There’s also that a manual transmission vehicle is less likely to be stolen. On the other hand, for the same reason it’s harder to sell second-hand as well…
ETA: For the OP, why not look as something like a Ford Focus? It’s not that small, top end trim lines come very nicely equipped, and they are still available with manual. In fact, the Ford Focus ST is manual only. Bottom line, some of the current “compact” cars are not much smaller than a “midsize” car from 15-20 years ago, and you don’t have to give up the nicer quality and technical gizmos.
Is that by number (manuals being a far smaller proportion of any fleet) or percentage?
But yeah, car thieves not typically being the brightest of bulbs (although I once knew one of the acknowledged grand masters of the field… long story), autos are easier to rip. Not really a compelling argument for choosing one, though.
weeeeellll… I’m usually a hardcore realist when it comes to the manual vs. automatic flame wars (in that I hold the line that an automatic will always win on economy and emissions.) But I do conceded that a manual may be better for performance in the hands of a skilled driver. for example, on a track a skilled driver might know that it’s better to hold in one gear for a stretch or around a curve where an automatic might force a shift.
By %, actually. A lot of would-be thieves can’t even drive manual, especially regarding the joy-ride kind of car theft. And “professional” thieves actually out to resell or part-out cars, who probably can drive them, apparently usually skip over manuals because they aren’t as easy to sell quickly. Hence my comment about it being harder to sell them second-hand–it’s a niche market (to my sadness.)
Yeah, not really. But it does remain a small advantage.
The biggest one for me by far is the “fun to drive” argument. A sporty call with an automatic just seems really wrong.
I’ve been driving for 35 years and have never owned a vehicle with an automatic transmission.
The car I have now is a 2011 Honda CR-Z. I love almost everything about it. The look is great with just the right amount of sporty without being an ostentatious wannabe, and the driver side feels like a cockpit. I love the autostop at red lights and when pulling into a gas station, and the corresponding autostart when pulling away. I also love the average 44 mpg I get.
The one thing I am not in love with is how quickly I must change gears. Throwing from first to fourth requires going through all the gears in approximately 3 seconds. What’s the point? So I’ve gotten into an admittedly bad habit of changing from first to second, then to fourth (skipping third), and then to sixth (skipping 5th). How much damage am I causing, if any?
None. The car doesn’t care if you go in sequence. If you’re shifting into too low a gear in terms of RPMs and lugging the engine, it might be a different story. Or shifting really late all the time and hitting the rev limiter before you shift. But otherwise you’re good to go, just be sure you’re leaving and landing on a decent amount of RPMs.
Yep, there’s an indicator in the dash advising when to shift up or down, and a warning indicator if the RPMs are too high or too low to have shifted, although I don’t need the indicators as the engine immediately complains if I shift up or down outside of the appropriate RPM range.
I’m driving a Ford Focus ST, with a 6-speed manual (which is all that is available for that car! Hooray!) I skip gears occasionally, too, especially, shall we say, when engaged in spirited driving.
That’s all somewhat true, and simply the costs of engineering any extra option become hard to amortize with a low take rate, but modern automatics are still massively more expensive than the manual which hasn’t changed much since the 60’s.
There’s all sorts of shell games they do with pricing of course, but I think in general the extra $1-3k you can expect to pay for an automatic these days is probably a pretty reasonable approximation of how much more it actually costs to make. If you’re looking at a $13k Ford Fiesta or something similar that’s still pretty significant.
It’s certainly true that it’s more of a challenge getting a manual transmission car to play nice with the electronic engine controls given all the crazy stuff a human driver can do. However, at least in the US it’s not really a certification problem because they just test what the emissions are for a normal drive cycle. They don’t actually test to see what it’ll do under whatever crazy conditions an unskilled or bored driver might put the car.
Furthermore, all of the more run-of-the-mill cars who’s manual options have disappeared from the US in the last few years are still offered in other countries. The actual engineering work of making a manual option that will pass an emissions test and won’t damage the emissions equipment if the driver does something crazy has already been done.
the problem is that the test is still done by a person operating the car. Yes, it’s done on rolls, but even a trained test operator isn’t able to shift as smoothly as an electronically controlled automatic. I’ve witnessed emissions cert testing. I know how it works.
nonsense. Just because it’s acceptable in one region doesn’t mean it will pass standards here. the EPA emissions requirements have clamped down hard on trace pollutants, and are even stricter than e.g. Europe on things like NOx. Which is one key reason all of those diesel cars you can get in Europe don’t make their way over here.
I am highly skeptical that the difference in tailpipe emissions between an equivalent car with an automatic and a manual being driven normally would even be measurable, let alone be the difference between passing and failing certification.
The extra programming you have to do on a manual has everything to do with maintaining drivability and preventing damage to the engine or smog equipment in the face of an unpredictable driver. Unless there is some country somewhere that tests for “emissions when driver overrevvs badly on every shift” or “emissions when driver decides to just drive around in 2nd all day” that particular bit of engineering can pretty much just migrate over from market to market intact.
(Also, the yawning gap between US and European emissions standards has pretty much closed over the last few years. At least in terms of emissions, at least any gasoline-powered car sold there could be sold here with minimal to no modifications.)
Not to hijack, but what is it about CVT that sucks so badly? I’m not a technical car guy, so I’m not educated in this area at all, but I read the WIKI description and it looks like it would be better power distribution across the board.
you’re being absurd here. The issue is how rapidly the engine changes speed/load when the driver/tester engages the clutch after a shift. if you’re inclined to disbelieve this can make a difference just because it “doesn’t sound right to you,” so be it. But here is a doc from the EPA itself showing how even just different shift points during testing affect tailpipe emissions.
I’ve got a CVT on my Outback. Except for the slightly annoying noise under load I haven’t noticed any issues with it. And I’ve driven all manuals before this car.
That document doesn’t even remotely show what you’re claiming. It says that emissions change depending on the shift point. That’s pretty obvious (although is probably less true now than it was for a '77 Chevette) but different shift points can be achieved lots of different ways. It has nothing to do with more emissions resulting simply from the shifts being performed by a human driver instead of an automatic transmission, which is what you’re claiming.
