After Honda officially announced the new Civic Si would be going turbo, many fans of the brand expected a significant power bump over the previous car's naturally aspirated engine. After the Si's modest 205 horspower output was revealed, some people were left wanting more. But Honda had a reason for capping the power.

Automotive News spoke with Civic Senior Product Planner Rob Keough about why the new Si isn't putting out as much horsepower as some Honda die-hards might like. It turns out, it's all about longevity.

"Honda likes to build their engines to last hundreds of thousands of miles, so they're working toward that target," Keough told Automotive News. "You can tune more power into [the 1.5-liter], but all of that takes away from the durability of the engine."

Price also paid a factor in the Si's power output. Honda decided against using a detuned version of the Civic Type R's 306-horsepower 2.0-liter turbocharged engine because it would make the Civic Si a nearly $30,000 car.

"The Si has always been in the [price] range that it's in," Keough said. "We wanted it to be attainable and affordable, so our target for Si was really to come in at this price point with this performance level."



This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io