Should You Still Buy A 2025 Honda Civic Si In A World Where The Hyundai Elantra N Also Exists?

The 2025 Honda Civic Si is the happy medium. It’s not too fast. It’s not too slow. It’s not too expensive, though it’s not cheap enough to get away with cutting corners. It’s new, but not so new that it’s unfamiliar. It’s manual-only, too.

The Civic Si has long been the perfect practical sports car. But as car costs and horsepower figures continue to rise, the question becomes: Can it keep up?

Why This Car Exists

The Si traditionally sits in the middle of the Civic lineup. It’s a sport-lite model that slots in above the normal commuter car, but below the 315-horsepower Type R hot hatch.

The Si nameplate launched in 1986 as a sportier version of the Civic with 91 horsepower, and “Si” stood for “Sport Injection” — originally marketing the fact that the 1986 model was the first Civic with a fuel-injected engine.

Today, the Civic Si has 200 horsepower, 192 pound-feet of torque, front-wheel drive, a turbocharger, and a six-speed manual as its only transmission option. And just like the original Si, that power comes from a 1.5-liter, four-cylinder engine.

Honda’s sold about 30 million Civics globally since the car debuted. But the masses aren’t running out to buy a manual-only Civic, especially in America. I like to think the Si and Type R still serve a valiant purpose: to give normal car buyers a reason to think the Civic is fun in every trim, because it is.

2025 Honda Civic Si: The Basics

• Price: $30,250 (base) $31,800 (as tested)
• Engine: Turbocharged 1.5-liter, four-cylinder
• Transmission: Six-speed manual 
• Drivetrain: Front-wheel drive (FWD)
• Power: 200 horsepower, 192 pound-feet of torque 
• Fuel Economy: 37 highway, 27 city, 31 combined (EPA)
• Body Style: Four-door, five-seat sedan

What It Looks Like

Every day, I ask myself: On the Si and Type R, do I like the 10th- or 11th-generation Civic styling better? Every day, my answer is different.

The 10th-gen Civic looked like a Battle Bot. It was covered in sharp angles, like the embodiment of a 12-year-old’s dream car. A lot of people didn’t like it, but I did — especially on the Type R.

The 11th-generation Civic is much more mature. It looks like an adult’s car, with softer angles and a less garish nature.

Both cars are equally cool to me, because they give people freedom to choose the body style that fits their personality. My personality is simply: “I can’t choose a favorite.”

What About The Inside?

The Civic Si’s interior isn’t revolutionary, but it is tastefully sporty. It’s almost all black, dotted with red accents: the dashboard trim, contrast stitching, shift-knob accents, cloth weaves, and Si logos. There’s a bit of piano black — a material that collects grease, scratches, and dust like there’s a gold medal on the line — but there’s no piano black on one of the highest-touch areas in the car: around the shifter and cup holders.

Instead, Honda used a classy silver-colored material with an etched herringbone pattern in that area. It’s one of my favorite piano-black substitutes, because it’s busy enough to conceal the dirt and imperfections that piano black highlights, but not so busy that it’s tacky.

But much of the Si’s interior is cloth, and I worry about how porous it is. It’s loosely stitched, and it collects dust more easily as a result. When the 2025 Si launched, I drove a car with under 500 miles on the odometer, and it had a massive dusty spot on the center-console cover. I did my best to dust it out, but didn’t get all of it.

The cloth front seats are comfortable, but because they have flat headrests (which is common in trackable cars, because they work well with helmets), I find myself leaning my head forward to compensate. That’s never a cute or ergonomic pose to hit, and I worry about my posture in the Si because of it.

The back seat is workable, even if not glamorous. There are no air vents back there, but at 5-foot-8, I at least have a few inches of legroom.

How It Drives

Mechanically, the 2025 Civic Si has a lot of similarities to the 2024. One of those similarities is the standard helical limited-slip differential for the driven front wheels. A limited-slip diff means if one front wheel has less traction than the other, the Si won’t just funnel tons of torque at it, like a lot of cars will — instead, it’ll send torque to the wheel with more traction until the other regains it. That limits slippage.

But there are some tweaks for 2025, because each new Civic Si is a minor evolution of itself. Those tweaks include: the rev-match system expanding to cover downshifts from second gear to first; updated safety tech that can better sense bikes; smoother inputs from the car while using adaptive cruise control and lane-keep assist; standard heated front seats and USB-C ports; new Google built-in with a three-year unlimited data plan; a standard 10.2-inch digital driver-instrument cluster; the shift-indicator lights from the Type R; more rigidity in the suspension, subframe, and doors; and “retuned suspension dampers take advantage of increased body stiffness.”

I believe when automakers make minor drivability tweaks like those, it’s almost impossible to notice how much better they are — or aren’t — unless you’re driving the old car back-to-back with the new one. I didn’t get to do that with the Si.

But generally, tweaks like those make the overall package that much nicer to drive. And if you’re buying a brand-new car anyway, you might as well benefit from those tweaks.

Each time I drive the Si and Type R, the experience feels familiar yet novel. The cars don’t change much, but the novelty comes from the fact that both cars remind me how practical, accessible, and fun performance can be.

The 2025 Si is all of those things. It’s not so fast that you soar past the speed limit immediately; it takes about 6.5 seconds to get from 0 to 60 mph, letting you enjoy each shift and digit change on the way up to speed. The shifter throw is light and velvety, popping into each gear with a teeny thunk, and the car floats into first gear so easily that it would be hard to stall. If you like automated rev-matching, the Si’s system is so smooth that you can climb up and down gears like a chauffeur.

The beauty of an Si is that it’s meant for any style of driving. The suspension is stiff enough to be fun on backroads without being punishing in the city, meaning the Si is almost as enjoyable (and comfortable) to drive in town as it is on a twisty rural road. The steering is weighted and responsive, gliding into each corner while not being overly twitchy for a daily driver. It has a little understeer in tight corners, but that’s to be expected from a front-wheel-drive car.

The new shift-indicator lights from the Type R add another layer of fun to the Si. They light up yellow and red based on RPMs to indicate when to upshift, and they make slamming the car into gear feel like a getaway scene in a movie (or like your sim-racing rig at home). The lights make you anticipate each shift and feel more engaged, because you want to hit the next gear at just the right time.

The only thing that’s missing in the Si is a physical handbrake, because Honda loves electronic ones now. But everything else in the Si is so fun, I can forgive that.

Does the 2025 Honda Civic Si Fulfill Its Purpose?

The Honda Civic Si has long been the bargain practical performance car. But in 2025, my biggest question is how much of a bargain it still is.

When I drove the last-generation Si in 2020, it had 205 horsepower and started at $25,200. When the 2025 Si debuted, it had 200 horsepower and started at $29,950. The price is up $5,000 in five years, which is slightly under the inflation rate.

At its debut in 2024, the 2025 Si was still a “sub-$30,000” car. That number was always a technicality, since there was also a $1,000 destination and handling fee. But when the 2025 calendar year rolled around, the base price went to $30,250 — meaning even our technicality is no more. The Si is now more than $30,000.

In isolation, I think that’s a fair price. But the snag comes in the Hyundai Elantra N: a young, 276-horsepower Type R competitor with a $34,250 base price. (I’ll embed a review of that car below.) In performance-per-dollar, the Elantra N is the better deal than either the Si or Type R. The Si’s price is creeping too close to the Elantra N to have 76 fewer horses, and the Type R’s MSRP is so high now ($45,895) that it’s in a different price bracket.

That doesn’t mean the Elantra N is for everyone. The Si and Type R are stunning cars, they’re great to drive, and they’re still good deals. The Hondas also have a long history of brand loyalty, and plenty of buyers feel more comfortable going with a model that’s been tried and tested over one that’s newer to the market.

To me, the decision comes down to whether you’re bargain shopping and where your brand allegiances lie. I’ve met plenty of car enthusiasts who always have been, and always will be, Honda people. And they’ll love the new Si. But I’ve also met plenty of car enthusiasts who have said: “You know what? The Elantra’s price is too good not to try it.”

The 2025 Civic Si is a great practical performance car, and it always will be. These days, it just has a fire-breathing Hyundai in its mirrors — and a little competition is never a bad thing.