I'm surprised as well. I figured any Honda stuff would be about as cheap as you can get. Maybe there are enough people doing various things with the Honda engine/trans that cable shifters have become "desirable" (i.e. expensive). I think one advantage to a cable system is the flexibility (literally and figuratively) it offers in mounting, routing, and connections.
That is the same concept as we did with mid-engine VW buggies back in the day. It worked well. So that does not use any cables, all solid rods?
I recall some guys tried to get too simple with their buggies and have only one rod all the way from the shifter to the trans input. On those trans the input is straight out the back (when mounted mid engine), and on a buggy you have plenty of space in every direction. So the single rod did both the "in and out" and the "rotation". But it was problematic. Sometimes simple is not necessarily better. Eventually the aftermarket began providing cable shifters for buggies and that replaced all of them; much smoother shifting and less problems.
Here are a couple examples:
View attachment 23533 View attachment 23534 View attachment 23535
And look who else decided to join the party:
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PBS got into the transaxle game with the "Rancho Transmissions" (a big player in the off road VW stuff), and designed a cable shifter for them. I understand PBS later went to the "Mendeola" trans market (aftermarket high performance VW transaxle replacement).