I've noticed the same phenomenon in my Civic. I suppose the ICE kicking in during a shift to reverse, though seemingly pointless, at least isn't too detrimental - when are you likely to shift into reverse and wait for an extended amount of time before actually moving? I suspect the electric motor can't propel backwards, so the ICE has to kick on. It would seem that they should be able to just tie the restart into the brake pedal, like the autostop does when in drive.

I'm with you, though, on the annoying factor of the ICE kicking on for that few seconds when shifting to park to turn off the car. If anything, "park" should be hardwired to always maintain the ICE off. When would you ever need the engine on in park, except if you wanted to keep your AC on? And there's always the ECON switch for that.

Maybe Honda will address these things in the '06 Civic redesign - predicting future changes for the Accord. I just got my '05 HCH, so the redesign won't do anything for me, but it'd be nice to see these little things tweaked.