Manual/Automatic? Reassure me!

zippygeorgeandben

I really appreciate recommendations.

prowla

The only problem when I drive my non-automatics is that I occasionally forget to change gear and stall.

As for the automatic, you only use your right foot and there's a "go" pedal and a "stop" one.

(Actually my auto also has the flappy paddles and a tiptronic too, but I never use them, apart from a couple of times I've accidentally touched the gear stick.)

Philipp_Bach

Try automatic and don't spend energy and the time for gear shifting... Automatic transmission should be approved by users and/or community, so I recommend check all the information about the car and transmission before you make a decision...

Mickey666

Forget about the auto vs manual ‘dilemma’ - just try both and decide what you prefer.  You’ll get all kinds of advice from all kinds of drivers but it’s all pretty much irrelevant because the only person that matters is you . . . And you can’t decide for yourself without trying both.

FWIW, I’ve been driving for over 40 years - motorcycles first then manual cars.  Then I had an automatic in the 1980s and have never looked back.  Since then I’ve had large and small automatics, Golf, Volvo, Saab, Discovery (auto is fabulous for off-road driving) and Mercedes.  I also have a Defender, which I love, though the manual gearbox does annoy me.  My current auto Merc has those flappy paddle thingies that are supposed to give you the best of both worlds but I can’t see the point and never use them.  The auto box ‘knows’ to hold a gear for longer if you slam your foot down anyway.

Of course, if you’re a ‘boy racer’ you’ll claim that auto’s are not ‘real driving’ (whatever that means) but such people should be on race tracks not public roads and are best ignored.

Missus_Hyde

I've been driving for about 40 years and my husband even longer and we've always had manual cars until about eleven years ago, when we bought my sister-in-law's Yaris, which happened to be an automatic. I pooh-poohed it at first, but now I wouldn't go back to a manual car and in fact we have another car which we bought as an automatic.

The automatic Yaris has quite a sporty engine and it can be driven in sport mode, but I don't tend to bother with that ( I'm not really interested in going the fastest speed from A to B.)

A super little car, although it's getting a little bit long in the tooth now ( a bit like me, really! )