What 877 owners told NHTSA about the 2022 Honda Civic Si

The 2022 Honda Civic (Sport) with approx. 13,000 miles had been driving fine for the previous 10 minutes, on and off the highway, when I was almost home and on a more residential 25-30mph road. All of a sudden all of the warning lights went off on the dashboard at once, so I went to brake to slow down and pull over. But the brakes were completely failing - the pedal would just hit the back of the foot well. The emergency brake is electronic, so that wouldn't work either. I was lucky to be immediately next to a grocery store parking lot, so I roll into that. As soon as I make the turn flames began shooting out from under the hood, reaching maybe 6" up the windshield. This is only 5 or 6 seconds after the warning lights had started, and it was clear that the fire inside of the engine bay was substantial. I managed to coast to the back of the parking lot, away from other cars and people, and found a curb "island" that I could run into in order to stop the vehicle. I effectively crashed the car, and at this point the flames had increased. I ran out of the vehicle and shouted for people to call 911. Within a minute the entire front half of the car was engulfed in 10+ foot flames. The fire department showed up a minute later and put out the fire, and after only maybe 3 minutes maximum the only things left in the car were metal and wires. The dashboard was entirely gone, seats were just their metal frames, etc. If the door had been jammed I would have burned alive.

NHTSA ODI 11720872

While driving steam started to appear from the engine bay. I pulled over to inspect, lifted up the hood and could hear the fuel line popping and gasoline hissing out. The engine bay spontaneously caught fire. As it ignited all of the gasoline in the air combusted and created a ball of fire in my face as I was looking in the engine bay. The fire was put out by the fire department. An incident report was created. The potential for safety risk was high and could have been worse if I was not on a road where I was able to stop or if it caught fire while I was inside the car. The vehicle has been inspected by Insurance and confirmed to be a total loss. Since nothing was left to visually inspect of the car their investigation came back nonconclusive as to the cause. There were no indication lights that there was anything wrong with the engine.

NHTSA ODI 11583954