i am not ordering cars from them anymore /s
yeah me too. I was like, about to and stuff.
Well then, I’m going to order twice as many cars from them next year as I did last year.
Thank god you put the /s there.
Plenty of brands stopped offering manual variants of plenty of models. IIRC BMW practically begged people to stop asking for manual variants, saying it just does not make any sense to mess with the supply chain and the production line and the car itself just to put an objectively inferior transmission inside it.
The M series cars still have manual as an option, although IIRC the automatic versions have better performance. They’re a bit outside of my price range, so I’m trying to keep my old manual 328i running as long as I can.
They also offer it on the Z4 with the Handschalter package. Pretty sure this will be the last year of the Z4 tho.
I got my license in the early 80’s, and at that time the cheapest cars were older american beaters with utterly terrible 2 and 3-speed slushbox automatics. The alternative were Japanese cars like Honda Civics, small, reliable, manual transmission cars that got great gas mileage and were way more fun to drive. All these years later I’m still driving a manual, currently a 2021 Toyota Corolla. It’s paid for, it gets around 35 mpg, and with regular maintenance it will run until the end of time.
I know American cars have improved a lot since the malaise era but you generally can’t get them with manual transmissions, so I’ll stick with the imports for now.
I started driving around the same time as you. I remember how common real VW beetles were and I don’t think any of them ever had automatic transmission - if they did I never saw one. I spent a summer driving one with no starter and a broken reverse gear, which meant I had to be very careful about where I parked it. Today’s kids will never know the fun that came from that situation.
80’s
'80s
Well when your customer base is mostly geriatric…
I would guess that there’s more demand for manuals from older people than from younger people. Younger people can’t be nostalgic about stick shifting.
I think there’s a word for it, but essentially false nostalgia. Gen. Z absolutely has a lot of nostalgia for things people say were great despite never experiencing it themselves.
Most of EU still drives manuals (most older models and newer floor models of VW group). I’ve been in an automatic once in my entire life.
And how do you engine brake with an automatic, is that a thing?
Same as with a manual transmission. Just let go of the throttle. Essentially all modern cars have some sort of a manual shift mode.
Not true. Your transmission is upshifting when you let off the throttle because it’s assuming you want to coast.
I have never seen a car upshift on coasting. I know BMW is a fan of essentially putting the car in neutral when you let go of the throttle. But that is the only manufacturer I’m aware of that does that.
Depends on the car, some of them are smarter about it. I remember my dad’s old pickup would downshift if it picked up speed while not touching the throttle, like when going downhill
So you drive manual on an auto? Weird.
I’m nostalgic for 80s music, but I’m pretty sure the only thing I was interested in when they came out was reading the Beano and seeing what games were on this months covertape of Your Sinclair magazine.
I suspect my actual nostalgia is of playing Vice City in my early 20s.
Younger people can’t afford those cars anyway.
I meant manual transmissions, not supercars.
Yeah. You can’t buy a ford or chevy pickup in the united states with a manual transmission anymore.
I know they’re not supercars, or anything like that.
Big trucking companies are all going to automatic transmissions in their trucks as well.
I’m a school bus driver - buses with manual transmissions are long gone. The drug use and child molestation filters weed out enough potential drivers as it is.
That escalated quickly…
I would add that those filters only apply to school districts that maintain their own fleets and driver pools. The private bus companies don’t generally worry about child abuse or drug use with their drivers - or drinking, speeding, using phones while driving, or paying them well, or providing any benefits …
What Ferrari and Lamborghini does doesn’t concern me but I’ll keep buying cars with manual transmission for as long I can get one. I wouldn’t buy a new car anyway so that alone gives me atleast 10 extra years. I still refuse to buy smartphones without a headphone jack either. Why? Mostly because of a principle.
What is the principle for manual cars?
They prefer fondling long shafts.
Same
More fun to drive. Id still have a stick shift if we hadn’t decided to switch to EVs.
I’m sure there’ll be a DLC that will emulate that feeling eventually.
Looks like Toyota is on it. I also saw a guy who basically created a fidget shifter but am too lazy for more than one link right now.
I don’t mind driving a manual. Every car I’ve owned has had a manual transmission so automatic would be a solution to a problem that I don’t have. I like driving and I don’t want the car to do the driving for me.
I have not had a manual in many years, but I will say I would prefer to have one because, whether or not it’s actually true, I felt like I was in more control of the car and, because of that, felt safer. The peace of mind was nice.
I still refuse to buy smartphones without a headphone jack either.
I’m running out of options and I may have to consider a jackless phone next. What are the options?
I went with Samsung XCover 6 Pro. Not only has it a headphone jack but a removable battery as well.
But the performance is terrible for the price. The only jack phone I would reccomend is poco f5.
I don’t play games with my phone. The performance is more than good enough for my use. And it has a removable battery just like the ones I had before
The initial performance is always decent. The problem is the planned obsolessence. To compare two 2017 phones: my mom’s Huawei p10 and my Redmi 4X, for example. The p10’s geekbench score is ~2* the Redmi’s and it’s visible even in simple use. Web browsing works fine on the p10, but on the Redmi, it takes way longer to render a page slightly heavier, than wikipedia. OSMand works on the p10 perfectly, but on the Redmi, it takes very long to calculate routes and crashes often. If you want to use a phone for ~10 years, it’s usually better to invest in a performant one.
I’ll choose better features over performance any day but thanks
Sony. Even their flagship phones have headphone jack afaik.
Which unfortunately, isn’t available in my country.
If you truly must use your wired headphones with your cell phone? They make some really nice small form factor USB C to audio jack adapters. Hell, saw a few that were cable+adapter+AudiophileApprovedDAC for what that is worth.
Those jacks can’t turn and aren’t strong enough for work. I’m going to turn around quickly, snag a cable and - well, those ports are so dense that I don’t need to really do a lot of damage, do I?
While I’d normally completely approve of the blatant rip-off that is buying a c$20 adapter to make up for the manufacturer omitting a 3c part on the build, their answer “oh we know the startac was a thing but we just cant figure out how to fit a headphone jack on something twice the size” rings a little hollow. It’s like they’re admitting to stupid.
Just bought a car with a manual transmission and I love it. Someone mentioned in this thread that they didn’t want the car to do the driving for them and I couldn’t agree more. Having control over the acceleration makes such a difference.
Honestly DCTs make up for it, especially when your customer base is mostly people who don’t know how to drive anyway.
Using a manual is easy, but using it to go fast can actually be pretty hard. You have to time everything right, compensate for a bunch of conditions, coax the shifter because its using synchros, feather the clutch accordingly, heel-toe downshift correctly, etc. It’s extremely rewarding and useful if you actually want to have complete control over your car, but I doubt your average rich guy is gonna want to put that much effort into driving.
Manual shifting a modern Lambo would just be such a chore with how fast the RPM changes too (plus the loss of power from clutch would be even more noticeable). Current high end manuals just choose to stay with 6 gears so the gap stays comfortable, but you obviously lose some efficiency.
DCTs will do that all for you, the only thing you lose is a mechanical shifter (which if you’re into manuals you very much miss lol) and the ability to do some clutch tricks (ie loss of some mechanical controls because its automatic).
Now putting a regular old torque converting automatic transmission into a sports car is a waste (and has many examples of such). They are very slow because they aren’t deigned to rapidly change gears like you can in a manual. Even a CVT would be better from a practicality standpoint.
Formula 1 switched to semi-automatic in the 1980s. The technology has only improved over the last 40 years. If fast is what you want, driving a manual is insanity.
Formula 1 switched to semi-automatic in the 1980s.
Seeing how well it worked for VW in 1973 I’m glad someone tested it on the track.
I mean, the reality is that manual/standard transmissions are just fuel and effort inefficient at this point. There was a window where automatics were inefficient enough to make learning stick worth it but that is LONG gone. And CVTs, in apples for apples comparisons, kind of are the best of both worlds.
Still pretty shocked since I don’t think anyone buys a ferrari or a lambo because they want a reasonable high quality car and nothing screams “I am compensating” like wrapping your hands around that shaft while you drive but… if the goal is performance?
The main reasons you wanted a manual back in the day was price - because automatic transmissions were expensive - and fuel economy - because they were less efficient. (To a lesser extent reliability, because automatics were newer and they hadn’t worked out the kinks yet.)
However, the price of automatics fell, and the dual-clutch gearboxes with 7-10 gears are even more efficient because they keep the car in the most efficient rev range. Same goes for CVTs. And the dual-clutches shift faster than you ever could, so they’re better for sports cars, which is why F1 switched to them a long time ago.
So it makes sense that manuals are falling out of favor because they’re objectively worse in all respects compared to the transmissions available today. However, subjectively they’re a lot more fun which is why I have a manual transmission car I plan on keeping on the road well into the 2050s.
Fun and more control. I too am in the I bought a manual club. Twice my truck and my wife’s car are both manual transmissions with a clutch (third pedal).
I guess some of the new dual clutch transmissions are considered manual 🤔
I love manuals but while they do give more control than a basic automatic transmission, I don’t think I could argue that they give more control than an automatic with paddle shifters.
Neutral downhill…
For day to day driving, maybe not.
But if I’m trying to to break the back end out, engine brake downhill, or have a dead battery and want to pop the clutch to start it I really want a manual transmission or a sequential gearbox.
I also can rebuild a manual in my garage (and have) so I’m more comfortable with something I can easily service if I need to. I drive 20 year old cars and intend to keep them, and any other car we buy, on the road for decades to come.
Modern cars will not push start on a dead battery - the alternator won’t engage and the engine computer won’t have the juice to boot up to tell the alternator or the fuel pump to engage.
I’ve tried. Many times. 20 years ago.
Also: As long as your battery is not dead dead (which, barring the freakest of freak occurences, comes with a lot of warning), just having a jump starter in your emergency kit covers it. Pop the trunk (which can be REALLY annoying on modern cars with only partially dead batteries…), grab it, and jump your car. Bonus points is you don’t need to frantically leap into the driver’s seat before you crash into a parked car.
A manually-shiftable automatic obeys your suggestion to shift if and when it feels like it. A manual transmission shifts RIGHT THE FUCK NOW as you move the lever.
I have only tried paddle shifters on other people’s cars so I couldn’t do anything too exciting. They will really refuse to shift sometimes even if the result would be within the operating parameters of the engine/transmission? Is that just a problem with some models or is it universal?
I do admit that I enjoy the feeling of being able to blow up my engine if I feel like it… (Actually I’m not sure the synchros would let me do that.)
To be clear, “an automatic with paddle shifters” (or in general, a manually-shiftable automatic) does not necessarily imply a fancy dual-clutch transmission derived from F1 cars or whatever. Sometimes, like in my automatic-transmission car, it just means you get a + and - on the gear lever and still have a torque converter instead of one clutch (let alone two).
But yes, the one thing that is true in any modern car without a third pedal is that when you push the stick to + or - or pull on the paddle shifters, all it’s doing is sending an electrical signal to a computer that mediates between you and the car and decides whether your input will be followed or not. It won’t allow a downshift that would cause an overrev (probably in any car, even the most track-oriented ones), in many cases (especially in less-sporty cars) it won’t hold a low gear and let you keep the engine at redline but will instead upshift even if you do nothing, and in many cases it won’t hold a high gear as you come to a stop and will instead start you off in first again instead of fifth like a real manual would do. And last, but not least, those computer decisions and solenoid activations and whatnot take at least some non-zero amount of time, which – even if it’s a fancy dual-clutch and the total time interval between gear N being engaged and gear N+1 being engaged is way shorter than any human could manage – it can feel laggy because you give the input and then it acts, as opposed to a real manual where your hand on the gear stick and your foot on the clutch pedal are doing the action to the car directly.
Which is why you call the gear change ahead of when you intend to. When you do it right and get familiar with how long the delay is on that car, you will nail it every time.
A stick shift is also a fantastic anti-theft device.
My truck won’t stall in first if you slide your foot off the clutch when it’s completely pressed, so your results may vary.
Removed by mod
Nope. When Nissan came out with them they acted like normal CVTs without shift points, but people hated it so they added them in, and now they all do it.
Subaru, when not in Sport mode. Problem is, the same monkey brain in some people that hates everything but manual also hates the way CVT doesn’t have gears for most people in general, so they make fake shifts to satisfy the monkey brain in people.
I just find manuals more fun and engaging to drive. Even an 80hp shitbox is better with a manual.
Fair enough. I usually take ten or twenty minutes of “So… let me just crank the radio up so you can’t hear me mangling your transmission” in a parking lot/empty roads to “remember” how to drive stick, but it is a much more active style of driving.
But that has nothing to do with safety. And, arguably, is considerably worse for it since it is less time focused on the road and, more importantly, the sides of the road. It is basically the opposite of the “autopilot” versions of Adaptive Cruise Control where it increases distractions and leads to less attentive drivers for whatever insanity other people are going to do.
If I were buying a super fast fun car to use at the track or whatever? Well, I would want paddle shifters because the real vroom vrooms have those. But a stick shift and a clutch are a close second.
But for something that I am going to drive in rush hour traffic or do a 10 hour drive to my favorite climbing spot every couple weeks?
I think traffic is the cause of a lot of the loss of interest in manuals. Live somewhere to get good salary and a good car, that place usually has bad traffic.
Driving a manual in traffic sucks, even worse when you start getting a cramp in your clutch foot while in said traffic. I loved driving manual but i don’t miss it when i remember those days
Manuals are for the fun cars, not the dailys
Depends on your daily commute. I have daileyed manuals for 6 daily drivers.
CVTs, in apples for apples comparisons, kind of are the best of both worlds.
In theory they have advantages, but in practice they’re probably the worst kind of transmission you could get right now unless you’re driving a low-horsepower econo-car. (Even then I don’t think I’d want one; I’d rather pay a little more for gas than risk an expensive early transmission failure.)
Subaru WRX with the Performance Transmission be like
Subaru WRX with the Performance Transmission
I haven’t tried them myself (I’m not a big WRX fan in general) but I hear a lot of complaining about them and not a lot of praise.
Got a bunch of friends with them, across the board everyone hates the CVT
Ferrari does it because they openly disdain their own customers. You will get performance the Ferrari way and you will like it. You’re lucky we even allow you to buy it. We put in the finest dual clutch transmission available because that’s the highest performance.
Lamborghini does it because they’re Audi’s with sharp edges. Audi is a company that advertises that its top trim can fit a set of golf clubs in back. They don’t want to bother their golf customers with a third pedal.
Half of them have had hip replacements, and half of them were on the left side, so they can’t work the clutch.
Their target demographic doesn’t care about manuals. Their buyers either are most likely buying a status symbol and the ones who are actually looking to drive them are looking to emulate the F1 / IMSA experience where absolutely none of those cars are manuals
If I had a car that powerful I wouldn’t want a manual either, no matter how fun it is. I’d grind the gears into powder on the first fast start.
We put in the finest dual clutch transmission available because that’s the highest performance.
I know autos are faster these days but manuals are so much more fun and always will be. It really sucks that they’re going away :(
They’re all fun and games until you’re in stop go traffic. I agree though I miss driving a manual. Also they were easier to work on and tended to be cheaper to fix. That might not be the case anymore considering you’re pretty much guaranteed to to have to special order parts.
Stop and go traffic with a manual after working out legs is something special
I guess it depends on the car, but most modern cars it’s NBD to drive manual in stop-and-go traffic. There are a handful of models that can make it a pain (e.g. Challenger, Nissan Z), but Honda and Mazda and many others are easy peasy even in dense traffic.
I actually found stop and go traffic jams with a manual easier. All i needed was the clutch and id use it to drive the average speed of the stop and go traffuc jam, even if it was 0.5km/h. Cant do that on my automatic, it will speed up to a set amount of km if i release the break and press the gas even a little.
Edit: i will admit i have big feet and driving is more foot work for me than it is leg work. My legs barely move while driving, not even to go from gas to break, so it might be easier for me, idk
And propulsion, way funner even if it’s worse.
I would disagree if we were talking about regular cars, but these hypercars should’ve manual transmissions still since they are an experience and I would think people, specially those in europe, actually take them to a track.
It’s not that I like manuals, it’s that I hate automatics randomly shifting and accelerating/slowing down randomly because of it.
It might not be as big an issue in bigger engines cars though, not driven anything bigger than a 1L engine in over a decade.
Looking forward to a direct drive electric car (with customisable acceleration profiles - even better!)
My e-cvt is nice. No shifting at all and it is quite responsive.
Don’t these sports cars usually have a mode where you can manually shift gears, but not with a clutch, but via the auto transmission?
Yes. There are +/- paddles on mine.
Source: My 2015 Hyndai Veloster TURBO
Flappy paddles <3
Source : audi a3The only name for them
Huh, so that’s what that’s for. Mines not a Hyundai but it does have a “sport” mode
High-end has all been sequential for like a decade
Most super-cars are not a sequential. A sequential is usually the type of transmission you find in motorcycles. Most flappy paddle transmissions found in sports cars are either a dual clutch automatic or an automated manual.
Ok that’s the kind I meant, I’d say I’m right of the curve on car knowledge but I don’t like design gearboxes for Ferrari or anything. Genuinely appreciate the correction.
They shift sequentially though via the paddles on the wheel.
GMA T50 begs to differ.
And recently also top end midrangers for some reason.
I didn’t know what a dual clutch transmission was and found this excellent video while searching. Figured I would share it here. Pretty awesome! You get the direct gearing benifits of a manual with the shifting ease and speed of an automatic.
I once had a Veloster with a dry plate dual clutch. Identical in design to a standard manual, just with a different clutch system and input shafts design, and computery bits controlling it.
If you drove it the way you drive a stick, it would last a long time.
Got almost 175,000 miles on it before it had any problems. At that mileage, the car was well and truly worn out, so not worth fixing, but I would have fixed the problem (failed 2nd clutch motor, common issue on the KIA/Hyundai DCT) if the car wasn’t all worn out.
My friend has a Veloster with the DCT. My favorite feature is that the car has hill hold, but it still rolls back like a manual transmission half the time.
Also the DCT gets confused pretty easily. At least once in a 15 minute drive I’ll have it fail to shift properly and the whole car jitters. Or it just picks the wrong gear then immediately has to shift again.
The first part, yeah, if you’re on a shallow incline it doesn’t hill hold. But you also should never hill hold with the clutch anyway, so keep that foot on the brake until its time to go. Worst case, you left foot brake to get it to preload and then immediately let off the brake. But I never really needed to do that.
The second part could be an early warning sign of the second clutch motor failure. I remember it only started going a gear too low not too long before it went completely, if I had it on auto shift. I ran it in manual mode almost all the time, though.
It’s been stupid like that for 7 years now. I think the transmission is just stupid.
So you need to download a pdf?
It’s taken me a while, but I’m okay with automatic transmissions on cars now. OTOH, you can have the manual transmission on my motorcycle when you pry that clutch lever from my cold, dead hands. (I have a speed shifter on my motorcycle now, and I barely ever use it.)
Because nobody wants them. Or rather not enough people want them. Hell, kids these days don’t even want to get their drivers licenses. For them Uber is good enough.
