The only thing missing is a physical handbrake—instead, the Si has a button.

The Si is also fun (or at least tolerable) for passengers. The pedals are so easy to work that, for someone who drives stick regularly, it feels almost impossible to kill. Even if you killed it, the Si wouldn’t lurch to a halt—it would just quietly die on you, waiting for you to press the start-stop button to try again. If you don’t feel like rev-matching on your own, using the Si’s perfectly smooth automated rev-match system means your passengers don’t have to endure a choppy jolt when you misshift. 

The Si has three driving modes: Normal, Sport, and Individual. Their names and functions are straightforward, but there’s a new feature in Individual mode for 2025: If you want to turn off the enhanced engine noise in the cabin and listen to your little turbo-four scream without help, you can. 

Cons: The Interior Isn't Perfect

A lot of car enthusiasts don’t like when automakers pump enhanced (or fake) engine noise into the cabin, but I don’t mind. It makes driving more immersive, like seeing a movie in IMAX versus watching it on your couch. As dead-quiet electric performance cars become the norm, we’ll need more of it to feel that same immersion. 

Styling-wise, the Si follows its usual blueprint: The exterior has slight tweaks to indicate that it’s a sportier model (namely, the red “Si” badges). The interior has five cloth seats. Red fabric seats and Si stitching up front pair to plain black rear seats.

There’s red trim on the dashboard and a herringbone pattern around the shifter and cup holders, and the car has red contrast stitching all over, including on the shift knob. The door cards are a mixture of hard black plastic and a red-and-black cloth pattern that matches the front seats. 

The interior of the Si looks great, but I worry about how porous the materials are. There’s loosely stitched cloth everywhere, which makes the car more prone to absorbing dust and dirt. My car, which had less than 500 miles on the odometer, already had a big dust spot on the center console cover. (There are also piano-black surfaces inside, which are grease and dust magnets as well.) 

The Civic Si’s front seats are comfortable, but because they’re flat-backed instead of having a headrest that pokes out a bit, I found myself leaning my head forward a lot. It wasn’t as ergonomic as I wanted it to be. 

The backseat in the Si is workable, even if it’s not the most glamorous. I’m 5-foot-8, and I had a few inches of legroom with the front seats slid back. But there are no air vents back there, and the backs of the front seats are thin cloth—meaning if anyone back there has a sharp object, they may poke a hole or two in them. 

The Honda Civic Si isn’t perfect, but as the cost of cars continues to rise, getting a new, manual-only performance hatch for just under $30,000 remains a great deal. If every new Si aims to become a slight improvement upon its predecessor, this one is a success. 

Competitors

• Hyundai Elantara N
• Volkswagen Jetta GLI

More Reviews

• The 2025 Honda Civic Is a Love Letter to Hybrid Cars
• The 2025 Volkswagen Jetta GLI Is a Last Bastion of Affordable Fun

2025 Honda Civic Si
Engine	Turbocharged 1.5-Liter Four-Cylinder
Transmission	Six-Speed Manual
Output	200 Horsepower / 192 Pound-Feet
Drive Type	Front-Wheel Drive
Base Price	$29,950

2024-09-17T13:23:02Z dg43tfdfdgfd