- There are times out there right now
that just move a little bit too fast.
Okay, it's 2020.
The sun is barely coming up these days anymore,
in the morning, and I have allergies
and I just wanna cry absolutely every single day because
the world just won't go back to normal.
I wanna watch the movies at a movie theater
and have some really delicious buttery popcorn,
but let's take it back to a day when
the world wasn't moving so fast.
A day where there was times where
you didn't have a flavor of the month car,
you just had good cars all the time.
I'm Alex. @Alex.Fi on Instagram.
In today's episode Behind the Wheel,
we're going to be taking a look
at Sawyer's 2009 Honda Civic Si.
(upbeat music)
So Sawyer's Honda Civic Si has Air Lift 3P air suspension.
It's got 17 by eight plus 35 AVID,
one 80 52 wheels and NVidia and one Catback.
It's got the S 204 front lip, moving wing, 15% tint,
5% brow, it's got bam shifts and booth shift knob
for all the fancy folk out there,
Honda mud flaps and the red out tail lights.
Probably the best and most exciting thing about Sawyer's car
is the air suspension on the Honda Civic Si.
It's like my favorite generation Civic,
like almost one of my top favorites.
And it's running a tuck setup,
which is a little bit different for most.
Everybody's gotten so used to like the poker flush fitment
when you're aired out but seeing a nice tuck fitment
on a small-ish coop front wheel drive car is like,
it is like, it is like,
Oh my goodness!
It's like buttery toast.
And obviously the wing isn't part of the original car.
It's it's, it's not,
but we wish it was.
The Honda Civic Si,
this specific generation did a really great job with pulling
all of the soft lines and the harsh lines together.
And when you pair it with a nice little wing on
the back of it,
it kind of flows everything together really nicely,
especially with the curve here,
to the harsh lines that come over the top of the roof line.
I really love the back of this car.
I think that SI's are underrated these days and people need
to drive them more and people need to buy them more.
People need to throw them on the ground like Sawyer,
just maybe a little bit more.
And not everything these days needs to go fast, all right?
Not everything needs to be super charged,
turbo charge 900 horsepower.
Blah, blah, blah.
Sometimes you just want to fun daily driver.
(bright upbeat music)
And this one has normal seats, baby.
(cheers)
I feel like Sawyer's like six foot nine, Oh my goodness!
Let me just,
let me just, wow!
We get to drive a normal car today
that just like isn't all over the place.
It makes me so excited.
(car engine roaring)
Look at all this space.
I'm just so excited.
Come on, give me, give me up.
Come on,
you got this.
(car engine roaring)
The air, the air works,
the air works,
the AC works, look at all this space.
The best thing about this car is even when it was introduced
and especially the generation in 2006,
it immediately won car of the year,
just in case anybody is wondering.
And on top of that, people love this car.
You have to remember that the previous generations of
the Honda Civic probably until you got to like
the sixth-ish or the fifth-ish,
I love the sixth generation too, by the way,
really didn't get a lot of love because of just what
they did to the Honda Civic in total.
So in terms of when they came back with this one,
it was pretty much everything we wanted.
It was the V-Tec,
it had the Si,
it had the manual transmission,
it had everything that kind of brought it back
and it had a super neat body style.
This is probably one of my favorite body styles
because it reminds me of "The Jetsons".
It's got like this super,
super techie front with a ton of space.
It's got a raked dash.
So it feels like you're in a sports car.
Like just looking at this dash
and how long it is in comparison
to how long it probably should be,
is always really kind of misconceiving
while you're outside of the car,
'cause the car doesn't look that big,
especially when you're looking at the outside
and the engine bay is extremely small.
It swoops down so you can't really see the hood line,
which reminds me a lot honestly,
of Audi r8 said a lot of those softer cars.
I think the number one thing I love about this car is
that this is a 2009.
But, the car has done so well,
for being 11 years old,
that I feel like you can jump into one of these
and not feel like you're jumping into a car
that's 11 years old.
And for what you get for the price of this car and the fact
that you get like the short geared,
you get the limited slip differential.
You get all of that.
You get the front wheel drive shaft,
which isn't everybody's fan favorite,
but you're not really getting a Honda Civic
to go sliding around in the back lots.
It is just a fun, enjoyable car to drive.
It's not insanely fast,
but it never really claims to be.
The point of this car was
to give people something fun to drive,
good to look at that you could
kind of, sort of play around with,
but at the end of the day,
it didn't raise your insurance premiums.
It wasn't a pain in the butt
to you know, fix or repair or anything like that,
and Honda did a really good job with it.
The number one thing that you'll actually hear about
this car when it comes down to modifying
or working on is actually how difficult
it can be to work in the engine bay,
just because they stuffed portions
of the engine further back,
that requires you to take off like the rain guard piece
that sits near the front windshield.
(upbeat music)
But because it has V-Tec, I don't care.
(car engine roaring)
Like it's still a fun car.
It's still such a blast.
For some reason for me,
I just feel like Hondas' don't get as much love as
they should anymore.
For some reason, I don't know if
this is just opinion or fact or what it is.
But for some reason,
I just feel like Hondas and Civics just don't get
the same love that they used to.
There's so much competition out there in 2020.
There's so many cars that are pushing 650 horsepower,
600 horsepower, rear wheel drive, $30,000 et cetera.
Everybody's going towards how fast can you go?
How high can that number be?
How fast is a quarter mile?
What technology can you stuff in it?
And then how long will it take for it to break?
And a lot of people have seemed to kind of get away
from the Honda Civic.
And I know that there's a tight bar,
there's a new one that came out, et cetera.
But I don't always want to look at top of the line cars.
Not everyone has top of the line price
to go buy one of those cars.
So when I look at something like a Honda Civic Si,
just this generation specifically,
for some reason,
it just speaks to me.
It just is a car that does everything right for me.
And it's not the fastest thing in the world
but I'd never buy this car to try to be.
Sawyer did a fantastic job
with keeping it super clean and easy.
Does it have any engine modifications? No.
Should it? Maybe.
It's got an exhaust to make it sound a little bit better
and it's got the wheels, tires and suspension,
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and it does all of that just enough to
where it's not ruining the daily drivability.
Plus look at them back.
You got two seats.
Do you have to remove your legs? Probably.
But for the most part, you still get a trunk.
You still get good gas mileage.
You still get everything that you would want a car to be.
I try to, I try to pin this back to like,
could you take this car to college?
Could you take some of these cars
that we purposely make less reliable anywhere outside
of your local, you know, city?
And the answer with this car, unlike many others,
is yes, you could.
And you could do it without much fuss
and you could do it without sweating your balls off.
You can do it without praying that you're,
you know, u-joints don't break off or anything like that.
You can just drive it.
(car engine roaring)
I think for some reason,
it's almost like these cars were built to be more fun.
(car engine roaring)
Like not going super fast.
They're more fun just driving around town.
They're more fun just playing around.
You got to limit its slip.
It's a blast.
You have the manual transmission, it's fun.
You still have the air and the suspension,
you got all of that.
So it still looks really good.
And then with how they styled the car,
it looks fantastic when it's on the ground.
You've got the center double up display,
which I think is kind of funky,
but I don't mind it whatsoever.
I love the fact that your lower dash has just the tack
and then your upper dash has a digital display for speed,
and a little, you know, wonky out there.
But I think it's cool.
Like, I think it's perfect for what you'd want.
The fact that it redlines at 8,000 RPMs in a Civic Si
for me which isn't even their top of the line model is fun.
The exhaust still sounds good.
(car engine roaring)
The LSD still does a great job.
(car engine roaring)
The front wheel drives still goes good.
(car engine roaring)
You can hear the switch.
(car engine roaring)
I don't want to get pulled over.
We're going 35.
I think when you're looking at a car like this,
it's just proper, it's just right
when you want to own something like a Honda Civic
and owning this generation Si for me is so much fun.
This one and the sixth one for me just hit a soft,
like soft, warm part of my heart because
they do everything so well.
The styling looks really good from the factory,
so you don't have to work on trying to make him pretty
because they were inherently ugly.
There are some civic generations
that I think are just a little bit ugly
and this one's not one of them.
Sawyer you did a great job with
kind of keeping everything relatively modest
and should have probably thrown a couple more
modifications on it.
I don't really think you'd want
to do anything more to the car.
I just noticed that the little scented thing majigger,
whatever it's called,
probably throwing itself in front of the GoPro.
But hey, it is a bam shifts,
we're not sponsored,
but in case you're wondering what it is.
(upbeat music)
And the best part about this car, truly,
the best part about this car,
is that it has normal ******* seat belts.
Thank you, Sawyer.
Thank you for doing that for me.
Oh yeah!
(gear shaft clunking)
Just making sure it's a neutral.
(gear shaft clunking)
Okay, I'm gonna put the clutch out.
(gear shaft clunking)
Okay, I think we're okay.
We're good. Okay.
We're good. Alright.
(upbeat music)
There we go.
(upbeat music)
We're on the ground.
(upbeat music)
Oh boy!
Steering, it's got AC,
it's got speakers,
it's got a cup holder.
What else do you want?
Oh, my goodness gracious!
One of my favorite things about Sawyer's cars is
that it's still just that it's a car
that you can drive without worrying
about it blowing up.
Now, is it the most modified Honda Civic Si out there? No.
Could it still do a couple of things
without ruining reliability? Also yes.
You probably could do a couple more things to it,
but as a whole, is it a great starting point
for somebody's modified Si?
To that I would answer, absolutely.
When you're taking about the reliability,
the community that's around it,
the cost of the parts of something like this platform,
you are pretty much in almost a perfect space.
And the only thing that you can do to ruin
this car is probably ruining it yourself.
When it comes down to rating this car,
I give it a 21 out of 30.
The only biggest thing that I would say with it is
that it just needs a little bit more of everything.
Everything about it,
I just want to modify it one step further.
Sawyer wants to keep it reliable,
I prefer things broken literally all the time.
We hope you guys enjoyed.
We'll sell your suspension, FITMENTINDUSTRIES.COM.
Don't forget to subscribe.
And if you do have an eighth gen Civic Si
that's just lotted out to the max,
you're going to want to let us know.
Maybe we can review it.
But I do really like Sawyer's car.
I think the one thing that I'd probably change about
it is you got to throw a turbo on there
because that's gonna make it more reliable
and it's gonna make it faster.
Imagine V-Tec with a turbo charge.