This Is It: 2016 Honda Civic 1.5T With 6-Speed Manual Transmission

Honda is further refining their 6-speed manual transmission to be offered with EX-T, EX-L and Touring models and is actively testing a prototype. 

When the 2016 Honda Civic was first introduced to the world last year in Los Angeles, although Honda offered a six-speed manual on its 2.0L naturally aspirated base engine, those who optioned out the 1.5 Turbo engine with their EX-T model were stuck with a CVT. According to CivicX on their latest forum post earlier Tuesday, it looks like Honda is finally letting journalists take their 2016 Honda Civic with their turbocharged engine out for some testing. The lack of details from the original poster leads us to believe that Honda is embargoing any details on how the manual performs. Check out the exclusive photos on CivicX as well as their twitter post below.

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If you look carefully at the camouflage you’ll catch quite an impressive camo pattern (it’s all Civic C’s.) Other than that, we see no reason why they had to camouflage the Civic in the first place. According to CivicX, this test mule has been thoroughly flogged so instead of ponying up for a paint job, a camo wrap was applied.

Although theoretically a CVT would be a faster car to drive, CVT’s in general are still a fairly new trend when it comes to American motoring (e.g. it hasn’t been widely adopted yet.) With the engine held at the transmission’s ideal RPM rev range, a droning engine still doesn’t sit well with those in the market for a Civic.

The connectedness, car control and lack of moving parts between your hand and the actual gear still has a strong following in the automotive community and keeps the manual going strong even though automatics, dual-clutch automatics and CVT’s offer more tangible benefits.

Next: Recall Alert: 2016 Honda Civic 2.0L Suffers From Faulty Piston Pin Snap Rings

We’ve got to hand it to Honda for prioritizing the manual transmission as an option and we’ll take one if given the choice over a CVT. However, we wish they would’ve offered a six-speed from the start.