According to the manual:

If your vehicle has an automatic transmission, set the parking brake before you put the transmission in Park. This keeps the vehicle from moving and putting pressure on the parking mechanism in the transmission.

I guess this is a good idea, but it is a habit that I have not gotten into yet.

 

The last thing I do is take my foot off the brake. So it doesn't matter if I shift into Park first or engage the parking brake first.

 

Not true in the 06 HCH. Shifting to park will cause the ICE to re-engage. That's the whole thing we're trying to avoid here.

 

I wrote about the sequence of shifting the transmission to park before or after activating the parking brake, as was quoted from the owner's manual. It has nothing to do with re-engaging the ICE.

Will pulling the parking brake handle first prevent the ICE from re-engaging? No. So what's not true?

 

One down side to turning off the car before you put it into park is that the driver side door does not unlock "automatically" - you would need to manually unlock it before you can open the door.

Sure this is a very minor thing, but one of my pet peeves about the Civic is that the doors don't unlock when you pull the inside door release. I can understand about the rear seats for kids, but for the front driver and passenger?!?!

 

There are multiple settings for the door unlocks. Change yours.

 

I did change my settings so it unlocks when I put it into park. Unfortunately, if you turn off the car before you put it into park (to avoid restarting the car from autostop), it does not unlock when you put it into park.

I actually do not like the way it works on the Civic anyway as I do not want the doors to unlock unless the door release handle is pulled. This way, I don't have to be concerned about having someone jump into the car when I park it. Just a personal preference. I'm sure I am in the minority that are concerned about that level of safety.

 

I had the "pull handle to unlock door" in my old Sable, and by the feel of it, I think it required a mechanical linkage, and wasn't handled by the power lock mechanism.