Mazda3 vs Acura Integra | The Battle for $36,000

You finally are getting it. The comparison test no one asked for. The two top trim level Japanese hatchbacks in a somewhat affordable price range at $36,000. I can't believe I'm saying that. The Mazda hatchback 2.5 liter turbo all-wheel drive against the Integra A-spec 1.5 liter turbo with a manual transmission. Both best case scenarios. Let's get right into it. The all-new Acura Integra Liftback. This is their most affordable entry into the Acura brand. Although it does not separate itself all that much from its civic counterpart, which is almost identical in here. Now, you might complain that this is essentially what the ILX used to be with a bit more flair. I'll leave that to you. But the interior space is a ultimate usability and visibility, namely compared to the Mazda 3. There are matte textures everywhere and anything that is piano black is very, very minimal with the exception of the center console. Usability here is its highlight. All the buttons, knobs, switches are super, super easy to use. The HVAC controls are clicky. The vent work is very easy to get to. There's nothing here that you're going to think about or have to fool around with to make it work. The visibility is also amazing. They haven't compromised anything here. There's a lot of glass in this car. When you're looking around you, there are minimal blind spots. You don't have to overly rely on the safety systems in this car. There is a ton of back legroom, ton of passenger space in the back. So if you're using this as a family vehicle, getting car seats in there, putting people in here is the highlight. The hatch space is very, very usable. It's almost like a small CUV. And you know, this is a big car. It really is. It's almost the size of like the old TL or Accord of the past. Its negative parts are it just doesn't feel all that special. It feels very generic. When you're talking about throwing an Acura badge on here, you expect a little bit more luxury. Although the Integra of the past was very much a Civic as well. So you can also make that argument. Technology wise, there's a few problems. One is the infotainment. As much as it is simple, there are problems with map redrawing on Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. And there are audio connection issues when you're using Android Auto specifically. The audio driver or audio module does not work when you connect your phone. The audio will not play until you go back into FM or XM to start playing the audio. And then when you go back in, the audio starts. So there's some like bugs and technology in here that don't work particularly well. But this cabin feels very, very solid. There's minimal noise, minimal vibrations or creaking and rattling, even in this subzero temperatures that we're having. So it feels like a well-built vehicle overall and a super simple interior at that. Now that I'm in the Mazda 3, there's something obvious. This feels like a much more special space. It feels like there was a ton of attention to detail to make it feel unique. And it's not something that you would appreciate if you just hopped in this car and drove it on its own. But when you get out of the Integra and into this, you really notice it from the bright works to the alloy choices, to the material choices, the cross stitching and just the overall design, the architecture and layout and the geometry of all the lines. It feels like you're the focus of the entire car when you're sitting in this seat. It feels far less generic than the Integra. But the big problem with this car is if you start to use it every single day like we have, you notice that there are compromises in its design to give you this unique outside shape, especially in the hatchback. You reduce the glass and the visibility of the interior. The blind spots in the rear quarters of the car are very, very bad. And you notice that the more you drive it and some of the specialness of the interior wears off. You just want a car that's functional. So visibility is a downer. The seats compared to the Acura Integra A-Spec feel far more flimsy, cheaper, and the interior cabin is nice as it looks, has plenty of squeaks and rattles from the headliner to some of the door panels and in the back, just unidentifiable types of clicks and creaks all over the place. And it only has 3,000 miles on it. Now, usability wise, this is a highlight. The knobs, buttons, switches, all the controls are amazing in here, including the door pockets. There's not much you're not going to fit in here, including this center cubby, which Jack has God knows what in here. I don't even want to touch it. The knobs, buttons, and switches for the HVAC control are so simple. It's much like the Integra. It's just laid out differently. The technology interface, you could argue some people like, well, you know, it doesn't have a touchscreen. But when you look at it compared to many cars we drive, this is one of the better infotainment systems because they've reduced absolutely everything to a minimum. And when you look at it at night, when you look at it in the daylight, there's only a few menu items here. It's all white on a black background. You can essentially leave the screen on and never notice it there. So it's not distracting. The gauge cluster is more traditional with analog gauges and a center screen that blends the light together. It's just a really cohesive design on the interior space. Where this takes a huge hit is in the back occupant space. You feel really claustrophobic back in there. And you do feel more claustrophobic in this car. And despite this being a hatchback, it is on the smaller side. But when you look at it, this is a smaller footprint car where the Integra is an enormous boat compared to this. If you don't need a large sedan or a large car, you're going to appreciate how nimble and small this the size is, namely if you're parking this outside in a city environment. But I think we're going to get in the shop and we're going to talk about some of the mechanical differences of both these cars. Mark, we're underneath two different Takumi built front wheel drive based premium economy cars. They're both hatchbacks. This is the Acura Integra, but you'll also see B-roll of the Mazda 3 all wheel drive turbo hatch. This car, according to Acura, is all different than the Honda Civic Si. It's in fact between one to three percent more rigid than that car, which is just incredible. And it's got a lift back. That's the big difference. They saved the lift back for the Acura lineup and you get stuck with the pure sedan on the Si. They're trying to, whatever, they're taking this architecture and trying to scale it out to more of that entry level luxury car. And as I said on the interior, is this really Integra or is it more IOX? Yes. I mean, and I think when you look at it in terms of driving dynamics and what they've done here in terms of tuning from the adaptive dampers to the way that it rides with the manual transmission, it feels more Civic Si slash what Integra used to be. And to be completely fair to this car, the Integra was always just a slightly altered Civic. I mean, again, same platform, same suspension, all of that. They've just changed the interior a little bit. So this car is not really that fundamentally different. You have independent rear, unlike the Mazda, that gets a torsion beam. And as we've learned from Mazda, at least from the engineering side, Mazda does not have a huge engineering budget. Not that Honda does anymore anyway. But in terms of Mazda, they took that small car platform with their most updated version and they held back on money, probably because they needed it for their next generation, like CX90 platform, double wishbone, you know, rear wheel drive based. So they knew where to move their money in terms of engineering. And they didn't feel that the small car market, at least in America, was like super hot enough where they needed to justify the cost. So this kind of fixes some of that. And it is very noticeable during the drive part of it, which we will talk about. But what other details do we have? I think both of these cars have two different fundamental missions. The Mazda 3, as we talked about in your original Mazda 3 video, which is like four hours long, they prioritize luxury over dynamics. Everything done to that car was in the pursuit of being a pseudo luxury car. Slow steering, a six-speed automatic gearbox, which had no gear shock whatsoever, a drivetrain, which makes way more power than this Integra and runs happily on 87, makes 310 foot pounds of torque and low 200 horsepower range. But it all comes in instantaneously. This Integra, they took the SI, they added adaptive dampers, they made it slightly softer. You get a manual, which is how you should get this Integra. You get a limited slip diff in the front and you get softer suspension than the SI, not to mention more sound deadening material. So while it doesn't have the same priority in purely being a luxury car in the interior space, they did elevate the basic SI to a nicer place to be, but it's expensive. This is in the mid 30s and so is the Mazda 3. This gets a better suspension layout. It is a more premium platform underneath, but you lose out on all-wheel drive, which is a big deal, particularly if you live in the Midwest. Even on snow tires, the front-wheel drive platform of this Integra is on will not be better to drive in the inclement weather than the Mazda 3. There's something fundamentally broken about these two cars because they don't fill the entire range of where they need to be. Like this has a really good manual, but nobody wants a CVT version of this, right? Like it's like cancer for an enthusiast at least. On the Mazda side, you don't get a manual with the all-wheel drive turbo engine, but with the automatic on the Mazda is way better than the CVT in terms of drivability. You get more performance out of this because you're working with an extra liter of displacement out of the four-cylinder. So it's, I don't know, there's both, there's really good pros and cons for both, but to your point with the Mazda part, they went, their big thing is premium everything. They want to move up market, but it's hard for me to digest that a bit when they moved all that money on the interior and then they kind of cost cut on the dynamics of the car from a driving perspective and then the price is still really high. Yes. You know, we're still talking about $35,000 cars and when you walk out the door, you're pushing $40,000. Like out the door, it's about $40,000. That's a lot of money for cars like this. So I'll be curious, Jack, to see how these things drive. All right, Mark, let's go take both of these premium vehicles for a quick drive. Get this baby into sport, Mark. You ready to feel the power of a thousand Takumis? Let's see. This gearbox, dude, so slow. It's like a sundial. Well, the first, the second gear shift, especially when you're, while you're brake torquing it. So let's just get this out of the way. This is a comparison against the Integra, right? Yes. And they're two cars that are trying to do similar things of being premium, premium entry-level, like youthful cars. But the Mazda 3 has taken a different approach to that. The geriatric approach. On paper, this may look like a hot hatchback. It's, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, it's a grown-up adult hatchback. It's like the Mazda 3 Speed that used to exist, but has all-wheel drive. It's not that at all. While it is much faster than the Integra in a straight line, it is about 500% less sporty. So why is that? What, what's happening here that's making this car less attractive to, to be less engaging to drive per se? Because it wasn't designed to be engaging. It was designed to be luxurious. It's a car that when you drove it, you weren't supposed to be disturbed by any of its inputs. The steering is slow. Suspension's built more around not tossing you around so much versus ultimate body control in the chassis. It's a car that you are supposed to not be fatigued by long drive zones. And you can really notice also the rear suspension architecture in this car. When you drive it hard, as I'm about to take a nice right hander up here, you notice the rear end isn't anywhere as settled as it would be in an independent suspension car. And the steering inputs are not helping that. It's, it's slow to turn in. It doesn't set as well as the Integra, but again, it's not meant to be. Yeah. And I think that's, that's kind of the takeaway of driving this car is what they set out to do, they achieved, right? Like all the inputs match each other. This is a less, uh, tiring car to drive. And, you know, you mentioned, Hey, the steering feels slow. Well on the highway, you know, it's not hyperreactive, right? You're not constantly having to monitor and change directions of the wheel. A Mazda is really good about keeping the inputs one-to-one with, in terms of the transmission, you know, you might say, well, it's a little slow. It's on the softer side. I would say they probably could have made it more sharp, but then you, you throw off the balance of the car. And I might be making some excuses for the fact that this isn't sporty, but the, what, how they set it up is really good. They, all of the, the ride control, how you're not jostled when you drive at the trans, the throttle input, the throttle input is really smooth and natural. And while even though the power is everything all at once, there is no point to revving this out because all that torque is down low. It all matches the entire experience. And if you're looking for that cruiser, that more luxury, low effort car to drive that less fatiguing car to drive, this is far less busy than the Integra is. But it also, the negative part is it's just not fun to push out the limit. It's just not, it's not as quick to respond. Obviously you don't have a manual gearbox option in this car with the turbo all wheel drive setup, which is a huge knock against it. But that to be fair, the Integra doesn't have a good automatic either. You're stuck with a CVT with that car. So you're forced into the manual. So, I mean, there's some weird like gaps between the two cars. They have similar objectives being that premium entry-level car from a Japanese brand, right? I don't see the German car snobs cross shopping these vehicles, but they, they do fulfill their, at least design criteria. This wasn't supposed to be story sporty, like the Integra. This is supposed to be that premium vehicle. This is like more GTI, right? Yes. Like this is the grownup kind of hatchback that still looks like a hatchback. It's not a fake hatchback. Like the Integra is, it still has that youthful size. It feels more like fitted around you versus the Integra, which feels like a giant accord, you know, feels like a bigger car. But to me, there's something missing here. And I think it's, it's so expensive for what this is. It does lack, there's something lacking in the suspension refinement and the driving refinement at its price point of pushing $36,000. I would almost rather see them make this, this turbo model more fun, like lifting off. If you're going to have a torsion beam lift off and have some rotation in it, have some edginess back here on a sporty car that they didn't, they didn't even think about with this. The last thing I'm going to say before we hop into the Integra is while your head moves around less than this, you don't feel like you're like, you don't get the sensation of like little, little ship in the big sea effect. You're bobbling around what you do notice versus the Integra is the impacts, particularly in the rear. There's a more of a sharpness from the initial hit. The torsion beam doesn't hide that as well as the Integra, but yeah, it's a washboard effect over, over bad bumps. It does translate from the back to the front more so than the front to the back. And it's just indicative of what they tried to do with this platform. And that's why I was talking about, like, if you're going to go to a torsion beam on the back, they're like almost trying to go the opposite way of making a torsion beam refined instead of making it fun, which is typical on the cheaper cars. Anyway, let's hop into the Integra, Jack. I'll be curious to see how that bad boy drives. All right. 1.5 power. It's time to go full sport, Jack. All right. Ready? Yeah. Second gear launch. I didn't rev it high enough. The battle of the fake engine noise. Yeah, I know. Do you think the Mazda 3's fake engine noise is better or worse than this? It's less intrusive. The Mazda 3 is more of like a low, low frequency rumble where this is like mid frequency. They're trying to hit that normal resonance of an intake sound. It just sounds like ----. It's just horrible. But this will let you bang rev limiter so you can be a true Honda boy. It's a manual transmission. It would be amazing if it didn't let you hit the rev limiter, just be like, oh, pull the shifter out of your hand. So let's get into it. The first thing I'm going to talk about, which we haven't touched on compared to the Mazda 3, is this 1.5 liter. It makes a lot of horsepower for being a 1.5 liter. 200 horsepower. Yes. It feels great in the cold, but the manual transit feels lively. But here's the here's the kicker. The aftermarket. You have to account for the fact that this engine makes a lot more horsepower in the aftermarket with a Honda tune and just minor stuff. This 1.5, this variant is mechanically identical to what's found in the Civic Si, which means 200 horsepower, about the same amount of torque. It has the same gearbox linkage. It is the same flywheel. It is the same drive train. Obviously, suspension tuning is different. It's much softer than the Si. Well, and you have adaptive damper. Yes. So that's where the softer part comes in. You have the ability to go softer than the Si. And then from there, basically, there's minor improvements in terms of seats. I mean, I mean, there's the improvements are so minor that I will just say 100 percent. I just can't justify this car over an Si other than the fact that it's really hard to get an Si at the time this video came out without getting gouged in a markup. That's really the only reason, because it just feels so similar to drive in every single category. I will say when you take it out of damage my kidney mode and put me back into comfort compared to the Mazda 3, I feel like this combined with the superior seats handles bumps, the harshness of the bumps better. It's a more refined ride in terms of damping, but the overall experience isn't as refined as the inputs are not all completely matched up. So this is a total opposite. The steering is quicker. It feels quicker. It feels more responsive. You can chuck it into a corner more. Granted, the problem here is when you start to power out, regardless of the limited slip differential, when I want to go flying into a corner, hopefully not off the road here, it wants to turn in way faster. Like it really gets into the corner quicker than the Mazda 3. It just has problems getting traction on the way out because front wheel drive. But you do have a good mechanical feeling in the front of this vehicle. Yes, because of the physical limited slip. It is. It's really good. It's about the best front wheel drive experience you can get outside of like the Elantra and the Type R. The Type R. Yeah. I mean, it does a really, really good job. And to be fair, the GTI, the new GTI does a great job, too. But I think for me, you know, the combination of the shifter, the naturalness of the pedal box, this wants to rev more. It's just a far more engaging car to drive overall, 360. But it lacks some of that like refined feeling that the Mazda 3 has like on the highway doing your daily driving. And it feels far more generic. And I said on the interior part, it just for being an Acura, I don't feel they're adding enough here over the Honda counterpart to differentiate it where I feel like it's something special. It just doesn't feel that way. In the scope of this video, Mazda 3 versus Integra, I've said this in videos in the past, it becomes a matter of your priority, the perspective on your priorities in life. Do you want something that adds back a little bit of fun to your life when you're driving it hard? Or would you rather just not think about anything? You know, be fast, soft, off the line, have a more refined interior space. I think it becomes a matter of that perspective more so than one car is clearly. Well, this is a perfect example of this constant debate we have that's really, really hard to make any sense for people is that the Mazda 3 is faster than this car. It probably would turn a faster lap as well, even though we both agree that it's nowhere near as engaging or fun to drive than this. So how can this car be slower, but sportier and better to drive? And the explanation is more down to what we've already talked about and how it makes you feel with all of the inputs and how the car responds to your inputs. And they're both doing things totally different. And that doesn't make one bad or worse. But to really close out your point is that it really is what you're going into this. Am I a 33-year-old person that now has to put in a ton of hours and I'm going back and forth to work and I don't care about having fun anymore? I have a second car to have fun in? You have a Miata or an FRS or something? This really is unnecessary. The Mazda 3 would be your better choice. But I think when we get into the final Dodge check, we're really going to break down each individual part of this and where it really is People want to talk about winners and losers. It's time to do just that. Let's hit up the categories for both these cars. These are two very different vehicles, but they are supposed to fulfill a similar purpose. They're both premium Japanese hatchbacks that are supposed to have a little bit of fun and a little bit of luxury. Let's start with the first topic and that is exterior and interior styling. You take a look at both these cars and it's pretty obvious who spent a little bit more time on making the vehicle unique. The Mazda 3 is the winner in this category. And even their own media is very self-serious about the Szechuan S and all the other things that they put into the exterior styling. It looks like a traditional hatchback. It's not a liftback thing. It's not another car turned into something else. And that carries right over to the interior space. There's so much purpose. It looks unique. It doesn't look like any other car, whereas the Integra really is. It has to be, you know, civic. Yeah, it's a civic. So it goes from there. But there's also the next category, which is functionality or interior usability, Jack. And that's where Mazda has sacrificed design for actual usability. While you may argue you don't actually need a large car, but I will argue you need to be able to see out of your vehicle. And the styling of the Mazda 3 leads to far more blind spots. The hatch space is nowhere as large. And if you need this to be your family vehicle, full-size adults are going to struggle to fit in the back seat of the Mazda 3. And that's its biggest penalty. You can argue between the usability of the infotainment of both vehicles. Both require physical controls. The Mazda's infotainment has a jog dial or a D-pad to use it. And while it does not have the touchscreen functionality, it's fairly easy to use. And the Acura's infotainment is just all touch. It's very simple, though. Well, the Acura wins just in pure usability because you have the space for four people. You have the larger usability, and it just feels more open and airy. You know, you could argue the aesthetic part, which is why the Mazda wins that part. But the usability goes to the Integra. Yep. And the Integra also has, at least in my opinion, vastly superior seats, at least in this A-spec. The next topic, Mark, is audio system. The audio system is a tricky one. And typically, the price point between $20,000 and $40,000, manufacturers do not spend a lot of money on this. It's not the primary R&D budget focus for many companies. But these two cars are a great example of what happens when you try to do it right. The Mazda was built from the ground up, the interior space with Bose involved in designing the door panel design and some of the frame of the front tub of the car. So what you have is a much more cohesive long-term design to scale it out. Also, for aftermarket, you want to change the speakers out, you're going to get much better performance. The Acura, however, has the ELS system, which is typically very well tested in our part. The MDX and the TLX have great audio systems rivaling that of Bowers and Wilkins, which is typically our best tested audio system. So it makes sense that they're kind of trickling it down to the lower end car. The issue is the Integra still has to be based on the civic interior. So they didn't start from the ground up thinking about audio. So it's kind of like a retrofit. When you look at the audio charts, the Integra has better bass response from the lower end. And that's because the cabin is larger. When you have a larger cabin, it's easier to control bass frequency. You can get more bass and it's easier to control. So when you see that, if you want bass response, you have to go to the Acura. It's better, but the trade-off is just because you have more bass doesn't mean it's perfect. There's a lot of harmonic distortion in the bass in the lower end on the Integra, whereas the Mazda 3 still has harmonic distortion, but there's less bass, so it's less noticeable. In terms of the audio graphs, the Mazda 3 has the better controlled system. The frequency response and the harmonic distortion is far better controlled throughout the range of, you know, human hearing and what they're tuning in the car. They roll it off where they need to at the high end, they roll off the bottom end, and even the mid-range frequency is pretty flat for a car of this price point. The Integra does lift one kilohertz for that human voice to kind of give you a little bit of nuance to it, but overall the Mazda 3 wins this test in terms of audio design. Both of these cars from an interior refinement perspective when it comes to noise, they both have rattles and squeaks, but the Mazda 3 is that little bit quieter. Even though our Mazda 3 was on snow tires, or is on snow tires, it's still a slightly quieter cabin space, at least to our ears. The next topic is platform, or engineering platform, the architecture the cars are on, and very simply the Civic platform, or the small car platform as Honda Acura will call it, is vastly superior to the platform that the Mazda uses. The Mazda has a torsion beam rear suspension, it doesn't have anywhere as much aluminum or underbody coverings as the Acura. The Acura has the more premium platform. Absolutely, and the straight answer is somebody's gonna like, well what about the all-wheel drive system, you know the Integra doesn't have that. So the Integra, that small car platform that the Integra's on can scale up, right? It goes from Integra to Civic to Sedan to Hatch and to Type R, Type S. The Mazda scales up to the CX-30. It was never intended to really be scaled up as a performance design, and you can definitely tell driving it. So that leads into driving dynamics. When it comes to engagement and fun and sportiness, that's where the Acura takes the cake. With its limited slip differential in the front, its ability to put down power and have just a more jovial driving experience, that's the joy of the Acura. The Mazda's driving experience is built around not disturbing you and all-weather performance. So from a dynamics perspective, the Acura is a clear winner. The Acura wins the fun to drive segment. However, so the winner of the best performance in terms of straight line acceleration, overall traction, all-weather usability, the Mazda wins that category because it's going to mop the floor with the Integra every single time in a straight line. It's much faster. And in bad weather specifically, I joked of starting in second gear in the Integra because if you start in first in any slippery conditions, all it does is wheel hop. The Mazda never has that problem. So you could argue, yes, the Integra is more fun to drive, but the Mazda is more usable on a 360 type schedule, putting its power down, being faster, and of course, you know, giving you that safety aspect of not constantly feeling like you're going to understeer off the road. The next topic is ride quality. Quite frankly, the Mazda does suffer from the torsion beam. Yeah. While you don't have the bobbling of the head that you get in the Integra, actual impacts translate into your spine. The Acura is the softer, better riding car. And the adaptive dampers also help that case and having a comfort mode for that car. So again, you know, two different ways of designing a car here. Engine performance, as we talked about a little earlier, the Acura makes less power, way less power, though it does want to wind out and it has a little bit more excitement. However, if you were chasing that zero to 60 time and having that instant torque all the time, the Mazda 3 is superior in that regards. Absolutely. So, Mark, the next topic, along with engine performance, is fuel economy. And honestly, the Mazda does not do a good job in that regards. If you're driving on the highway, you're driving in the city, just in general, you're looking at best case mid to high 20s, where in the Integra, you were returning far higher than that. Yeah, and in a good condition, you're probably getting 35 miles per gallon on the Integra and you're always going to net about 30 miles per gallon on the Integra, regardless of how you're driving it. So again, we're dealing with two different engines with much different displacement here, two four cylinders, but there's a liter difference between the two, right? So again, it's what you value. Do you want the power or do you want the efficiency? So, Mark, which of these two vehicles, given that the scorecards are very, very similar? They're basically tied. Yeah. I mean, and that's not on purpose. I mean, everybody's like, oh, of course the comparison test, you know, it has to be tied and it's not tied. Really. There is a clear winner here. And I think in both scales, but for me, I would have to choose the Mazda three. And the reason I choose the Mazda three is because if I had a fun car, a second car, I wouldn't need like the Integra mentality of manual transmission. That's not really a sports car. It's not particularly the funnest car. The Mazda three gives you 365 days a year of all weather performance. If you're not in the sunny California weather and you're in the snow, the salt, the wet, the all wheel drive system works. It's got a really interesting, unique shape. It feels special. It feels like Mazda put the effort in to make this car important to their lineup where the Integra just feels like, well, we only had X amount of dollars to make an Integra and maybe we're going to call it an ILX or it just feels more ambiguous than the Mazda three is. Oh, like we know they spent time on it. And that's why it feels more special. That's what I want for my money, that connectivity, that feeling that when I look back at it, when I drive it, it's not just a cardboard cookie cutter car. I'm going to agree and disagree with Mark. I think like most things, it comes to what you prefer in a vehicle. The Mazda three is a pure luxury appliance to go from point A to point B, you live in bad weather, you want a good audio system, you like the styling and you have another fun car or another larger car that can fit your whole family. That's where the Mazda three comes in. You need one car. You have a big family. You don't want an SUV or you want something that's more exciting to drive. I'm looking at it from my perspective. I would take the Integra. I like the manual. I like that there's a little bit more life to it, but it is nowhere as special looking or feeling in many ways. I mean, I could, I think we could argue back and forth about those points for sure, because I don't feel like the Integra is that sporty. I could get an SI, it's the same car. I could literally get a GTI and it would be in many cases better than the Integra. Oh, way better. You know what I mean? It's just that front wheel. In this comparison between the two, I mean, I think the all wheel drive factor is a huge one. You know, when you're looking at 36 or $35,000 back to back, I mean, and the automatic transmission, you are stuck with a CVT. If you have a family that can't drive a manual transmission, then you're stuck with a CVT. It's kind of like it takes the whole point away of the Integra of being anywhere remotely fun. And that's why I skew this more towards the Mazda. And I know I get what you're saying, but I'm sorry, you're wrong.