Its a Civic on stilts whats not to like. The downsides it will suffer more wind noise but I don’t believe its terrible. The missing blind spot monitors, can be solved with the little blind spot mirrors stuck on the mirror.
TheAustral has a frog dog box type gearbox with 7 forward gears with 15 combinations, which you are aware of.
I would choose the ZRV over the Austral but, both of middlng in their class!