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No difference at all. I like driving and I "enjoy the journey". I do plenty of it just to get out with no destination chosen, just hop in and go. To me, having an automatic lets me enjoy it so much better! No shifting to do. No clutch. I can let my arm rest on the door with the window down and just cruise along taking it all in. Yep, in complete control of the car!
Ditto. I used to be hardcore "manual trans or bust", but clutch pedaling three feet at a time through nine hours of a hurricane evacuation (really tough on the left leg, ya' know...) makes you reassess that thought.
Two hands on the wheel and one foot on the go-pedal when I'm not using cruise control is fine with me. Never mind that my F150 has 3.55 gears rather than the laughable 3.08s the manual trans/v6 models would have along with Geo Metro-like towing capacity.
Before I grew up, I may have thought auto trans and fun was mutually exclusive as well.
It is reaching the point, that auto companies will quit offering manual transmissions as the current supply runs out, due to the demand being so low that it is no longer financially practical for them to offer a manual transmission.
You're engine is disengaged while cornering, you cannot feed in power if needed to balance the vehicle through the corner, you're assuming that your cornering is going to complete as you think it should (and it may not) you may have to very quickly, change gear to a speed appropriate gear (not the gear you've preselected), declutch and apply power because you're coasting around the corner, and it's probably a moving offense to coast in your drivers regulations too.
It's obvious that you don't know how to drive a manual
I've been driving manuals for over 20 years and I always coast "on the clutch" while pressing the brake when taking a curve, at the same time I go ahead and put my car into the gear that I will need to move out of the curve
The point is you cannot shift in 200ms which is what the "regular" state of the art auto does. And, yes, the PDK is even faster than that.
Everything depends on the car in question & the driver. All you see in road racing is PDK OR manual's. In drag racing I would suspect that you would see more automatics then manuals. Like 350,C-6's, etc. Even the old TorqueFlite/727 I would suspect. Damn things are tough!
It is the opposite in Ireland where automatics are rare. It might be due to the high gas prices ($8/gallon when I was there last). I found that as I was driving on the left side of the road, having a manual transmission was better as I was more engaged with the car than when I drove an automatic on the left. Shifting with the left hand took some getting used to...
For my daily drive, it is an auto, but for a fun car (91 300ZX) it has to be a manual...
My daughters (23, 19) want me to teach them to drive a manual. It is a life skill...
Small 4 cyl. engines popular since gas got so expensive do a lot better with a stick shift. Automatics absorb too much power, its not a problem with V8's but is noticeable with small engines.
I posted here before and mentioned that now most cars have shiftable transmission.
I just did 1600 miles in one and used that feature for self education purposes.
It is cool and works. Problem is, resulting de- or ac-celeration has a major lag, esp for de-celeration. So using it for engine braking going down the mountain passes is rather dangerous adventure, as you have to engage lower gear way before the sharp turn, not right into it as you may with manual transmission.
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Yes, it can, virtually instantly. Come on over and ride with me in my automatic trans BMW. It'll shift in MILLISECONDS, not 3 seconds.
Like 350,C-6's, etc. Even the old TorqueFlite/727 I would suspect. Damn things are tough!
