c'mon siegen. you know the buff book drove the Sclade as hard as the RDX and the RDX should be able to produce much better FE than it did. The two came out about equal which is scary since the sclade is like a ton more.
And to say it got as good an mpg as the fuel sucking CX-7 is not helping. Both of those vehicles are prime examples of how larger N/A fours or small v6's would be better powertrain applications. Neither vehicle has a user report history of matching the best mpg of the other CUV's / cute utes in its class, what is funny is that neither of them is also an acceleration king.
now if as you suggest it improves on FE with real world user reports than that is fine enough for me to lay off the sauce, but even then, there should not be such a wide spread between the FE in mild driving and wild driving. It leads me to think that Honda hasn't yet figured out how to squeeze upper tier power (-cough- and torque) and fuel economy out of a four cylinder at the same time. It leads me to think they have not optimized the fuel system or combustion chamber so as to achieve all benefits. In other words, they have yet ot achieve anything close to cutting edge, which again explains the second tier status.
turbo, something honda is a novice at. saab, audi, vw, bmw etc. all way ahead on that front. even chrysler's caliber SRT and chevy's HHR SS make you question Honda's turbo skills.
It should be fun to see Ford's ecoboost system put these Honda amateur turbos to shame when those come out.