My wife and I picked up a 2006 Civic Hybrid this afternoon and we are stoked! It was really a pretty interesting shopping experience. We headed from Colorado Springs to Denver this morning to research/drive new cars to possibly replace my wife's Protoge. Of course it was going to be "just a fact finding" day driving several cars, but after driving the Forester, Mazda 3, Corolla and regular Civic my wife fell in love with the Civic Hybrid.

This was pretty surprising since she had crossed off all hybrids off her shopping list because of their lack of manual transmissions (on new ones at least). The Hybrid Civic's MPG and interior won out over her need to shift for herself though. I am excited about it too--the car seems to drive very well so far and the milage is pretty sweet. I can't wait to see it once it has had a chance to break in.

I'm very happy to find a forum like this for hybrids! I visit legacygt.com a lot (I drive a Subaru OB XT--the dark side of the force?) and love reading other car owners experiences and hints. I'm sure this site has a wealth of knowledge and I look forward to being a member!

Congrats and welcome, you'll learn a lot here.

Good luck with the new hybrid! There is a TON of information here if you take the time to look for it, and there are almost always quick answers from the community if you have questions for us. I know the 05 Civic Hybrid had a manual version, but apparently not the 06, so I'm glad your wife loved the car anyway.

Instead of thinking about shifting, she can start thinking about hypermiling. Keeping half an eye on that mpg gauge keeps driving interesting enough to occupy me- I wouldn't have enough hands and feet to worry about shifting, too (though I know that some people do it- they're very talented). If she has the attention span to drive a stick, I'm sure she'll turn out to be fantastic at driving a hybrid for high mpg. I wonder if there's any connection between hypermilers and experience with a stick? I wouldn't be surprised.

You're right about the hybrid aspect of driving being a lot to pay attention to! I think it's pretty fun though--I can see it making up for the lack of "engagement" with driving a shiftless tranny. I actually like the CVT a lot after driving it some. My biggest complaint about traditional automatics is that they never seem to be happy with their current gear choice in the mountains. The CVT (obviously) never has to hunt!

Jaenette wants me to teach her hypermiling so I've been reading quite a bit here in order to learn how to do it myself. We're both very analytical people so I can see a contest in the making...