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By Dan NeilLATimes.com
January 11, 2006
Tina is my wife and -- setting aside her taste in husbands -- she has very good judgment. While I ponder the Confucian mysteries of things like caster angle and shift throws, for the Tina-meter it's all about comfort, security and serenity in the passenger seat. Yes, yes, your electroluminescent gauges and dials are all very pretty, but for me the Tina-meter is the most important readout in a car. If Tina arrives in a bad mood, well, my day isn't going to get any better, is it? Among the now hundreds of test cars we've shared, few have so righteously buried the Tina-meter's "I-hate-this-car" needle as the Honda Civic Si, the high-revving Civic variant that drives like the result of an unholy congress between a Civic and a Cuisinart. The 2006 Civic sedan, by the way, was just named Car of the Year at the North American International Auto Show by an august jury of automotive journalists -- many of whom bravely pushed away from the shrimp buffet to vote -- and the entire Civic line was also voted Motor Trend's Car of the Year. It's safe to assume the Civic has something going for it, the Tina-meter notwithstanding. This is the eighth generation of the Civic, which is perennially the bestselling compact car in America. The Civic comes in four flavors: a sedan and coupe powered by a thrifty 140-hp four-cylinder and five-speed manual or automatic transmission; the amazing Civic hybrid, reviewed in these pages a couple of months ago; and the Si, which comes from the factory with a truly dope rear spoiler, aero cladding, socket-like sports seats and a helical-type limited-slip differential between the front wheels, about which you'll hear more later. One thing I love about Honda is that the company does not make safety a pay-extra proposition. Front, front-side and side air bags are standard equipment on all Civics, as well as four-channel ABS. The company has also quietly developed something called Advanced Compatibility Engineering (ACE), which involves crushable structures in the upper front of the car to fend off blows from taller and heavier vehicles. This helps mitigate the knife-to-a-gunfight implications of driving a small car in the land of Escalades and Cayennes. The Civic has good bones. Yet the Si reminds me how great a distance can intervene between the two front seats, the difference between drivability and ride-ability. From the driver's chair, the Si is an endless source of infantile thrills, a high-fructose sports compact with all the yank and snatch of a tuned autocross racer. Think psychotic hamster. From the passenger seat, however, the car is kind of awful -- loud and ungenerous and frantic, endlessly seesawing over 1-2 and 2-3 gearshifts. The sport-tuned suspension is leathery and the "tuned" intake system, routed through the fender well for more wailing resonance, performs exploratory surgery until it finds your last nerve, and then gets on it. I suspect a case of overcompensation. The previous generation Si -- a hatchback -- was not much loved by the sport compact crowd; the new car is everything a wheel-burning Turk could want. Compared with the stock Civic coupes and sedans, the Si has stiffer springs and dampers and larger sway bars, as well as big and sticky, 17-inch Michelin Pilot tires. All of this plays against a canvas of the Civic line's overall improved dynamics related to changes in the front-end geometry. The steering link has been relocated lower and closer to the hub axis for better feel; caster angle is increased to give the car more self-centering behavior at high speed; and new aluminum front hubs lessen unsprung weight. Sure enough, the Si corners like a weasel in a drainpipe. It turns in instantly, gathers itself into a posture of easy, neutral grip, and just hangs on. The steering is light, precise, quick. The brakes exquisite. If you commute to work on a go-cart track, this is your car. At the heart of the Si is an insanely revving 2.0-liter inline four-cylinder with Honda's variable valve timing and lift gear, which can be thought of as computerized cylinder heads. This exceptional piece of motor craft produces 197 horsepower at a low-orbit 7,800 rpm and between 120 and 139 pound-feet of torque between 3,000 and 8,000 rpm -- for a four-cylinder engine this is as flat a torque curve as you'll find anywhere. Also packed under the hood of this front-driver is a short-throw, close-ratio six-speed manual transmission. Downstream of that is the car's final drive gear with a 4.765 ratio. That last number may not mean much to you, but it has a very definite effect on the Tina-meter. A final drive ratio represents a trade-off between acceleration and gear range: the higher the ratio, the quicker the acceleration and the narrower the range of speed for any one gear. The Honda's 4.765 final-drive ratio is about as radical as I've seen in a production car (the stock Civic five-speed is 4.294), which means -- stay with me here -- that while the car scats aggressively in any gear, it requires a lot of shifting because the gear range is so narrow. Add to that the close set of the transmission gears and you have a car that requires more stirring than 10-year-old house paint. This wouldn't be a problem but for the fact that the engine flywheel just refuses to slow down between shifts, which is to say, the engine rpm hang in the stratosphere: hunnnnnnnggggggg-a-ding-a-ding-a, etc. This means that gear shifts must be accompanied by the most feathered clutch work possible or else the car will lurch awkwardly, bouncing the Tina-meter's do off the headrest. Don't mess with the do. It's not that the Civic Si is a bad car; it's a good car with the wick turned up too high. If I'm alone in the car, I'm more than happy to tolerate the punchy and overwound quality in exchange for its quite ridiculous handling. The Civic Si has much to recommend it, including a terrific optional nav system, great seats and an instrument panel out of "Blade Runner." The car is also just gorgeous to look at. And yet, if you could sue a car, I'd sue this one for alienation of affection. Automotive critic Dan Neil can be reached at dan.neil@latimes.com. - - - 2006 Honda Civic Si Base price: $19,990 Price, as tested: $21,740 Powertrain: 2.0-liter, 16-valve inline four cylinder with variable valve timing and lift; six-speed manual transmission; limited-slip center differential; front-wheel drive Horsepower: 197 at 7,800 rpm Torque: 139 pound-feet at 6,200 rpm Curb weight: 2,877 pounds 0-60 mph: 7 seconds Wheelbase: 104.3 inches Overall length: 174.8 inches EPA fuel economy: 22 miles per gallon Final thoughts: Bachelor party
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