Having decided to replace my wife's nine year old Nissan Almera for something new and also with automatic transmission I have test driven the Nissan Qashqai, (far too eccentric and no automatic available yet), Mazda 3 (not much improvement on the Almera!) and of course the Honda Civic. I rang our local dealer to test drive a SE 1.8 iShift. Fairly easy around town, though acceleration into and out of roundabouts was sluggish and very jerky. On entering a slip road to the A14 (the worst trunk road in the UK) I floored the accelerator as the traffic was going at 70mph in both lanes. Acceleration again was not good and the engine several times changed up and down gears.Not impressed. In fact my wife and I had decided this was not the car for use. I told all this to the salesman when I returned to the showroom. He wasn't concerned, and then told me that the car was a 1.4 not a 1.8!!!! He told me that the 1.8 would be much better. I decided then and there that if he couldn't even get the car right, he wasn't getting a purchase from me. I then arranged to test drive a 1.8 at another local Honda dealer, and made up sure that it was a 1.8. Good around town, and excellent on the A1M. So my wife will now pick up her new 1.8 iShift next week to potter around in and do the shopping. My conclusion, based only on test drives is that the iShift is excellent on the 1.8, very poor on the 1.4.
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Originally Posted by Gerald
I had a new Civic i-shift in February, it was virtually impossible to drive to to the irratic nature of the gear change when in auto. The supplier re-mapped the gearbox / engine - whatever and things vastly improved. In manual mode the gear changes are not as fast as with a manual clutch. The computer will not allow 'stupid' or 'sports' changes and tends to look after you like a baby. i.e. if you forget to change down then try to accelerate you will find yourself in say 1st or 2nd rather than 6th. Equally it will not allow you to over rev changing gear to protect the engine.
It's an interesting system but one which I find restrictive, being older and possibly getting more stupid it's probably best for me but certainly not for a boy racer.
Hope this helps Gerald
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