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I have a Honda Civic 2000 with that continuous transmission - you know, where it continually moves from one gear to another - I think using belts. (CVT?) Often when I start the car in the morning and back out of the garage, the car hesitates before it moves - doesn't seem to engage the gear right away. Should it be like this?

The early Honda CVT's had a problem with a shudder on take-off.

From around 2005, and after numerous modifications, the transmissions performance has been greatly improved almost to a point where they are pretty much fault free.

As your car is now 10-years old, the transmission is a very early version of the CVT technology and if the hesitation is in fact connected to the transmission, the repair costs could be horrendous.

Hopefully I'm wrong but you will need to get it checked out to confirm either way.