Since it will be the wife's car, all other things equal, does she have a preference?
We have the variable cylinder management in our '07 Odyssey. It is very smooth and the only indication that it has kicked in is a light on the dash. Other than that, we feel no transistion. I don't have an identical vehicle without the feature to compare mileage to.
Honda is usually pretty conservative when it comes to adding new technology before they are convinced it is reliable, so while I have no data to say if it is reliable or not, my trust in Honda does not turn me off to the feature.
Yeah, but A) that was a GM product and B) 30 years ago.
Well, it's not a manual transmission, so how cumbersome is it really? You put it in drive at the beginning of a trip and back to park at the end. Will the wife really be shifting it other than that?