Why choose to drive manual? :)

sh0597

I wouldn't pay extra for an auto. But I wouldn't avoid an automatic anymore. Will all cars end up as autos? I'm not sure. A manual box is probably cheaper and lightweight so more suited to your 3 cylinder town cars.

Getting_There_Slowly_2

I buy the right car for the right price. If that happened to be an auto then fine, but so far I have only owned manual cars. My budget for cars is small so the autos would be the old type that are inefficient too. I have driven some of those and thought they were ok, but would prefer a manual for performance and economy. When more modern autos come within my price range I may reconsider.

Newer autos may be great, but how hard is it to change gear, really? They may be more efficient by a couple of % but it will take forever to get back the £1500 you spent on the auto. And I honestly believe there is more in there to go wrong than a manual, and it will cost more when it does.

I drive automatic and manual lorries at work and I must admit I like the auto. There's more to think about when driving a truck, so taking gears out the equation feels like I can focus more concentration on the road. Trucks have the newer "automated manual" type gearbox design. I will see how reliable that is over 300,000 miles and maybe I will be converted to owning one myself!

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

Autos are fine in the snow, and easy to rock simply switching from D to R. Some have a winter mode which simply blocks out 1st gear. You can also drive with both hands on the wheel all the time.

I'd agree that the rear wheel drive BMWs and Mercs are a handful in the snow, that's not the auto, that is wide tyres and heavy cars. The fix on my old very heavy 1999 C Class was all season tyres, it actually could be driven in the snow and also massively improved the wet weather handling. A lot of cars (like the Audi Q7) have entirely unsuitable tyres for winter driving, even in the UK.

Richard53

I'm not sure about the argument that automatics are more likely to go wrong. I would have thought the reverse* is true. The inputs and forces the box has to deal with are well-known to the designer, and there is little opportunity for a driver to subject the box to more than it can cope with. Compare that with a manual box, with drivers who ride the clutch, crunch the gears and so on.


I am lucky, in that I have never had a gearbox (auto or manual) fail on me, but anecdotally I get the impression that autobox failures are quite rare in comparison to manual boxes, including failures of the clutch that the autobox doesn't have.


It's a bit like the electronics versus analogue argument. Yes, your EFI and electronic ignition will cost more to fix when they go wrong, but compared to carbs and points they hardly ever do go wrong, so you have to reckon that overall, reliability is better and the long-term cost is less.




*See what I did there?

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

Richard53 wrote: »

I'm not sure about the argument that automatics are more likely to go wrong. I would have thought the reverse* is true. The inputs and forces the box has to deal with are well-known to the designer, and there is little opportunity for a driver to subject the box to more than it can cope with. Compare that with a manual box, with drivers who ride the clutch, crunch the gears and so on.


I am lucky, in that I have never had a gearbox (auto or manual) fail on me, but anecdotally I get the impression that autobox failures are quite rare in comparison to manual boxes, including failures of the clutch that the autobox doesn't have.


It's a bit like the electronics versus analogue argument. Yes, your EFI and electronic ignition will cost more to fix when they go wrong, but compared to carbs and points they hardly ever do go wrong, so you have to reckon that overall, reliability is better and the long-term cost is less.




*See what I did there?

Oddly, reverse hits the nail on the head. We have a Golf with a missing tooth that clack, clack, clacks in reverse. Been like that since one or other family member either was learning to drive or was demonstrating that they'd been driving automatics for too long! Started at 10k and now at 80k miles so my garageman is in perpetual disappointment about selling be a new gearbox.

I'm sure there are many manual boxes out there with troublesome syncromesh.

Like with ignition, the days of 30,000 miles being a good clutch life seem to have passed - people live in fear of a clutch change these days when they were routine maintenance a couple of decades ago.

I wonder how many people stall or have a near miss through pulling away in the wrong gear?

Biketrials08

Aquamania wrote: »

No they are not, and you cannot compare the figures in that way; they can only be used to compare like with like.

That is because the figures are based on laboratory test conditions. For a manual car, the drive cycle is fully defined, including which gear to be used when. Obviously that cannot be the case for an automatic car, so the car is able to choose the optimum gearing.

^ This, the majority here are ignorantof this fact. The test regime for manuals is rather laborious with respect to the specifiedgear but autoscan select the gear that they want to be most efficient. In reality, you wouldnot drive a manual car in the same way as the test.

PenguinJim

wildincrawley wrote: »

Just the fun of the manual for me, the feel of a mechanical change, the connection with the car, and the pleasure of learning to do it as well as possible in each situation I encounter.

That's part of it for me, too - partly fun, and partly learning to maximise efficiency in various situations. I like automatics a lot, but I feel more 'engaged' in a manual. My impression is that I'm therefore more focused on the driving and my attention is less likely to wander, but I have no facts or evidence to support this.

trailingspouse

Also great fun to see the disbelief on the faces of your average American that a woman (shock!!) can actually drive a stick shift.

Had a business colleague over from the States stay with us for a couple of days. I took time out of my life to drive him around and show him the sights, and he had the bare-faced cheek to tell me that I 'seem to know what I'm doing'. You have to laugh.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

trailingspouse wrote: »

Also great fun to see the disbelief on the faces of your average American that a woman (shock!!) can actually drive a stick shift.

Had a business colleague over from the States stay with us for a couple of days. I took time out of my life to drive him around and show him the sights, and he had the bare-faced cheek to tell me that I 'seem to know what I'm doing'. You have to laugh.

Back in the 90s had an American consultant over here from New York. He managed to drive the car in 3rd the whole time from London out to Slough in 3rd gear. He thought it was a bit noisy down the motorway and he also didn't understand what all the flashing lights and gesticulation was about as he merrily ploughed his own furrow down the outside lane at about 60.

We put him right.

iolanthe07

There are a lot of comments on here about how expensive autos are to fix, but actually a torque converter autobox is very simple and reliable. In 23 years of driving torque converter autos I have never had any problems with them at all. On one occasion when I accidentally shifted into reverse (instead of 2nd) when going down a steep hill I expected the gear box to self destruct. But nothing happened at all. Auto boxes do seem to be idiot proof.