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10-22-2012, 06:32 AM | |
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Manual or Automatic transmission..which do you prefer?
Can an Automatic be as much fun as a manual?
http://jalopnik.com/5952570/a-manual...o-deal-with-it Car enthusiasts have been bemoaning the lack of manual transmissions in cars for what seems like an eternity. Every time a new car comes out and it doesn't offer a manual gearbox, it gets shunned by every card carrying member of the enthusiast community. But guess what? The manual transmission is outdated technology and there are better things out there. It's time to get over it and say bye bye. Before I get yelled at by all of you, I want to say that we're not too different. I love a good manual gearbox. If a car has one, I'm instantly more interested in it. And let me tell you, nailing a perfectly rev matched downshift instantly makes me smile. I'm absolutely for putting manual transmissions in everything. When I have a little Travis or Travisette running around I'm going to find a way to stick one in his or her Cozy Coupe. But I am totally against the notion that having a manual is the only way to properly enjoy a car. That is bullshit. Complete bullshit. 'Manual elitists,' as I call them, will shirk the notion that a car without a third pedal can be engaging to drive. They say that it isn't pure, it isn't as much fun, they don't feel connected. Bull. Take a current Nissan GT-R to a race track and drive it as fast you can. Then tell me it would be better with a manual gearbox. It just wouldn't be. Your corner speeds will be slower, your straight-line speeds will be slower, and your lap times will be slower. But you say you don't feel engaged? The point of driving a car quickly, either on a race track or a road, is to make it from the start to finish as fast as humanly possible. If you drive a GT-R on track and don't feel engaged, well, then you just aren't going fast enough. For a long, long time, a manual gearbox was the best way to do just that, to be the fastest. It just isn't the case anymore. Times have changed, and we enthusiasts need to adapt to it as well. Everyone dislikes someone who repeatedly refers to the past and says "in my day, we did it this way." That's what we in the enthusiast community are becoming. Nostalgia is our enemy, technology is our friend. Funny thing is, a bunch of manual elitists probably own an iPod, subscribe to Netflix, and own a smart phone. The rest of their lives evolved, yet they just can't let the manual tranny go. I see the manual gearbox like a film camera. When digital first hit the scene, it was terrible. People stuck with film. However, over time, digital got better and better and more and more people started switching. It got to a point where the pros and the stubborn were the only ones with film. And guess what? Now even the pros use digital. And much like how they could manipulate film better than the average person, their digital pictures are that much better. It's the same case here. Give a Porsche 991 with a PDK gearbox to two drivers, one great, one not so great. The double clutch transmission will not suddenly make the bad driver a God. He'll still be a mortal. The good driver will be able to manipulate the gearbox better and get the most out of it. He'll still be faster. And that's where I think a lot of manual defense comes from: fear and snobbery. People think they're members of an elite club just because they know how a clutch works and can heel and toe. Guess what? You're alienating possible enthusiasts by being that way. As enthusiasts, we should want to welcome everyone, not be scared of others suddenly being better at driving than us. First off, they won't be. Secondly, more competition for the fastest time is better. It's more fun. And having people interested in driving faster makes more enthusiasts. Giving them access to the tools to be quick breeds enthusiasm. With people caring less and less about cars, we need to make more enthusiasts. We aren't helping by lambasting anyone that can't drive a manual gearbox. By making exciting cars more accessible to people that may not be as skilled creates passion. Passion builds bonds. Bonds create friends. That's what we need in the enthusiast community. What we don't need is snobbery and fear of the new. |
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10-22-2012, 10:13 AM | #46 | |
Blame it on the Henne
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People never consider the EPA's mandatory driving style when getting MPG figures. Does the EPA hit neutral on a huge hill? When they see a red light a block ahead do they drop it into neutral? When driving a car with a lot of torque do they alter their shift points? Do they alter which gear they're in at certain speeds? The answer is no, they have to follow a strict set of guidelines. I drove a 2001 Maxima 5-speed that had a city MPG rating of 19, I was always near 30 just by dropping neutral when appropriate (live in CO, tons of huge hills, places I coast for miles) and by going to 5th at around 35mph since the engine had 217 of torque in a fairly small package. This is all I did, I actually am a pretty spirited driver, not a hyper-miling douche that takes an hour to get up to 50mph. I currently have an auto Xterra, while I don't think I'd want it in a stick, there are so many situations where I would just pop it in neutral where the RPMs are 3k or more. Also to the dumbasses that engine brake: You are burning a shitload of gas by keeping your RPMs up that high instead of idle and last time I checked brakes were about a hundred bucks. Why the hell would you wear out your engine/tranny over a part that costs a hundred bucks and if we are talking years of ownership, hundreds in gas. Simply stupid. |
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10-22-2012, 10:17 AM | #47 | |
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I have a "Diablo Sport" programmer that will actually change the shift points and firmness on the Challenger, and that would have to be electronic like you say. When you go into "Auto Stick" mode the MDS system is turned off. |
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10-22-2012, 10:18 AM | #48 | |
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10-22-2012, 10:22 AM | #49 |
Blame it on the Henne
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Doesn't mopar drive you nuts with the constant slushboxes? I like so many of the SRT8 models (particularly the 300) and it makes me insane that every single god damn one is an auto (challenger excepted I guess). One thing I like about GM is they only made the CTS-V in manual, I wish Chrysler/Dodge would get on board. I would hope anyone buying a SRT vehicle would only want stick. My old man had a SRT Grand Cherokee, while it was definitely fast as shit, it got old so fast just smashing the gas pedal and feeling the front end "hover".
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10-22-2012, 10:24 AM | #50 |
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Real Men don't need to give their car a handjob to feel like real men.
Paddle shift FTW. |
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10-22-2012, 10:27 AM | #51 | |
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Its not just the sports enthusiasts that prefer manual transmissions. Sticks are more efficient and save gas money as well in most instances. Having an automatic transmission also adds to the sticker price.
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10-22-2012, 10:38 AM | #52 |
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The author is simply dead-ass wrong.
If someone doesn't really care about "having fun" or feeling like they are in control and driving the car, thats fine. I have nothing against automatics and if you have a brutal stop and go commute and don't want to clutch for an hour, I can see reluctantly giving up the manual. But thats not the author's point, he is saying there's no difference in fun, control, or efficiency between the two. Bullcrap. If you don't have a brutal stop and go commute and if you aren't a lazy person who cant be bothered with doing much while driving, then drive a stick. Its cheaper on the lot, saves money on gas, and is more fun to drive.
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10-22-2012, 10:41 AM | #53 |
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I just spent a few weeks in Ireland and England where I rented a car in each place. They charged almost double for an Auto Transmission car. So I got manual transmission cars. They were both Diesels one a Vauxhall Astra and the other a BMW 1 series. Both were fun to drive and got great gas mileage up around 50 MPG.
I have to admit my stress levels were a bit elevated driving on the wrong side of the road shifting gears with my left hand all the while trying to figure out their road signs not knowing where the hell I was going. At home I have an FJ Cruiser with a 6MT I got for the fun factor. This is my first offroad vehicle and I never thought I would be out rock crawling in it. Had I known I would have got an Auto. |
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10-22-2012, 10:42 AM | #54 | |
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At best, it's a completely negligible difference that's almost entirely offset by the fact that people aren't machines and if they aren't timing their shifts perfectly, they give back whatever mechanical gains they may make up. In the real world, automatic transmissions have become so advanced that they have overcome the mechanical simplicity of the manuals.
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10-22-2012, 10:55 AM | #55 |
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dead battery?
manual saves the day... I knew a guy with an s10 who could upshift without the clutch... |
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10-22-2012, 10:56 AM | #56 |
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10-22-2012, 11:04 AM | #57 |
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10-22-2012, 11:06 AM | #58 | |
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My goddamn camaro doesn't idle above 800 and its 45 yrs old. If you're just rolling down a hill an automatic, the engine is going to be either idling or if you're on cruise it may downshift to keep you from accelerating past your target speed. It's not going to sit at 3k if you're not on the gas at all; it's going to coast down to idle speeds. Oh, and you're wrong on the engine breaking thing - you don't use more gas when the RPMs come up during engine breaking. The RPMs are only rising due to the compression in the motor and the motor spinning down. It's not actually using any more fuel; it's the transmission turning the motor in the absence of fuel, rather than the motor turning the transmission. The RPMs come up because there's no place for the energy that the transmission is imparting on the motor to go (i.e. the engine compression) so the RPMs spin up and the compression finally peters the acceleration out. If you were actually feeding the motor fuel to create those RPMs, it wouldn't decelerate. And while Radar and Hemi can speak to this more than I can, the last automatic I was fortunate enough to look at the guts of had some kind of slipping interlock in it where at lower RPMs it was barely engaged, so it's not like your breaks are having to work very hard to keep the car in place. At higher RPM the 'disks' in the transmission synch together and pull harder, so it's actually able to apply the power better. However, at low RPMs, the transmission isn't doing much work at all and as a consequence your brakes aren't doing much work. And if you're spending a couple hundred dollars on brake pads - you're an idiot. If you had to replace the brake assembly altogether, it's because you were an idiot for a prolonged period of time, burned through your pads and ****ed up your rotors. That's when you start spending a couple hundred dollars. Brake Pads for your daily commuter are dirt cheap. I reiterate, at it's very best, sitting in neutral at a stop light is going to do nothing more than save you a set of brake pads over the life of your car. Brake pads are cheap and easy to replace on your own. But hey, maybe you're right on those XTerras that idle at 3K. To start out by calling my post bullshit and then excoriate people for burning fuel while engine breaking and then chirping about $200 brake pads is...interesting.
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"If there's a god, he's laughing at us.....and our football team..." "When you look at something through rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags." Last edited by DJ's left nut; 10-22-2012 at 11:34 AM.. |
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10-22-2012, 11:08 AM | #59 | |
Like I woke up in Wonderland..
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As long as I have to commute through rush hour traffic, I doubt I will ever own a manual. Love ‘em though.
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10-22-2012, 11:17 AM | #60 |
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What's efi?
I'd totally forgotten about starting the car with the clutch. My dad did that a few times with older cars when I was a teenager, and I thought it was magical. How did that work exactly?
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