A few weeks ago, Shawn Church of Church Automotive shared the dyno test results of a customer-owned 2012 Civic Si. This week I managed to borrow a brand-new 2012 Civic Si directly from Honda, so I took it over to our regular dyno testing center: Dynolab, Inc. of Marietta, GA.

You may recall the "Virtual Dyno comparo" we performed several months ago between the 2011 Civic Si and 2012 Civic Si (using the dyno results of the TSX 6MT, which supposedly runs a mechanically identical engine to the 2012 Civic Si). While that was fun and generated some interesting discussion, there's no substitute for the real thing, so now we have the REAL numbers for the 2012 Civic Si. The results aren't all that surprising but there are a few curious differences between the curves of the TSX and 2012 Civic Si, particularly in the upper end of the rev range.

We performed six dyno passes. We threw out the results of the first run (183whp, 162lb-ft), because prior to that run, the car had been sitting for an extended period and seems to have benefited greatly from the cooldown, as the car didn't come close to backing that effort on any of the subsequent passes. On the remaining passes, the car consistently developed right around 175hp/160lb-ft, which pretty much matches the numbers you see in the plot below. We tested this Civic Si the same way we always test our Hondas and Acuras - we allow the cars to cool down to "normal" operating temps (according to our OBD-II scangauge) before performing the next pass. In the case of this Civic Si, that was right around 185F water temp. At the end of each pass, the water temps were observed to be in the 215-220F range. To accelerate the cooldown, we crank the temp up to "max" on the climate control and run the heat at full speed. This flushes coolant into the heater core and aids the exhange of engine heat.

To see how the 2012 Civic Si compares to the 2011 Civic Si we tested earlier this year, click on to the next page.