I’m hell on a clutch. I admit it and this led me to wonder how many of us would willingly go to cars with only automatic transmissions if said autombiles could be reduced in price due to the fact that there would need to be no separate part of the factory dedicated to manual transmissions?
I realize that many of you like to switch gears and I’m not advocating the elimination of that choice. Just asking if you’d miss it, if it meant you’d get a price break for the automatic.
IANAM, just wondering if such a thing would be possible?
I feel your pain! I have been paying the penalty for an automatic because I often drive in horrible traffic. Still think there will always be a stick shift crowd. I think in Europe it’s difficult to rent an automatic.
Yeah, well there’s a reason why most warranties don’t cover a standard transmission.
Let’s face it, between those of us who just like to wind it up for that extra bit of acceleration, and teaching our square friends to drive a stick, we’re hell on clutches.
But, the only accident I was ever in, I could have a avoided with a standard transmission. (This is only true because I was used to a standard, but driving an automatic.)
I’d have to think about it honestly, and it’d depend on the car. The family minivan, sure make it automatic. My middle-age sports car: Heck no! Gimme the stick. (It’s a phallic thing, you know it) But I’ll miss my stick, when it’s gone.
I drive a manual shift only because of the greatly improved aceleration you get out of a small engine. If I could afford somthing with a nice powerful engine I would readily give up shifting on my own - however I have no desire to die trying to merge onto a busy freeway with an unresponsive automatic.
I appreciate an automatic when I have to drive in heavy rush hour traffic, but for all other times, I’m all about the stick, baby. I would be disconsolate if automakers did away with standard transmissions altogether. They’ve become rare enough as it is.
You can take away my stick when you pry my cold dead fingers from around it! :mad:
Seriously, it would have to be one hell of a price break to make it worthwhile to me. $1000? No way. $5000? I’d deal. But it’s inconceivable that doing away with stick shifts would save the automakers that much.
Between business and personal travel, I rent a lot of cars. It’s rare that I rent one where the automatic shifting isn’t sloppy as hell - you wait and wait and wait, and it huffs and puffs, and eventually it pushes its way over the top and into the next gear. And the effect on acceleration - ye gods, you step on the gas and the car has to think about it for several seconds before it says, in effect, ‘OK, let’s speed up now.’ Are the car’s microchips having a committee meeting down there, or what? :rolleyes:
I’ve frequently read over the years, in places like Discover, that pretty soon automatics will get so good that stick shifts will become obsolete, like manual chokes. I figure that as long as I keep renting cars while traveling, I’ll know when that moment arrives. But it’s still a long ways away, IMO.
It’s funny, when I first got my 5-speed manual tranny car, my brother (the CAR expert) told me I’d burn out the clutch it a couple months. This was after he watched me drive it.
Eleven years later, I still have the car (my SO uses it in the winter, after he puts his 'Vette away for the season) and it still has the original clutch.
I don’t mind driving a manual, but I really like having an auto. An Automatic transmission is more ‘luxurious’ to me, kinda like having power windows and A/C.
Both my wife and I only buy stick. The company car I get from my job is an auto though. I would not go to an auto for my personal car for a price break nor for any other reason.
I used to hate sticks, mostly because my experience with them was almost entirely a Ford Escort '83 (beyond awful), and I never saw the point of all that work. Was it really worth all that stalling? No way I thought.
Then a friend lent me a BMW M3 (and later the super exotic Z8). With a fine sports car a stick shift has a sense of rightness about it that can only be described correctly in terms that I do not use in public.
What are your people’s takes on clutchless manuals and automatic transmissions that let you shift manually (not necessarily the same)?
The clutchless manuals are super-exclusive and fairly expensive and I would think almost everyone would prefer the full power of a standard tranny but without the clutch pedal work and arm movement. Automatics that let you shift manually are good too but they are automatics at heart and may not let you get near the redline (depending on the maker).
I’m with you Rufus T. Probably it is because I learned on a standard oh so many eons ago, but when I drive an automatic, I feel like I’m further from the car. And I feel every dodad that takes me further from the car makes me less effective as a driver.
No, I’m not advocating “becoming one with the car”, but I guess it’s something like that. If you’ve ever seriously ridden a motorcycle, you know what I’m talking about. You try to sense what is happening to that vehicle, and I feel that having an automatic transmission between you and the road can interfere with that ability to sense.
But like I said it probably just goes back to my first car being a standard.
For me, that factor’s out of play: I didn’t learn to drive a standard until I was well into my thirties, after a decade and a half of driving automatics only. But once I learned, I was hooked.
My wife’s also a convert to stick shifts, though not at quite such a late age as me. But she was about 26 when she learned to drive a stick, and she wouldn’t dream of going back.
One, I can still throw it into “manual mode” and shift
when and how I want - IN ALL THE GEARS - if I feel like it.
Two, NO WEAK-ASS TORQUE CONVERTER. There is a reason cars with friction-plate clutches accelerate faster and harder than those with auto trannies. It’s because there is no direct physical connection between the wheels and the engine in an auto tranny. (Well, not until about 40 MPH when the torque converter “lock up” kicks in.) Instead you have the equivalent of two fans - one blowing air at the other to turn it. One fan is powered by the engine and the other turns the wheels. Very smooth and nice, but just weak and inefficient as heck for transmitting power.
Meet these two conditions (like Ferrari’s “automatic
manual” hybrid where you get a stick but no clutch) and I might consider buying auto if it was significantly (5-10% value of car) cheaper. Until then, I’ll pay a significant amount more for a manual transmission.
The reason I am like this is pretty simple. Cars are
not appliances to me - they are toys. I do not commute in
a car. I have my bicycle for that. I ride to work on
it, I grocery shop with the saddle bags, etc, etc. I have
chosen the locations of my apartments and such so that I may do this. I also live in a place that, while it can get cold, is relatively dry, so even in winter the streets are very often clear. I can easily do everthing on my bike 9 to 10 months out of the year if I bundle up.
Thus, my cars are almost entirely for recreation. When I go for a drive, I am out to have fun. And a manual transmission with a manual clutch is ten times more fun than an automatic.
Whoever said “Talk people into giving up manuals? Hell, why not just try and talk Charleton Heston out of his guns - you’ll have better luck” is right on.
I don’t object to automatic transmissions. If you want one, that’s fine - welcome to it. But I do think they’re
for when you want your car to be an appliance that just
gets you from A to B. Me, I’m a car nut. I doubt I’ll ever
look at my cars like that.
-Ben
Only manual for me. I didn’t get a manual because of the cost. I’ve driven nothing else ever since my ex taught me how to drive a stick over 20 years ago. My car’s nine years old and I haven’t had to replace the clutch and have had no transmission trouble. Front brakes replaced once -
I downshift…another advantage of a stick.
Depends on the circumstances. I learned on a stick and have had many cars with a stick. There’s no way an auto would have worked on something like my GT-6. OTOH, I drove a hack (that I owned) for a few years, and life in that with a stick would have been unbearable.
My most recent previous car was a BMW 320 that had a 5-speed stick. Before I bought it I drove an auto version of same and it just wouldn’t respond - unacceptable. I now drive a larger car with a (surprisingly responsive) 4-speed auto that I’m happy with for the driving I do. Of course my current driving repertoire includes very little road racing, pulling of trailers or off-road.
