head, shoulders, knees, and toes

Reprinted with permission of:
A. Raza Choudhury
Former Lead Reviewer, Automobear.com

It's a typical Pennsylvania winter's day. The sky is as gray as a middle managers' conference, rain pours down because it's just not quite cold enough for there to be snow. It's the kind of day that your landlord decides to show your apartment while you're in the shower.

It's also the type of day that makes you want to tempt fate. You can smell it in the air when you step out for something fresh. You can taste it in your morning coffee. Today is the day you spit in death's face.

The tires grasp at wet tarmac, calling on every ounce of available grip; catapulting you forward as quickly as this car can. And despite its modest power rating, just 197bhp, it does fire you like a clay pigeon. Snap through the first few shifts, grabbing the nicely weighted titanium shift knob, and yanking on it as hard as you can. The clutch is nicely weighted as well, a refreshing change from most modern cars short of Zuffenhausen's finest. The first corner is fast approaching, the road is soaking wet, I'm pushing a new car on a road I don't know. I stab the clutch, drop into second, and floor it through the 90 degree turn. Wind back some lock to keep the rear from kicking out as the front tires spin, and shift quickly into third. Keep pushing, there's more than that to come.

Oddly enough, the car isn't much to look at. As far as hot rod special editions go, this looks as thinly tarted up as you can get. You can tell they wanted to make the car look more aggressive, so they took a page from Subaru/Mitsubishi book and stuck a giant spoiler on it. Then, it seems they glued on some fiddly ground effects. Looking at it, the Honda Civic Si Mugen doesn't look anything special; just like your average car owned by someone who can't point his hat straight. The paint isn't even special. Parked next to a standard Si sedan in Fiji Blue, the Mugen just looks the same. Mugen badges are stuck everywhere, lest you forget that this special edition car, one of only a thousand on sale, is going to cost you thirty thousand dollars. A lot of money for a Civic, a lot of money period. I'm sure if Honda could, they'd stick a Mugen badge on you when you drive it.

Open the door, and this sedan greets you with deeply bolstered seats, an ugly dashboard, and an oddly truncated handbrake, just left of the Mugen branded shift knob. The steering wheel is appropriately small, thick, and well contoured, but the multifunction buttons seem a bit unnecessary. The steering wheel is here to steer, and that should be it. As with the standard Civic, Honda has deemed it fit to move all of the gauges around and mess with their displays. The tachometer is in the back seat, the oil temperature gauge measures heat with electronic bars, not with a needle that points to a number, and the speedometer is bolted on to the hood of the car. The seats, however, hug you like an old friend, fitting just right and never pinching like that funny grandmother you hate visiting during the holidays. They are manually adjustable, and the steering wheel tilts and telescopes. Get it in the right position (a little bend in the knee, a little bend in the elbow), and never let anyone else drive it.

Back on the road, I'm coming up to a sharp, uphill left hander. I punch the throttle; the car reacts, pulling you through the corner without argument. The left hander feeds into a right, and I spin the steering wheel back and the Mugen just flies through. On exit, I floor the throttle and the engine spins up to the magic VTEC engagement point, and it kicks in like an old school turbocharger. Power stays strong up until the 8000 rev redline, and when you snap the shifter into the next gear, revs stay up high enough that you don't bog down. Winding roads are where this car is meant to live. The suspension never gets upset, even when you drive like a maniac down a wet road you've never been on. The car simply eggs you on; now it's fate that's tempting you.

Tearing through just a few miles of untried roads, the Mugen doesn't simply obey; it fervently accepts your commands, begging you to give it yet another. The car lives for the impossible task. Go around that 90 degree at 90 miles an hour? "Sure, no problem," the Mugen replies. Clip multiple apexes at ridiculous speeds? "I can keep going, you know." Driven like a normal car, the Mugen reacts like a normal car. But if you grab it by the scruff of its neck and go for a tear, the Mugen reacts like a small child after mainlining two giant Pixy Stix. It feels like nothing can stop you. Adrenaline pumps through every centimeter of your central nervous system. Pupils will dilate; your heart will beat ferociously. When you stop the car, you'll want to challenge Mike Tyson to a fight. This is a car you feel with your entire body.

Never before have I felt such immediacy in a car that's masquerading as a family sedan. Never before have I been so excited by something with such mundane roots. Never before has a car from Honda gotten my heart racing so quickly. The suspension communicates with you, telling you what's happening with the front wheels through the steering wheel. You can feel every minute detail—every time you lose a morsel of grip, every time the car lets you know that it's okay to keep going—in each and every one of your fingertips. Suddenly, Honda's idiocy seems to make sense. The speedometer is far away and elevated on the dashboard so it's always in your field of vision. The tachometer sits in a pod by itself so all the information that it gives you is uncluttered and absolutely clear.

I don't know how many speakers this car has. I don't know if there's enough leg room in the back seat. I don't know if the controls on the dash are made of soft touch plastic. I don't know where the fuel filler cap release is. I don't know where the fuel filler cap is. But I do know this; the Honda Civic Si Mugen is truly something special. This isn't the type of car you buy to impress people at dinner parties. If I were to wager a guess, if you told someone at a dinner party that you drove a Honda Civic Si Mugen, they'd suddenly remember that they left something in the other room, or that their new cell phone's silent mode is shockingly silent and they've got to step out. This car isn't about what it says to others. This car isn't a slinky black dress. This car doesn't go everywhere and it doesn't go with everything. It will always stand out as being immature; it will never exactly fit in. And none of that matters.

It's fantastic. Without driving the Mugen and the standard car side by side, and with my memory of the Si coupe fading, I'd say that it's worth every penny. Something this good doesn't come along that often. This car has the intimacy that we fear is lost with every new generation of car. Driver involvement is through the roof. This is one of the easiest cars to fall in love with that I've ever driven.

* images courtesy of Honda