Hah, the new Civic got it's ass handed to it.
Stupidly, a 4g Civic Si would have been around the same performance, and defintitely better on handling than the new Si. Lower weight + double wishbones = win.
New cars have many advantages, NVH, comforts, safety, etc continually improve, but as is quite often the case now, something is lost with the movement towards more and more weight and cheapening up on things like suspension. Take the Focus for example, we in the US get a 140hp ~2600lb 2.0 DOHC i4 car for quite cheap, while some whine that we are taking so long to get the newer Euro generation, but those people utterly ignore the fact that the only faster Foci of the new gen are the Turbo ST and RS models, with the rest of the line bogging down with small motors under the 3000lb+ weight of the new model. If you come to me and ask whether I'd rather have 140hp at 2600lbs, or 140hp at 3000lbs, I'll take the lighter one each and every time, even if the new one looks considerably better.