2020 Honda Civic Si gets more aggressive looks, safety tech

Honda is giving the 2020 Civic Si some upgrades to its exterior styling and a slight boost to its acceleration giddyup. The coupe and sedan versions go on sale Sept. 6.

First, the stying changes. The lower-bumper fog lights, now LEDs, are now encased in gloss-black surrounds and feature a body-color crossbar. The “wing” grille crossbar is also updated, appearing slightly narrower than before, while both the Si Coupe and Sedan get upgraded to LED headlights with wider and longer light beams.

In back, the Si Coupe gets a new lower faux-mesh bumper treatment to match the front, surrounded by gloss black trim and body-color crossbars. Both the Sedan and Coupe models now ride on matte black 18-inch allow wheels with all-season tires. There are also updated sport seats with red accents on the seat bottoms and backs, plus new red trim highlighting the instrument panel. They add to the interior upgrades made for 2019 that included an updated display audio system with physical buttons and a volume knob and larger cupholders.

The 2020 Civic Si sticks with the same 1.5-liter turbocharged inline-four engine as the 2018 version, which makes 205 horsepower and 192 pound-feet of torque, and the same six-speed manual transmission. But new for 2020 is a final-drive ratio that is shorter by 6%, helping to give a nudge to acceleration.

All trim levels of the Si Sedan and Coupe get standard Honda Sensing safety and driver-assist technologies that include new automatic high beams, adaptive cruise control and collision mitigation braking. They also get Active Sound Control, which uses the audio system to amplify the engine sound during aggressive driving.

Both the Civic Si Coupe and the Si Sedan will start at $25,930 including destination, which is a $700 increase over 2019.