[brucepick]

My guess as to what's going on is, the other board is mainly a performance / tuner environment. They'll be all about every possible way to get more air/fuel mixture to go through the engine. Including gearing towards higher rpm's, not lower. Intuitively form them, lower rpms is just plain counterproductive and wrong. But I'm sure it will help you get better mpg.

I'm driving a '97 Civic HX. As the general successor to the VX, I expect it has a similar gear ratio setup. I know from the owner's manual that it's geared higher (i.e. lower rpm's) than the DX, HX, and the rest of the Civics of the same year.

The '97 Civic gets out of its own way just fine, thank you. And turns something like 2300 rpm at 60 mph. If I really do need/want to accelerate quickly from 50 or 60 mph I can always downshift into 4th or 3rd - but so far I've only needed to do that for fun, not for transportation.