That seems to be the general scenario with most small turbo engines. I've read other car tests with similarly sized turbo engines mated to manuals and CVT and the manuals were often a touch slower, only because the turbo lags more with the manual than does with the CVT.
I think that's a given without even seeing any tests. A CVT is inherently better for acceleration. Has anyone ever seen ANY car where the manual transmission version accelerated faster than the same car with a CVT (or even an automatic with the same number of gears)?
That certainly wasn't the case 10 or even 5 years ago. historically automatics and CVTs were quite a bit slower than their manual counterparts. The 8th and 9th gen civics can attest to this the old 5 speed auto and cvt were slower than the 5 speed manual by more than a second. It's only been recent years that automatics, dct and cvt transmissions started to edge out manuals due mostly to being able to shift faster, add less weight as they get smaller and lighter than they used to be, and prevent power loss between shifts that is a given with a manual. So it's still a relatively new idea to most people that an automatic (stepped, cvt or otherwise) could or would be faster than the manual offering.
The 2.0 6MT for the 16 Civic does 0-60 about a second faster than the CVT version of the same car.
The turbo definitely makes the difference. It's pretty clear that small turbos pair well with autos/cvt. With naturally aspirated engines, manuals still deliver more direct power and torque curve.
Sport Exhaust take some room under the car, hence leaving a higher floor in the sport model. I read it somewhere on the internets.......
