Dual Exhaust on the 2016 Civic

The 2016 Civic has a 1-to-2 "fake" dual exhaust system in place.

Does anyone know why Honda added this to the car?

This is the most peculiar thing to me about the 2016 Civic because...

1.) Dual exhaust is more "premium" and attractive, but the exhaust tips are hidden..

2.) This type of dual exhaust does not provide performance benefits over a single exhaust (especially on 4 cylinder turbo motors)

3.) Dual exhaust adds weight and cost compared to a single exhaust with the same volume

I can only imagine the marketing guys somewhere had some insight that a certain percentage of Honda's customer base considered dual exhaust a feature they looked for, and the project team decided the added cost for a "fake" dual was low enough to throw it in.

Thoughts?

What? I thought they added at least as much HP as my NOS stickers!!! /sarcasm

I find that my "dual" exhaust is actually 70+% driver's side and no more than 30% passenger side... so they really haven't put in the T that well at all. It looks quite odd from the back.

It's weird. I plan on getting an aftermarket cat back exhaust.

I feel like the reason they did it was to make the exhaust as quiet as possible. It definitely wasn't for exhaust flow.

Most likely it was to achieve their NVH, pressure drop, and packaging targets.

WhatTheFun said:

Most likely it was to achieve their NVH, pressure drop, and packaging targets.

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Just wondering, is there any intuitive reason 2 mufflers would be better from an engineering perspective (cost, weight included) than 1?

hondabuildquality said:

Just wondering, is there any intuitive reason 2 mufflers would be better from an engineering perspective (cost, weight included) than 1?

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Theoretically, yes. Allows better exhaust flow and better high RPM power. It theoretically also means decreased low RPM power, as the more you open up the exhaust, the less back pressure you have, which decreases ghosting, which makes the engine work harder to push the exhaust out. In practice, it's unlikely even removing the exhaust on this car would have a profound performance advantage (save for weight) and the design was likely because they were either reusing it from another car or wanted to use this same system across the entire line (including Si) and it was just cheaper to make 1M of one type, the half that of two. The dollar drives everything.

camhabib said:

Theoretically, yes. Allows better exhaust flow and better high RPM power. It theoretically also means decreased low RPM power, as the more you open up the exhaust, the less back pressure you have, which decreases ghosting, which makes the engine work harder to push the exhaust out. In practice, it's unlikely even removing the exhaust on this car would have a profound performance advantage (save for weight) and the design was likely because they were either reusing it from another car or wanted to use this same system across the entire line (including Si) and it was just cheaper to make 1M of one type, the half that of two. The dollar drives everything.

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Yes but we know that the volume of a cylinder increases exponentially with diameter. So a "fake" dual exhaust increases weight and cost of materials to achieve the same exhaust flow. The second point makes sense and could possibly be true. I can only imagine a single exhaust could drop 10-15lbs at no cost to NVH or HP though, and extremely little or negative cost to the car.

hondabuildquality said:

Just wondering, is there any intuitive reason 2 mufflers would be better from an engineering perspective (cost, weight included) than 1?

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My guess is that they were balancing their noise requirement with packaging. If they did 1 larger muffler, it may have caused them to raise the floor of the trunk. They are bounded by the wheel well, bumper, spare tire, and trunk floor. A larger muffler size may not have fit all on one side. They couldn't expand it toward the middle because of the spare tire. So the next most logical thing would be to place another one on the opposite side.

Additionally, this is a turbo engine, back pressure downstream of the turbo is especially challenging and has a large impact on peak power numbers.

Finally, to address "ghosting" which I assume is a typo for "scavenging". This is a turbo engine, the post turbine pressure will have little impact to cylinder pulse flow dynamics. Many turbo engines make the exhaust manifold very small to enable them to use the pulse flow to spin the turbine wheel at the expense of scavenging. Although there is a trick to open both intake and exhaust valves at high load and low Rpms to enable more torque, but that is a topic for another day.

Interesting. I had seen a YouTube video showing a 2016 Civic with dual exhaust and assumed that it was either an EX Turbo or Touring as mine (An EX w/Sensing) does not have dual exhaust nor two mufflers. I just looked underneath again to confirm and only one muffler and exhaust tip is present below the trunk..

Surely there's a reason for it but I can't wrap my ahead around why Honda would HIDE IT! It's the most economy looking dual exhaust system I've ever seen.

Why not give it the same look as the Accord dual exhaust set up?

deevel79 said:

Surely there's a reason for it but I can't wrap my ahead around why Honda would HIDE IT! It's the most economy looking dual exhaust system I've ever seen.

Why not give it the same look as the Accord dual exhaust set up?

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I agree, I would love to see a nice set of chrome tips on it, I think it would look sweet

RedTouringMA said:

I agree, I would love to see a nice set of chrome tips on it, I think it would look sweetie

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Honda reps said they hid the exhaust tips on the TLX to give the car a more "green" look. Presumably the same line of reasoning applied to the civic.

hondabuildquality said:

Honda reps said they hid the exhaust tips on the TLX to give the car a more "green" look. Presumably the same line of reasoning applied to the civic.

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I'm wondering if part of the car is fiberglass, I got a nasty scratch on my rear quarter, and I did not see metal, just more red. Would fiberglass be the same color as the exterior paint? I would not be surprised if they did it to bring up that MPG
I can only hope that an aftermarket company will come up with Chrome tips for the CivicX

Not on the quarter...