What are you missing? Unless you have one of the very newest Acuras that just came out a few months ago, your automatic is a 5 speed, compared to the manual version which would have 6, so you’re missing a gear ratio. Most “tiptronic” manu-matic type gearboxes won’t hold gears up to red line, and cannot be shifted out of sequence. The torque converter saps engine power so less power gets to the wheels, and the gearbox itself is heavier than an equivalent manual transmission which hurts handling and speed. But if you don’t miss anything, you don’t miss anything. Different things are important to different people.
In terms of likelihood to embrace progress, I would rank Europe as being on top followed by the US and Japan a distant third. In any case, the manual trans is being rapidly superseded by newer technologies outside the US too, principally CVTs in Japan and dual clutch automatics in Europe. At the end Europeans are really no more enthused about cars or masochistic than anyone else, and since dual clutch transmissions mostly offer an automatic experience with the light weight and low power loss of a manual, that’s probably going to be the way forward.
However manual transmissions will still be offered as an option in Europe, definitely for higher performance type cars. This is more problematic in the US because the US regulations are much more onerous - the EPA requires separate, expensive certification for every single powertrain combination that essentially makes it prohibitively expensive to offer any engine/transmission combo that doesn’t sell 20,000 units per year. This is why cars in the US will come with 1 or 2 engines, with maybe a manual transmission as an option on one engine but not the other, while the same car sold in Europe will have 6 petrol and 6 diesel engines, all with either a manual or automatic.
What BDoors said. It is a chicken and egg situation, and stick shifts stay the standard here in the Netherlands for much the same reasons most people stick to the Querty keyboard.
It is the EU’s loss. I was trained to use a stick, and I didn’t know any better. But like other posters said, it is a pain in the tuchus when driving in a traffic jam or in an urban situation. When we bought our Toyota Prius, which only comes in automatic, it took me less then an hour to get used to and I haven’t looked back once. Now when I borrow a car and it is a stick, I get annoyed at how much extra work a stick is.
Ok why exactly is a stick “work”? If you know how to drive properly it is instinctive.
My own WAG that the ones who find it difficult and work are those who learnt to drive in automatics; those who learnt to drive in manauals do not have that problem.
Me; I live in the Himalayas. I have yet to find a hill climb mode in an auomatic that I can trust.
In general, people don’t respond well to being called lazy. You were obviously joking, but this is a pretty contentious issue. Despite the U.S. vastly preferring automatics, quite a lot of us have grown up with car people who insist they are so much better than us because they drive stick.
Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if that sort of attitude has hastened the decline of manual. The demographic that tends to care about raw power and likes to do things the old-fashioned way are the same demographic that absolutely hate elitism of any kind.
As for the question about America having fewer manual transmission cars than Europeans, keep in mind that we are richer. Even poorer states like Alabama and Mississippi have a higher standard of living than most European countries.
When I learned to drive 40 years ago, my family had both a station wagon with an automatic and a Beetle with a stick. One thing my friends said that when you took the driver’s test you should use an automatic because the tester could flunk you for “riding the clutch”. I don’t know how true that is but I used the wagon. Incidentally, the women my age would advise each other to “wear a skirt because the tester doesn’t like girls wearing pants.”
I have owned both manual and automatics and I prefer automatics. It’s just not worth the hassle of shifting every few minutes in traffic. So I’m lazy…shouldn’t we be trying to make life as enjoyable as possible as long as it doesn’t hurt things? If you need to have three copies made of a letter you wrote, would you use carbon paper or a photo copier? If others don’t share my views, you are welcome to it and I hope you can find a standard in your next car.
Incidentally, I talked recently to someone who runs a business rental high performance cars to people for a day or several days. He says that he no longer stocks manual-only cars, just automatics or also paddle shifters. He says that even if people can’t use a manual, they lie about it and repair bills result.
Who here claimed that manual clutches were necessary? The point of a manual transmission is direct control over which gear you’re in, and avoiding the losses of torque converters. Fancy systems like dual-clutch automatics achieve both of those with the added benefit of inhumanly fast shifting.
The debate here is about typical, modern-day manual transmissions vs. slushboxes. I’ll miss clutches when DCTs become more common but that’s just sentimentality–I’ll be happy as long as I retain as much control as I have with my normal manual.
I’d like to see a manual CVT–just one smooth lever with the endpoints marked “0” and “1” :).
Surely together these two posts explain the divergence between Europe and America. In Europe with smaller cars and less powerful engines plus high fuel priices there was a large disincentive for the majority of people to buy automatics. In the States with big, powerful cars and low fuel prices these disincentives are much reduced. If American stick shifts were half as bad as **kunilou **says it was no wonder people started buying automatics. Once the trend starts there is positive feedback - more automatics -> more drivers learn on automatics -> more people want to own automatics -> manufacturers built yet more automatics and so on.
I think really its a matter of once one system becomes dominant it keeps itself in the dominant position due to all learners then learning on it.
Why manual became dominant in Europe and automatic in the US just seems to be to do with the different driving environments. Simply put Europe has lots of old narrow roads having to twist around ancient boundary lines and so I think the control you get with a manual is more required. The US has in general big wide straight roads where a manual really does not give you any benefit.
I do expect manual to probably slowly die off now though even in Europe with the newer double clutch type systems giving you manual levels of control but still with the benefits of an automatic for things like driving in heavy traffic. These systems are still fairly new but as they make there way down the market to entry level cars I see no reason why they won’t supplant manuals in a few years.
The interesting thing is, though, that that article talks of automatics rapidly becoming more popular in Australia. I suspect that the same thing will happen in Europe (although we’ll probably bypass old-school slushboxes and prefer the double clutch boxes mentioned by Dr. Strangelove). In fact, my impression is that it is already happening - DCT transmission is already a feature offered on many quite ordinary cars. Just look around Ford UK’s website, for example.
I think any economic arguments against automatics have faded and it’s now just inertia that’s holding them back. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in ten or twenty years’ time, DCTs outsell manuals in Europe. I don’t like slushboxes but would be perfectly happy with a DCT. And Europeans are just as “lazy” as Americans :D.
Learn when it’s best to skip gears, makes things a lot smoother. And just practice a tiny bit, soon it will all become second nature and you wont be overly conscious of what you’re doing. If you don’t have any physical infirmities then you shouldn’t have any physical problems with moving your feet constantly.
Let me 'splain. No, let me sum up I am not going to sift through an assload of posts to find shit to quote.
Female, 50 in October. I learned to drive in a ferrari and a 73 chrysler new yorker. I drive really fast, and can parallel park a carrier. My preference is for manual transmission cars. I learned to drive in a western NY winter. Snow, ice, slush. The preference for a manual comes because I can hit the clutch and stop the drive going to the wheels and drift gently across black ice. There are driving in winter conditions that I can go through that people with automatics can’t. I can in good weather pick and choose to do certain things like downshift and have passing/acceleration when I absolutely need it. You can avoid accidents that way. I am more vested in paying attention when I drive, I have only gotten road hypnosis when driving an automatic.
I am an American living in Colombia where the standard is manual transmission for cars. But, my wife learned to drive with automatic in the USA, so we have automatic. She doesn´t want to learn to drive with manual transmission. The reason here for the manual transmission being the standard is the original cost and gas cost. I find it much easier to drive automatic because of some mountain driving with lots of traffic. I can drive either manual or automatic though.
Both RaftPeople and I want to know why you think a manual would be easy in heavy traffic.
Here’s how I handle heavy traffic in my automatic: When I’m stopped, my right foot is on the brake. When the car in front of me moves a few feet, I let go of the brake, roll forwards a bit, and then use the brake again. Repeat until the traffic clears up.
Here’s my memory of how to handle heavy traffic in a manual transmission: Right foot is on the brake, and shift is in neutral. When the car in front of me moves a few feet, my left foot presses the clutch, my right hand puts the car into first gear, and my left foot lets up on the clutch. At this point, if I am going uphill, it is especially important to keep the right foot on the brake until the clutch is fully engaged, to prevent rolling backwards. The right foot can now move from the brake to the gas. A few seconds later, when you’ve caught up to the car in front, do it all in reverse.
Those are a lot of steps one must use on the manual transmission. I believe that people are being sincere when they say that it becomes second nature after a while. But reaching that point requires a heavy investment of time and effort, and I cannot imagine any “Point A to Point B Steerer” who would consider that investment worthwhile. Where is the payoff? I’ve never been on a highway and said to myself, “I don’t like the gear that the car chose; I wish I could force it up or down.”
(Actually, most automatics can be forced down, if I’m not mistaken. Most automatic drivers simply put the car in “drive” and never think about what the “2” and “3” on the shift refer to. If I understand correctly, the “2” prevents the car from going higher than second gear, and the “3” prevents it from going higher than third. And some cars have a button labeled “O”, which prevents the car from going into Overdrive, i.e., no higher than fourth. I suppose these would be good when going down a very steep hill, to prevent the car from going too fast. But I have no idea what other sort of situations I’d use them for.)
It is work because it requires attention, something most Americans don’t want to give to the driving task. Having to clutch-in before coming to a dead stop, or put it in gear before the light turns green, or shift your way up through the gears as you accelerate means you have to be paying attention to one more aspect of driving. Most Americans want to be absolved of that responsibility. They don’t derive any satisfaction from having direct control over the transmission, and since automatics have pretty much achieved parity with manuals in terms of MPG and reliabilty, the choice for them is obvious.
(As a side note, it’s interesting to see why automatics and manuals these days deliver roughly the same highway MPG on the same model of car: the top gear on an automatic is usually slightly higher than the top gear on a manual. Why? So the people with manuals don’t have to downshift so often to accelerate/pass at highway speed. Apparently even the manual-trans enthusiasts don’t want to work as hard as they used to. :D)
My wife has absolutely no interest in a manual transmission. I have an '03 Maxima with a manual trans, and maybe 7 years ago I gave her a couple of lessons in a parking lot followed by short, stop-free drives on public roads. She did not enjoy the experience, and in fact found the whole thing anxiety-provoking. She doesn’t like the idea of accidentally stalling it at a traffic light and drawing the ire of the people behind her, is fearful of doing damage (by stalling it or selecting the wrong gear) and does not want to be saddled with decisions about when to shift up or down. She is bothered that she can’t help with the driving when we go on long car trips together, but ever since those first lessons she has steadfastly refused to learn.
If you’re repeatedly catching up to the car in front of you, then it’s not just heavy traffic, it’s stop-and-go traffic. Which is indeed a hassle, but IME it rarely lasts long. In those cases (and at 4-way stops with loooong lines) I typically let a gap open in front of me before idling forward in first gear. Allowing that gap to grow a bit reduces the frequency with which you need to clutch-in/clutch-out. Watch the big-rigs, and you’ll see this is pretty much what they do.
I’ve driven both automatics and sticks all my life (30+ years since I got my license), and I love driving a stick. One of the funnest cars I owned was a 1987 Toyota Corolla FX16 with a 5-speed stick. I also had a 1986 Hyundai Excel GLS with a stick (owned it for 5 years, so it wasn’t a total piece of shit).
No cite for this, but I heard many years ago that at least one reason automatics became popular in the US was because of returning WWII vets. It was much easier for disabled vets to drive an automatic than a stick. It makes a certain amount of sense, and I’m not saying that’s the only reason, or even a major reason (I believe post-war prosperity had something to do with it as well – why do for yourself when you can afford a car that can do it for you?), but I think the vet explanation has at least a grain of truth in it.
