The Si in stock form is an awesome car for its own reasons. Honda can produce a lot of power, but they like to do it very high in the rev range. You have to work to get the power out of the engine, but the reward is a really awesome sound and really nice power.
Yea, the torque and HP numbers can't compete with the Speed3, but the 0-60 is still very respectable and a lot of fun can be extracted from this car (plus it gets ridiculous gas mileage).
Since we've gotten the car, I've run into quite a bit of Honda hate from Nissan Z enthusiasts in real life and internet message boards. Visiting some of the Civic forums, I can understand the e-hate. A lot of the owners are just kids who can barely form a sentence or use punctuation. And they tend to buy the cheapest ebay "jdm" mods they can find and slap them on.
I think the Civic hate stems from a lot of the young-punk types who own them. It can put a bit of a stigma on the car, but it's still an incredible feat of engineering when viewed from a vacuum. My friend with a 700whp Z06 gave us the thumbs up when we bought the Si, so those Z guys can go to hell.
And really, my wife is very happy with the car and loves to rev it and is glad to be back in a manual. A happy wife is a good thing! She's getting very interested in race driving. She even wants me to take us to Skip Barber racing school and purchase the Logitech G25 and playseat setup so we can practice our cornering and power shifting without wasting gas and putting people in danger on public roads! (2thumbs)