ya, ppl beat my 1.6L all the time - i'm just happy for the awesome gas mileage! If i really wanted to race, i'd take my 2003 camry v6 n spank em. If my parents were to mod that thing out, it'd be sickkkkk...Dang old ppl n their nice cars they never race...
But anyway, for the civic i'd get a LS-R/LS-VTEC/"FRANKENSTEIN" DOHC 1.8L VTEC - aka H22. Info on the engines n stuff is found here:
http://www.4thgenerationcivic.com/engines/engines1.htm
it's close to the bottom, and if it runs 13's stock, and you added some mods, you could definitely do some street or track racing damage.
B16a - DOHC 1.6L VTEC might be another alternative, 160hp running 14s stock sounds nice...
Really, how fast you wanna make the car go will depend on how much money you have to spend.