Car has poor acceleration

Today one of my friends told me that the '96 Civic has acceleration that is sluggish to the point of being dangerous. He claims that since the car accelerates so slowly, it is easier to get into a crash on the highway when I am trying to merge with oncoming traffic. I do have to admit that when I'm accelerating, I really have to push down on the gas to get the car moving, and the engine revs and is very noisy. A brand new '96 Civic does 0-60 in 9.4 seconds, but mine definitely takes longer than that, for no other reason than its age. So is it time to buy a new car?

It is a lot cheaper to replace/repair the car these days. Is it auromatic or manual? how many miles are on the car and has the engine ever been majorly serviced like a head gasket or anything like that? Used japanees engines for your year car is about 350-600 depending on where you buy them and the model you get, also you can look into upgrading to a larger size engine if you want more power out of it, might run you 2800-3800 depending on what your trying to do but atleast you'll have some reliable power for a good few years.