Civic, Standard or Automatic

Just looking for opinions, I've never driven a standard, and thinking of
getting a new 2005 honda civic SE (canada model) but not sure if i should
get an automatic, or standard...

what do you think?

 

Pros of Automatic:
-- Less physical strain when driving in the city.
-- More expensive

Pros of Standard:
-- I'd argue lower maintenance cost
-- More fun
-- Initial purchase is $500 - $1000 cheaper than automatic


I looked into the fuel economy of Auto vs. Standard a few months ago. With newer
cars, the gap has pretty much closed. They get about the same fuel economy.

 

I agree with Caroline on her points.

Six months ago I was in your situation when I bought my first standard
car, an 01 Prelude. While the first couple of thousand kilometres were
not very pleasant especially in rush hour traffic, now I don't even
notice it anymore. Whoever complains about driving standard cars in the
city either does not like driving in general or they do not know how to
drive standard well enough. True, automatics are slightly less effort to
drive, but not by much. This is more than offset by loss of power and
control of an automatic.

I also have access to my dad's 04 Accord EX V6 with an automatic
transmission, but I'm not even tempted to drive it. It's simply boring
in comparison to my Prelude.

Cosmin

 

Are you going to drive the car, or just ride along behind the wheel
with the radio on? bob (getting older)

 

Out in the SF Bay area, where bumper to bumper traffic is an everyday and
almost anytime adventure, I would never get a standard tranny. Personal
preference, as I have had my fill of Ford "three on the tree", GM 4 speeds
and foreign 5 speeds over the years. My main goal is comfort these days.

I have the 04 EX-L V6. Far from boring. Hard to keep in under 80 whenever
the freeway does open up....

 

Well, in SF if I'm not mistaken, you have an adittional problem. Toronto
is fairly flat, so rolling back is not much of an issue, but from what I
was told, SF is pretty hilly which makes driving 5spd a bit harder.

That said, 5spd vs. auto is a matter of preferrence. I drive standard
cars, I ride motorcycles and I run Linux on my computers, so obviously
comfort and ease of use do not rate very high on my list of priorities.
But someone else could very well have a different criteria.

The 04 EX V6 is actually faster than my Prelude as acceleration by about
half a second if Consumer Reports are correct in their test results. The
Accord also wins in highway cruising speed, since my Prelude does not
like going above 90mph for long periods (VTEC kicks in at 5200rpm or
93mph, and keeping it in VTEC for too long wears out the engine
prematurely), while the EX V6 can easily maintain higher speeds than
that. I did not test the top speed of the Accord, but I think they're on
par since I drove my Prelude at almost 150mph on the GPS.

But I still think the Accord is boring simply because it has the auto
transmission. If it were 6spd, I'd probably like driving it just as much...

Cosmin

 

Yes, the hills can be tough on a clutch. On a std. tranny as well!

Well, the I couldn't see an auto trans on a motorcycle, being an enthusiast
for quite some time. A bike still needs to have that "shifting" feel, IMHO.
Nothng like downshifting a couple of gears an nailing it....(one of my
previous bikes was a first production year '86 Yamaha Vmax, which offered
plenty of kick, though it was tough to keep low in the turns).
I use windoze XP, so ease of use is not high on my computing comfort list
either. Being an old command line guy, I don't really like plug and play,
and would still prefer to set my own IRQ/DMA/Memory address ranges for my
buss cards. Of course, USB has made me somewhat lazy!!!

The Prelude does have the more "sporty" feel to it. These cars are made for
different audiences. I like the feel of the road in the Prelude and the way
it handles, and I may have preferred at some previous point in time. One of
my favorite cars was an Accord '79 hatchback with a 5 speed. Good road
feel, decent pep for a 4 cyl.....

If they offer one, I wouldn't know....never crossed my mind!

 

I have a 2003 Civic EX with the automatic transmission and have put 37K a
year on it. I found you must use cruise control on the highway to get good
mileage; I cruise at 75 mph and get 33 mpg. The price of gas in CT and Long
Island is $2.17 I leave the lead foot at home. As far a Honda automatic
transmissions go, the only problems were on the 6 cylinder models and that
was solved. I know many people with automatics on both Accords and Civic
with no problems.