TOV: Rumor: Next generation (2012) Civic Si to have 2.4L? And other 9th gen Civic tidbits.

We received this tip a while back but were asked to sit on it for reasons I won't get into, but here's what we got:

"Just heard through the grapevine that the next-gen civic will definitely be getting a version of the TSX K24. Probably for Si model. Will incorporate integrated exhaust manifold"

The integrated exhaust manifold the source is speaking of is the same sort of cast-in exhaust manifold that is currently found on Honda's J-series V6 engine family. It should be noted that the source has indicated that this rumor still has legs, yet it currently sits right around a 5 on our CR scale at this point.

In other 9th generation Civic news, American Honda Executive Vice President John Mendel recently confirmed something that we've been talking about here since last May (and more last September), and that's that the 8th generation cycle will be stretched by up to a year, pushing back the release of the 9th generation Civic. Mr. Mendel has only said that the next generation Civic would be released some time in 2011. For some time, we had been hearing that it would likely launch early in 2011. More recently some folks in the dealer community have pegged the intro date as June '11. If we start seeing 2011 Civics appearing in showrooms earlier than this September, then it would tend to support the notion that the 2012s would launch in the first half of 2011.

And finally, it's no secret that the Civic's delay was keyed by a midstream change during the design cycle. There were some reports from a blog or two that the redesign resulted in a vehicle that would be smaller than the current generation, but our understanding was that the original design of the 9th generation was going to be larger than the 8th generation, but then the redesign shrunk it back to the point where it was roughly equivalent in size to the current model. The latest from Automotive News lines up with this:

At the Tokyo auto show last October, Honda Motor Co. COO Tsuneo Tanai said the redesign had been altered midstream. The next Civic was planned to be larger than the current model. But its exterior has been resized closer to the current one, Tanai said

Source;
http://www.vtec.net/news/news-item?news_item_id=899102