Honda has always built racing variants of its street cars. Even today that still rings true, as Honda just launched its newest Civic-based touring car. Built for the SRO TC America Series, the new 11th generation 2022 Honda Civic Si features a turbocharged engine and a 6-speed manual gearbox cribbed directly from the street car. Developed in part from HPD’s efforts with the tenth-generation Civic Si TCA racer, the new car is built up from a body-in-white for maximum performance from day one.
Building from scratch, rather than building from a finished production car, allows Honda to optimize for motorsport. The racing car goes without a sunroof, never gets sound proofing installed in the first place, and is completely devoid of underbody coatings and seam sealers. This both reduces weight and increases usefulness as a racer.
In addition to the already potent turbocharged engine, HPD adds a custom tuned ECU, and a turbo-back Borla exhaust for track performance. The car is also equipped with a set of Bilstein dampers with Eibach springs, big Wilwood brakes, and lightweight Momo Etna racing wheels. There’s also an APR rear wing to add a bit of downforce, and some more motorsport touches. Obviously all of the requisite safety gear is included.
The Civic Si TCA won’t be cheap, though. You can look to something like the current Civic Type R TC for perspective. That monster machine, eligible for SRO TCR or IMSA TCR classes, will run you about $90,000, which is a smidge more than the $37,890 Honda charges for a street Type R. You can probably figure a well-set-up TCA car will be around $60,000 out the door. If you want to go fast on a race track there are probably faster options for less, but if you want to get serious about digging into racing, you’d be hard pressed to build something this competitive for less than that price anyway.
Honda will have the car on display at SEMA later this month, but I’m sure if you wanted to order one now you could call up HPD and make that happen. The 2022 racing season is just around the corner, so you’ll want to get a shake on.
