Well, what kind of performance are we talking here? Gas mileage, top speed? Just curious here.
Mostly I like Mustangs cause I like the look of 'em, and they seem to be fairly popular around Texas, compared to most other things I’ve seen, but now that I think about it, I haven’t seen as many now that I live in Arizona (and of those that I see, more of them are the newer ones rather than the 90’s ones). Also, what’s the price range for the Subie? ISTR that the Shelby GT500 (basically a stripped down and rebuilt performance Mustang) was around $50K or so, as opposed to the stock Mustang which is more like 16K or 20K.
Oh, on the topic of difficulty shifting in manual, I’ve noticed that when I’m in a bad mood, my shifting goes all the crap, but otherwise I tend to be fairly smooth at it (2001 Pontiac Grand Am)
The “go fast” kind. Did you drool endlessly over gas mileage figures as a youth? Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
I’m thinking in Canadian prices, hence my discaimer about Subaru being overpriced here. In the US the STi starts at $33k, but is almost C$50k in Canada.
The Ford is $43k in the US and $56k in Canada.
Oh you know it. “Oh baby, 40MPG Highway! Yes! I love it when you’re compatible with E85! YES YES YES YES! OH GOD YES!”
Yes, but I bet the British chicks would be all over me once the hear the sound of 500 ponies purring under the hood of my Cobra.
That said, one of my long term goals is to own a Shelby Mustang, paint it blue, and have a red Cobra logo from GI Joe stenciled on the hood or roof. I’ve been told that I’m something of a geek for this.
A quick search has brought to my attention that the Shelby GT- series Mustangs and the Mustang Cobras are in fact different cars, though similar in concept. Does anyone know of the Mustang Cobras and the Shelby GT’s were ever produced at the same time?
Audi is moving away from manual transmission entirely and going to the new DSG transmission for US models. I’ve heard similar but unsubstantiated reports for BMW, who will be abandoning their own system in favor of the Borg Warner DSG system.
I think it’s about time, I can’t wait for DSGs to filter down to everyday cars.
My Dad, a lifetime stick driver, finally switched in his latest car (2002) because:
Fewer cars in his price range had stick anymore,
He wanted me to be able to drive the car too, and I’d learned (at age 28, what’s this driver’s ed you rich snobs had in school? Betcha had football teams and swimming pools too, Muffy ) only on an automatic. In fact, I too did the classic lurching thing when I tried to drive the stick with the car next-to-last, and it was pretty bad since I was trying in a parking lot, a crowded one, which ties into
The main reason Dad stopped trying is that he was spending more and more time in more and more places in stop-and-go slow traffic or outright jams. We’re talking like most of his trips to anywhere in a fifty-mile radius of his home in the Bronx. A few hours of that and he’d come home with his sexagenarian feet aching from repetitive stress syndrome.
He misses the control and the gas mileage, but it was nice for him not to have to drive ten hours a day just by himself during the family trip to Canada last year.
It is possible to over-romanticize such things–I’m scanning old pix of my grandfather’s, Dad’s dad, who did a lot driving in NY and New England in the 20s and 30s in the Model T he labelled in one pic “My Chariot”. Grandpa used to enjoy telling the story of driving on rutted dirt roads with a clutch, etc. and the time he visited his cousin’s farm on a Vermont hill so steep, he had to drive in reverse because the tilt was such the gas wouldn’t come out of the tank right at that angle. :dubious:
Canada is 9.3, and I really don’t think our ratio of manual vs. auto drivers is much different than in the States. The only people I know who drive manuals here are people who grew up on farms and/or are car enthusiasts.
Actually, to tie this all in with the discussion of transmissions, I have a feeling that in real world situations, the Ford might actually have an advantage over the Subaru in terms of fuel efficiency.
I don’t know any actual details about the Ford or Subaru, but the Z06 Corvette you mentioned is EPA rated for 18 mpg city, 26mpg highway, basically putting it on par with the Subaru and exempt from the “gas guzzler” tax that the Ford must pay. Recall that the Z06 has a 7.0L, 650hp V8 engine, compared to the 2.5L 4 cylinder engine in the Subaru.
This is essentially a bit of accounting trickery by GM. The Corvette comes from the factory with the 2nd and 3rd gears DISABLED, you have to go straight from 1st to 4th. That huge engine has so much low end torque that you can do this easily, you could even start the car in 4th gear (as demonstrated by Jeremy Clarkson) and probably stay there for the entire trip. Thus equipped the Corvette gets better mileage than many Japanese V6 sedans, just not…very…quickly. Of course the mechanism that disables the gears is easily bypassed and most owners do so a soon as they drive off the lot. As I understand, it’s all sort of wink-wink-nudge-nudge, because GM gets to sell more cars and improve their fleet MPG, and drivers get to skip the gas guzzler tax.
Ford isn’t smart enough to do the same thing with the GT500, but with a MANUAL transmission I don’t see any reason you can’t also achieve the same effect as the Corvette, and get very good fuel efficiency as long as you’re not in a hurry. The Subaru driver, with his massively complicated turbocharger and AWD system, does not have this option. So I’d give the Ford a good chance of actually coming ahead in terms of theoretically possible MPG.
Engineering/mechanic types, feel free to correct me.
Deb and I both prefer manuals, but the last car each of us bought was a slushomatic based on need vs availability. (I was pretty upset. I bought a used '95 Dodge Caravan with an automatic after having scored a manual '88 Dodge Caravan for my previous car. Sometime after '88 they simply stopped building them with sticks. I had trouble finding a minivan by any manufacturer in a stick. There may have been some out there, but my budget was limited to used vehicles and there were none of those with a stick.)
As to Yank drivers: I got to go to a lot of parties to which I was not invited in college ('68 - '72) in Detroit, because some classmate would arrange to borrow a car from a classmate who had to study, and then everyone heading out would discover that none of them knew how to drive the borrowed car’s manual transmission, so I was invited as the chauffeur.
On the other hand, the usual method of measuring auto fatalities in the U.S. is per thousands of miles driven, noted as “passenger miles”, (since that gives a better view of the ratio of accidents to use). I suspect that U.S. fatalities for passenger miles would be much lower than most of the countries on that chart simply because U.S. drivers spend far more time actually driving–and driving longer distances.
A while ago I managed to find a link to a site which had breakdowns of European countries and American states for deaths per thousand passenger miles, but I’ll be damned if I can find it now. What I do remember is that the north-eastern states had low rates which compared with Britain and Germany, while the mid-west compared to Scandinavia and Greece. Road & weather conditions, and the likelihood of prompt medical assistance, easily are as important as driver training.
I thought the reason for using reverse in such a situation was that the gear ratio was lower than that of first gear?
You’re probably right, but since I was nine when he died, he gave me the more colorful explanation. It was definitely a problem with the gas tank according to him.
Mr. Slant got it almost right. And I say “almost” because you can do the same thing in a manual transmission car or Jeep by simply partially releasing the clutch pedal, AKA slipping the clutch. The problem is that too much slipping will kill the clutch plate rather fast. This is where automatic Jeeps are better.
Mind you, automatics have an advantage there, but they are not totally immune. If you climb a steep hill in your automatic and push the gas pedal all the way in, the revs will jump but the car won’t be moving significantly faster. Obviously, something is “slipping” there, although there is no clutch. The “slipping” part in an automatic is the torque converter. If there’s any difference between engine revs and wheel speed (eg stepping on the gas on an uphill) the fluid will start overheating and eventually damage the converter. All serious off road vehicles have a ATF overheat warning light on the dashboard.
The Ford’s a turbo, and the Corvette’s naturally aspirated, so I’m guessing you don’t want to be lugging on a turbo engine by skipping gears, right? I’m not a true enthusiast driver, so I don’t know, but it seems like a logical guess. The guzzler tax for the Ford should be about $1700, with no tax on the Corvette. What are the real word fuel economy values on a Corvette with this missing gears enabled?
Dunno, but I DO know that the difference between a Supercharger and a Turbocharger (more correctly called a “Turbo-Supercharger-XTreme” (or something like that) is that the Supercharger is mechanically powered by the car engine itself, and the Turbosupercharger is powered by car exhaust pushed through a turbine.
Good for bragging rights on an automobile, absolutley vital for piston-driven fighter planes operating at high-altitude in World War II (The Mustang, powered by an American Allison engine, could do unmatchable feats of agility, weaving between trees, etc., and had awesome endurance, but was useless above 10,000 feet or so, but with a turbocharged Rolls Royce Merlin engine, it could hang a little US flag in the air over Berlin). By the sounds of it, a Turbocharger would probably be more fuel efficient (not directly taxing the engine itself) but heavier, so I dunno how the balance comes out between the two choices.
OK, a quick glance through Wikipedia shows that Turbochargers are more fuel efficient and more effective, but suffer from “Turbo-Lag” because they don’t do anything until you’ve built up enough pressure in the exhaust system, usually by flooring the gas pedal and waiting a few seconds for it to do something. Superchargers suck up substantial portions of the engine’s power to work, and thus are far less efficient, but work instantaneously, which means when your foot puts the gas pedal into the floor board, the world immediately becomes blurry.
Bah, I’m special today. The Mustang used a Supercharged Merlin engine, not a Turbocharged one. The P-47 Thunderbolt was the fighter with the Turbocharged engine, and was apparantly an absolute beast because of the extra bulk involved with turbochargers in airplanes.
) only on an automatic. In fact, I too did the classic lurching thing when I tried to drive the stick with the car next-to-last, and it was pretty bad since I was trying in a parking lot, a crowded one, which ties into
