Well I can finally claim true membership on the forum as I picked up my 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid Magnetic Pearl w/Navigation last night. I live in Pittsburgh, PA and got the pleasure of visiting Leesburg Honda in Leesburg, VA (thanks Sean and Roger - you guys rock!). I still have a pending order for this exact car at my local dealership but have been waiting since March 23rd and just last week the dealer got the VIN so I don't think it will be here next week like the dealer promised. Two weekends ago I started my own search and found about 3 of these cars from Chicago to Philadelphia and last Thursday the Leesburg folks had one on their lot and my wife and I drove down last night (~250 miles) to buy it and drive it home.

First impressions? I love it. I've been waiting so long I'd forgotten some of the features/options so they were nice to re-discover. I also only had 20 minutes of daylight driving before we stopped for dinner and then the next 4 hours were all at night so that was definitely interesting but fun all at the same time.

The car drives very easily and I had fun playing with all the Nav screen features and setting addresses and scrolling through my PC card which I bought a few weeks ago - about 1,500 songs fit on my 2 Gig card btw. With the A/C on, cruise on, and driving the hilly terrain between D.C. and Pittsburgh on the Interstates and Turnpike and cruising at 72 mph I was able to average 40.0 mpg -- mind you -- this was with *full auto cruise* of letting the car zoom back up to speed when climbing a hill rather than my manually modulating the throttle but this will probably be around the worst mileage that I'll see so it was worth a test. Temps were around 80 degrees with some rain so not at all ideal conditions.

I look forward to the excitement of a new car and all the features this car has as well as playing the fuel economy game and seeing how many times I can hit the brakes enough to get Regen Braking but not hard enough to employ the actual brakes -- it adds a whole new twist to driving. I can't wait to drive around today.

 

Congratulations! That's fantastic! If you've been waiting since March, it must have been a huge relief to finally get what you wanted.

Good luck breaking in the new car, and definitely come back and tell us how you like it, what kind of FE you're seeing, if it does anything strange or wonderful...

Welcome to GH!

 

Yes, welcome! And enjoy the car. Great choice on the color, btw.

 

It has been since March but but that car *still* isn't at the local dealership yet so I had to resort to other means and locate the car myself and within 4 days had found one (sure beats the 4.5-month wait, eh?). And yes I like the color too.

First tank fill-up was at 410 miles for 10.5 gallons or 39 mpg but this was with the A/C on both days and lots of cruise control letting the engine auto-manage the speed which is not the best economy but I'm trying to learn how the car works.

I'll try to search for this next question elsewhere in the forum and might also post it elsewhere but I've only found two glitches/issues so far and that is with the Navigation. If I ask "What time is it" to the Male voice then he responds but if I ask that with the setting as Female voice then she responds in gibberish with some weird words instead of a time. The other issue is that even with a Start and End set for the map I can't get the Directions page or the Turn-by-turn to display. Still tickled pink (tickled magnetic pearl?) with the car though. Thanks everyone.