Civic Si Sedan

Make
Honda
Segment
Sedan

We've already fallen in love with the 10th generation Honda Civic, especially the highly aggressive hatchback model. The Si and the Type R are even more amazing, and only come with six-speed manual transmissions and turbocharged engines making 205 and 306 hp respectively. Even the base Civic Turbo has a 180 hp 1.5-liter four-cylinder, which is pretty fun. The only thing that saps away a bit of the fun is the continuously variable automatic transmission in the Civic, which is far from the sportiest transmission on the market.

Many people would just say, "buy the manual if the CVT is so bad," but there is a large portion of customers that simply don't want to drive stick. Luckily, there's a small rumor from Japanese publication, Car Watch, that the Civic's CVT could soon be replaced by a dual-clutch transmission (DCT). At Honda's 2017 Meeting Event, it rolled out a test mule of the Civic called the "Dynamic Study" for journalists to drive. The car featured small improvements to the 1.5-liter engine, but the biggest change was an eight-speed DCT transmission, that was plucked from the Chinese market Acura CDX. This DCT is actually unique to others in a few ways.

Honda's DCT is a wet clutch with a torque converter. The addition of a conventional torque converter makes it different than Volkswagen's DSG. The transmission is about the same size as a conventional five-speed automatic and gives a 15 percent improvement in power delivery and 8 percent improvement in fuel economy. Despite already being available around the world, the Civic hasn't made its debut in Japan yet. We still have no word on whether this new transmission will be for the Japanese market only. We know that the 2018 Accord will receive a 10-speed automatic transmission, so we'll have to wait and see whether the Civic will keep its CVT moving forward.