Used to be Stick all the way for me. But then two things happened:
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Got old, and my left knee has arthritis, thus clutching a lot makes it hurt.
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The new automatic trannys get as good milage as using a stick.
I just took my ‘07 Rabbit manual for a drive down one of my favorite twisty backroads, Haley road in Kittery Maine, I hadn’t yet driven Haley in the Rabbit, just the Golf DSG, so it was a good comparison.
The Rabbit’s 2.5L I5 and 5 speed manual was a good combo, the transmission had a wide gear ratio, and the 2.5 had power on tap when needed, very similar to the torquey powerband of the diesel, die to the wide gearing and torque, very little shifting was required
I did notice the slightest longer lag of clutch-in-shift-clutch-out, but it also gave me the ability to “feather” the power delivery with the clutch, something not possible with the DSG, making pulling into traffic much smoother, the DSG feels very “binary” in comparison, the clutch pal is either engaged or disengaged, no subtlety, first gear in the DSG is also extremely short, if I’m taking a corner at an intersection from a stop, I have to upshift using the lever in tiptronic mode, as the paddle will be on the wrong side of the steering wheel (paddles are mounted on the wheel itself, not the column)
The Golf HANDLES better, most likely due to the 45 Series performance tires, less sidewall flex, the Rabbit uses 65 series, a much taller sidewall, put a set of 45’s on it, and I’m sure the handling would be pretty close.
The Golf is overall much flatter handling and has more grip in the corners, the Rabbit has a wider overall powerband and doesn’t require as many up/downshifts as the Golf, the Golf shifts faster, and pulls harder at throttle mainly due to the Diesel engine.
A manual Golf TDI is what I truly want, but the DSG Golf TDI is perfectly livable.
For all but sports cars, yes. There will always be some level of demand for manual sports cars.
My first car was an '81 Rabbit (bought in '90). It ate oil, the front passenger door would often stick and need a flathead screwdriver to be opened, and puddles would form under the peddles when it rained. I loved that car. I kept it until '94, when it started costing more to repair than it was worth. A very kind Mitsubishi dealer gave me $100 for it as a trade-in. 
(Relatively) low horsepower and a teeny tiny trunk? I love the Miata in theory, but I wonder how practical it is as a daily driver. I’m not sure I’m up for even less storage space than my 370Z already has. But yeah: as a second car, like you propose, it’s basically a no-brainer.
A car is supposed to deliver me places in absolute comfort. “European handling” and phrases like that are a red flag for me. Any advert with “handling” in it means a crappy ride. I don’t want to know anything about the road, and I want to say “Did you hear something?” when I run over a land mine.
GM Turbo-Hydramatic for me. Preferably in a '73 deuce-and-a-quarter.
Definitely manual. In an automatic I feel more like a passenger than a driver. OTOH, with my leg problems, I’ve become more of an automatic person.
How about from your POV rather than mechanically?
Manual shifter - this not the most common configuration but I got tired of getting fake links on GIS.
Regular automatic with overdrive - gears are P-R-N + limit to 1, limit to 1 or 2, D is 1-2-3, and the button is basically 1-2-3-4.
Third option. You can shift straight down to D and drive just fine like that, as the computer will pick gears for you. Or you can push it to the left and limit the computer some. It stays in the center position of the left channel, but you can push it up or down to change the max gear; it will return to the center immediately. In this case you push forward to shift up gears, but other cars are the opposite.
CVT - I haven’t been in enough to know whether this is typical, but the ones I’ve seen have only P-R-N-D-L; there aren’t a discrete number of gears.
Ok, then this one.
It’s fun to drive my wife’s manual on rare occasions, but I like a boring automatic for the trafficky commute.
Manuals are a PITA.
Never had one, never will.
eCVT. Here’s a simulator that shows you how one works : Toyota Prius - Power Split Device
The new Rav4 Hybrid, one of the best selling vehicles in the USA, uses an eCVT. It basically has the same drivetrain technology as a Prius, just upscaled, boosted in peak power a lot, and of course it’s sold in the popular compact SUV form factor.
The eCVT is the clear winner on technical merits. Gears do not shift in eCVTs, they remain permanently fixed in a specific ratio. Torque ratios are achieved by generating power with one motor, sending the energy around the transmission cables, and converting the energy back to torque in the other motor.
So you get high reliability, very good throttle responsiveness, no mechanical shift lever, all transmission modes are just software settings. And of course the best efficiency.
I had several manual trans vehicles, but for daily commuting, the auto is the way to go. I think that the number of cars sold with manual trans slipped a bit after cellphones became common.
I have heard that cvt trans were very expensive to repair. I was told $5K for a replacement. No repair really possible. Most autos are maybe $2k for repair.
Prius eCVTs are $500 for the part, maybe $1000 for installation. See ebay for details. Here’s an example listing.
The reason the used ones (with under 50k miles) are $300-$500 is due to the low failure rate. They rarely break, people crash Prii at a higher rate than they blow their eCVTs. (also called a transaxle)
I drove sticks all my life but came to appreciate a 4 speed automatic with my beloved grocery-getter. It got 38 on the highway which is better than any stick I ever owned. I’ve given thought to having it completely rebuilt.
For sports cars I still like a manual but it has to be a good manual which means good clutch feel and precise shifter mechanism. I like to be able to click through the gears without the clutch.
Hush you!
Automatic. There is no real advantage to manual anymore, and the “fun” factor just isn’t worth the bother. I drove a manual for years and switched to automatic as soon as I could.
It depends on the driving demands.
- in stop and go, rush hour traffic I prefer automatic for the convenience
- on drives with serious hills/curves, like mountain driving, I prefer manual for the superior control
- for interstate cruising it really doesn’t matter, I’m going to set the cruise control and not touch any pedals for long stretches
- for off roading, definitely a manual
Actually, the gas mileage benefit is still there if you are good at driving the stick shift. It turns out the EPA numbers, which are self-reported by the car companies, if I recall correctly, underestimated the mileage of most manual cars by about 17% (cite).
Just going back through my last four vehicles, I can’t think of a time when I didn’t beat the EPA estimates by at least 10%, and I have always calculated my fuel mileage with every fill-up by dividing the miles driven by the gallons it took to fill the tank back up.
My Vibe is rated for 29 on the highway, I typically get 33 on the highway (13.8% better than the estimate; the automatic version was rated at 2 mpg higher than mine, but real world numbers seem to be what they historically have been, two miles per gallon better with the stick shift).
My Civic was around 42 miles per gallon on the highway, rated at 35 (20% better than estimated).
My Saturn was 40 miles per gallon on the highway, rated at 34 (17.6% better than estimated).
My old Nissan truck was 23 miles per gallon, rated at 18 (27.8% better than estimated).
With automatic cars, however, I’m lucky to even get what was advertised. I figure the automakers are deliberately underestimating it in an effort to convince diehards to opt for the option that results in more money spent at purchase, and more money spent in the shop. The newest automatic car I have driven is a 2016 Dodge van, and I see that with over 80 years of car companies building automatic transmissions, they STILL cannot make one that doesn’t shift up and down half a dozen times when climbing a small hill!
Although the manual shift mode does help with that somewhat, it will not allow me as a driver to shift at the same points that it will shift on its own at. It will go into 6th gear at 45 miles per hour, as low as 40 when the Econ mode is turned on, but if I manually shift it into 6th gear, it will ignore it until I’m up to around 47 miles per hour, even on a downhill grade. What gives there?:smack: I do get slightly better mileage out of the thing in manual mode. The econ mode setting actually seems to make fuel economy worse (probably because it was tested by engineers on some perfectly flat track, a condition which does not exist on Maine’s roads).
I grew up in Maine (York), and currently live in NH (Dover), our back roads are just as hilly and narrow, back when I had the sludgebox Honda Element the stupid transmission would be constantly hunting gears just like every other crap sludgebox I’ve had the misfortune to drive, I could sense the power being wasted by the torque converter every time the bloody thing was hunting gears
in my DSG Golf, on the exact same road, the transmission actually shifts when I would have shifted a manual a good 90% of the time, and I rarely have to override the transmission choice with the paddles, D mode keeps the RPM around 1200-220 RPM over most roads, on the flat sections, the engine is barely off idle in 6th
the torque band is wide enough that the transmission rarely needs to kick down to accelerate in D mode, S mode holds gears a bit longer to maximize acceleration and keeps the RPM a bit higher
“M” mode will typically stay in my selected gear until I hit redline or would bog the engine (this override feature can be defeated with software mods), and I’ve rarely had it kick down in manual mode (also defeatable by patching the software), for the most part, in M mode, it behaves like a manual
no, it’s still nowhere near as engaging as a true manual, but it’s close, and light years better than a sludgebox or CVT
it doesn’t have the “slop” and sogginess of a sludgebox, or that weird “rubberband” effect of a CVT, it has the direct feel of a manual, just without the clutch pedal, it’s the best compromise for those of us that want the feel of a good manual (shifts are very crisp and nearly instantaneous) but for whatever reason, end up with an automatic.
I still prefer manual, and always will, but the DSG is an acceptable compromise, the only acceptable compromise for me.
…that said, if I can find a manual Golf TDI in good shape, at a reasonable price, and a CPO vehicle, I will trade out of the DSG version
I had (and have) a BMW F30 328i (automatic) now also have an M2 (DCT, ie automated manual which VW calls DSG). In the comparison IME the 328i’s transmission is very good. It shifts smoothly when I’d want it to, very high % of the time. You can manually manipulate it using the shift lever, no paddles, but I almost never do. Can’t see a serious complaint about that engine/transmission interface, one of the strong points of the car IMO.
The feel of the DCT in the M2 is different. I guess more ‘engaging’, car has paddles. I do use them sometimes particularly when passing because even in ‘sport’ mode you’ve got to really give it the whip for it to downshift a lot by itself. Whereas it might be advantageous to downshift up in rpm to 4-5000 even if you’re not going all out. So if I’m going to floor it and hit the kick down button on the floor in a two lane pass and want to 100% concentrate on any oncoming traffic etc I’ll keep it in ‘drive’ mode, but otherwise I sometimes use ‘sequential’ (the paddles) in passing.
All in all the M2 has a different, more fun, more hardcore personality than the 328i, it’s not just that it’s a more powerful car (my 328i is tuned up so the power difference is less than if it were stock). The DCT is part of it but just isolating that one feature I’m with the general engineering consensus of not a lot of difference (the new M5 and M8 are both automatics, as well as all wheel drive, two M car heresies).
On mileage, again not necessarily just for that reason the 328i significantly outperforms its EPA highway rating under my foot, around 38 mpg long term historical average v 33 rated. The M2 more modestly outperforms like 28 v 26. Although again two different cars and the long trips I’ve taken in the M2 are perhaps more tilted to winding roads where it excels, F30 not bad at those at all IMO, but not as much incentive to push it and that might be a factor in the relative mileage.
I had no interest in true MT in the M2 (where it’s available). You save a little, but if focused on saving I wouldn’t get any BMW. Manual version of the car is slower than DCT, and I bought to be a fast car, so that’s self defeating IMO. There’s also plenty to focus on and enjoy in relatively legal aggressive driving on two lane roads with the DCT without rowing through gears with a clutch. And ‘control’ issue is completely bogus on that car between MT and DCT, essentially bogus considering BMW automatics either.