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I have a older Honda Accord with a 5 speed manual, and a 2015 Challenger Hellcat with the 8 speed auto. I'm picking the auto, the transmission is one of the quickest shifting on the market, and it's quicker than the manual transmission. I have 4 different driving mode and the transmission adjust accordingly. When I have it in sports mode, people think I'm driving a manual from the sound of the exhaust. Best auto I have ever had, and the paddle shifters work great. The car is just a blast to drive.
Automatic transmissions, vs Standard, vs dual-clutch, vs CVT. It's a big decision.
Which one do you pick? Why and at what cost? What about it's long term repair history? How does fuel mileage factor in? Do the math, for the best long term results.
Manual for several reasons.
Most importantly, it's more fun to drive. I don't care that I can't shift as fast as a DCT/automatic can, because the only use I would have for faster shifts would be in a professional racing environment. And it's not like there's a racetrack in my backyard.
It is almost always less expensive to buy cars with manual transmissions when available. DCT/automatics usually add between between about $800 and $3,000 to the price tag.
Longevity really depends on how you drive. If you always keep the clutch on the floor for extended periods of time at intersections, and creep up two feet every time the person in front of you does, you will wear out the clutch more rapidly than you should. I have been driving a 23 year old Audi with a five speed manual for a couple years now, and just hit 300k miles last week. The engine, clutch, and transmission are all original.
Fuel mileage is a wash due to how easy it is for automakers to essentially game fuel economy tests with turbocharged engines coupled to automatic transmissions. Automatics might return higher fuel economy on paper, but it has been my experience that manuals return better fuel economy in the real world. You can also skip shift while driving a manual, which you can't do in cars with DCT/automatics.
I have not driven a car with a good DCT yet, but I've driven plenty of automatics that offer manual modes. They've all sucked, and I don't see how slightly quicker shifts would have changed that. And really, a DCT is just a fancy automatic by another name.
In the last 10 years or so, automatic transmission technology has advanced so much that they typically get equivalent fuel mileage to manuals. Some even get better mileage due to having up to 8 or now even 10 gears whereas the same car with a manual may only have 5 or 6. The biggest advancement in automatic transmissions was the lockup torque convertor and electronic controls along with overdrive.
In drag racing, automatics have gotten so good and shift so fast, they are now quicker than manual cars. This is all in correlation to the same things that improved the fuel mileage: quicker shifts, low to no loss in the torque convertor and better gearing ratios with more gears.
I prefer an automatic in my daily driver. I put a lot of miles on it and don't want to be shifting gears all the time. Also, my automatic transmission typically lasts somewhere between 300,000 and 350,000 miles. On a manual, I have to put a clutch in about every 100,000 miles or so but the transmission itself lasts just as long as my automatics but still it goes through 2 or 3 clutches.
In my weekend toy cars, I still have a manual. It is more fun to dump the clutch and smoke tires or hit second and get sideways sometimes.
Yeah that’s not true across the board at all. Manuals tend to beat mpg estimates while automatics often complain about those figures being fake news. Exceptions for when the gear ratios are just made substantially differently to make the manuals have a sporty acceleration and the auto to be a fuel sipper or vice versa but that’s an intentional design rather than pure auto vs manual. Autos still lose much more power in the drivetrain plus they cost $1k+ more to begin with.
That said, our two cars are both automatics because my wife doesn't know how to drive manual and doesn't have a desire to learn currently (which is fine). I would like to own a manual car in the future again though. My first 4 cars were all manuals.
That would be a deal-killer for me. I'd be looking for a different wife.
Seriously though, most of the women in my family can shift a manual transmission and most have owned vehicles with them in the past: two had Jeeps, one a small pickup, one a VW, one a Suzuki Samurai, and there were probably others I didn't know about. My mom taught me how to drive a Ford with 3-on-the-tree, and I taught my niece when she was 14 and got her learner's permit. Only one of my sisters cannot, and she's a terrible driver who no one would trust behind the wheel of their own car to teach her. Another sister worked for an exotic car rental company and got to drive many sports cars.
I have owned 23 cars in the 50 years I have been driving. Three have had automatic transmissions. I hated them. All the rest have been manual transmission cars except for my 2017 Corolla. It has a CVT and I love it. It gets better gas mileage than my 5 speed manual 2005 Corolla I traded in! I love the smoothness of the CVT.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Automatic if you have employees driving it... especially MALES Especially Semi trucks and male (youthful) drivers (the few who might be able to pass a DOT drug test..).
CVT if you like to drive a snowmobile (I very much dislike these in cars in Mtns) I have NOT found them to be 'economical' Of course anything getting less than 50 mpg on free fuel is very wasteful to me.
Manual... have 0ver 50 of those (for now) including Trucks, MC, Tractors, cars.
Ideally, more gears! (live in the mtns and haul heavy.
I think a 7spd would make my 52hp cars feel happier about climbing mtns.
trucks... multi stick ! My neighbor has a Kenworth logger with an O/U Fuller 10spd (dual range) + a 4spd brownie. That has about enough choices of gears
I kinda like 18spd fullers. We dropped a 13spd in a friend's 1T 12V 4x4 dually. that seems to work out nicely.
Grew up double sticking 5x4's (no synchros)
Dual Mass clutches in passenger cars...... we throw those away as soon as they break (often / soon)
Thank all you posters for quite an education on transmissions. With selections like these in the market place there's something for everybody. Good Luck.
Amen! My current car is a Prius, which has its own version of a CVT. I love the smoothness around town. The electric motor combined with the CVT is as smooth as it gets. When I first bought the car 3.5 years ago I didn't like it at highway speeds or at getting there, but now that I'm used to it, it's just fine at all times.
I've owned around 50 different vehicles in my lifetime, most bought new and driven 2-3 years. Half were probably manuals, the rest (before the Prius) were automatics. I picked whichever I thought was best for the car or pickup and was seldom disappointed.
My last pickup, a 2000 F250 PSD, I drove for 151K miles, and I was NOT happy with the 6-speed manual due to clutch problems. Some electric thing in the clutch went out the first year I owned it, then I had to replace the whole clutch at 125K miles. That was bad enough, but then it started going out again a year later due to some fluid dripping on the housing. Since the clutch had been replaced at the Ford dealer, it was supposed to be guaranteed for 2 years, but because there was fluid dripping on it, Ford wasn't going to honor the guarantee. That's when I traded it. I'll probably never buy another manual transmission since they're not offered on most vehicles and because the automatics are vastly improved from years past.
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Especially Semi trucks and male (youthful) drivers (the few who might be able to pass a DOT drug test..).
