I wanted manual transmissions only when I was 18. Now that I'm 41, I will only buy a car with a manual transmission. I haven't driven a car with a DSG yet, but I wonder what a rebuild costs? How many miles until it needs a rebuild? Rebuilding an automatic transmission is about the only mechanical task I won't tackle myself on a car. I've seen too many autoboxes fail with less than 100K miles on them. I drive 40-50K miles per year, so it doesn't take me long to rack up big miles.

Rawhyde

 

Woo! Lotta response to this question, fer sure. Me, I like to "stir" my own, but I stay engaged enough in the tech to know that the manual is a dying art. What nobody has mention (I don't think) is a perfected CVT tranny. Not the fragile ones that are out there now, but something that can take a beating.
When properly perfected, they will allow the engine to be set to one speed (it's most efficient -power and fuelwise- and let the tranny do all off the rpm changes. Running an engine across it's whole powerband is inefficient. There are areas where it's low on power but high on fuel economy, and vice versa. They can be designed to run at one peak rpm to get the best of all worlds. I think that modern prop airplanes use this technique with the variable pitch props, but we need a pilot to throw in on this; I'm not really up on the mechanics of the process.
But I would dearly miss the whole happy 'heel-toe, clutch, rev, shift, clutch, etc.' thing. It involves me in my driving. Otherwise I could sit at home on the couch and watch a video of the trip.

 

I like both but I am very impressed with the 6-speed AISIN automatic in my Clubman S.

 

What will be interesting will be to see how rapidly tranny development advances relative to electric vehicle development... because full electric vehicles make this whole discussion pretty meaningless... I had the good fortune to drive a full electric converted MINI at Hybrid Technologies a couple of months back... no gears, just awesome electric motor torque through a wide RPM range. I burned rubber pulling out of the parking lot with 20% throttle... The Tesla takes this to a whole different level.

True... no time soon are these cars going to be a solution for cross-country travel. But for trips of up to a few hundred miles per day, they'll soon be viable...

 

Automatics are also now more fuel efficient and allow for more gears. Witness the 7 and 8 speed tranny's that MB and Lexus are marketing. How'd you like to have row an 8 speed gearbox.

As much as I hate that manuals are on the way out they are becoming technologically superior.

 

Very good point, Blimey. Notice that the Tesla has a two-speed tranny, but I think they only put that in there to help with the impression of a 'sports car', you know how we sports car addicts love all that mechanical stuff. And with no 'growly' exhaust noise to feed the addiction, they needed something to help us connect with the car...

 

/me thinks if more people viewed the youtube video I posted, they may change their mind.

 

Xymox, re: flash video. Linky no worky.

 

haha i'm sorry for calling you skilless. what i meant is "it takes all the fun out of driving for me*"

 

thank god. i made a pact to myself that i will always have one "sports" car with a MT in my garage. but if you really think about it they still have MTs right now and they had them 50+ years ago. so 50+ years from now we'll still have our MT's. I'm just waiting for a new fuel type to hit the market.

 

This car, less than a year old, is my first MT after 20 years of driving AT and I never want to go back. It makes me feel like a part of the car and improves the driving experience.

 

welcome to the club!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBVm5QIYR3Q

 

I'm not worried about the shift lever or the clutch pedal, what I do care about is being in control and that the wheels are actually connected to the engine. What I don't like about autos is that the transmission will automatically select the wrong gear, and that if you have a torque converter, the wheels are not connected to the engine.

If you have an F1 style semi-auto transmission, that'll do me, you're in control of the gears (with flappy paddles) and there are real clutches involved.

I've never worked out exactly what sort of transmission a MINI has, does it use a torque converter or a real clutch? I know you can put it in a semi-auto mode (flappy paddles and all).

 

Yes, that's correct. To use an example, the E-2C "Hawkeye" (I'm a Naval Flight Officer) has turboprop engines, and the turbine speed is fixed at ~14,000 RPM for maximum efficiency. Then there's a reduction gearbox that fixes the prop speed at a constant ~1100 RPM. To vary the amount of thrust, the pitch of the propellers is adjusted to take a bigger or smaller "bite" out of the air.

A CVT transmission in a car doesn't work exactly the same way, though, because the engine speed is still allowed to vary - it just doesn't vary over as wide of a range as with a conventional automatic.

Widespread adoption of CVTs will also involve a little bit of driver education, because it can be disconcerting to drive one if you're not used to them. For example, if you mash the gas in a CVT, the increase in engine speed is disproportionally-greater than the increase in vehicle speed. In fact, under some conditions, a properly-functioning CVT sounds/feels exactly like a conventional automatic where the friction bands are starting to wear and slip, so some drivers that are used to conventional automatics think that something's "wrong" with the CVT.

In general, I'm in favour of technological advancements in cars - for instance, I don't miss having to add oil to my carburetors and synchronizing them, or adding oil to my shock absorbers and cleaning/adjusting ignition points, but when it comes to the actual visual/physical interfaces between the car and the driver, I'm a little more traditional. I like gauges with needles on them, I hated the automatic motorized seat belts, and I prefer the conventional shifter/clutch arrangement.

I just tallied up the vehicles I've owned over the years, and out of a total of 22, only two of them have been automatics (a 1982 Trans Am and a 1972 Mercedes).

 

Thanks for the info Scott. And I couldn't agree with you more. The only cars that I have owned with automatics have been my wife's. For her, a car is a tool to get from point A to point B. Her requirements are comfort, dependability, reliability (hence the preponderance of Toyota Camry's she's driven). Being old school, I like to feel a total connection between me and my ride, which probably explains why I get board with video racing games so quickly.
I had a Mini with the CTV for a few days as a loaner, and although I enjoyed the handling that is inherent in the car, it bored me in a short time. Dinosaur that I am.

 

I am 18 and love manuals. Driving my dads auto just doesn't feel as fun. It is good fun being able to just give it a rev at a set of lights, and heel and toe going into a roundabout. Autos just don't have the same rush.

 

The Aisin is a computer-controlled torque converter auto, with manual shift mode (steptronic). But there's always a torque converter in there. As torque converters go, it's pretty good. But nirvana, at least for me, is the "clutchless" (really auto dual-clutch) manual with an computerized auto shift mode... like the DSG... no torque converter, direct connection to the engine that the performance guys love, quicker shifting than you can row it, no torque converter drivetrain loss, but a "smart" auto mode for when you're stuck in traffic or just don't want to have to worry about shifting for a while...I'm hopeful that my next MINI will have one...

 

(drooling)

 

VW Dasher - MT
VW Rabbit - MT
VW Jetta Diesel - MT
95 Saturn SC2 - Auto
02 Jeep Wrangler - Auto
05 MINI Cooper S - MANUAL TRANNY

I honestly MISSED driving a manual transmission. Not so much when sitting on an uphill grade in bumper to bumper traffic (like on I-84 in NY yesterday) but otherwise, I think it's far superior to sliding softly through the gears.

And I like to see the co pilot's head snap back against the headrest once in a while. ;-)

 

I agree with Stu- I acutally like driving in traffic with a MT better than an AT because for me holding down the brake is more of a PITA then shifting into first...and you can always throw the parking brake on!

And yeah, I'm 20 and this is very depressing news that the MT is most likely on its way out. Damn realists!

As much as I love the stick, I would not be as badly heart broken with an F1 style trans with paddle shifters. As Blimey said, they can be fun in the twisties. My mom's Acura RDX has them and it is a pretty good auto for the most part. Our Acura TL has the WORST steptronic auto there is. You can't downshift into first (can on the RDX) and it seems to shift when it wants even when you're supposedly in control.

I feel that because I am so young and the fossil fuel drama has escalated 10-fold in the past few years I should try my best to embrace the fact that I may be 'modding' and electric car in the next 20 years or even less...who knows? On an episode of "Pass Time" on Speed one of the cars was a pickup truck with 30 motorcycle batteries in it, with an electric motor obviously. It's burnout was incredible, and it ran the 1/4 in the 12 sec range! And hey, it sort of sounded like one giant supercharger!

 

They have been saying this for a while now, and I'm still hoping that there is room left for manuals to stay around. I have driven a VW GTI with DSG and it's just not for me, tenths or thousands of a second don't matter on the street, I just enjoy the complete involvement that a stick & clutch pedal provides, feel really in tune with the car. It's nice to have another option, but please don't take our sticks away, some of us still really enjoy them.

 

I honestly believe that they will not completely go away. I threw out the idea that they are like carbs- they are still around because people love them...but Im still deciding whether that is the best comparison. Im trying to think of a technology that may be fading out (or faded out) that has a parallel fate to the stickshift. Any ideas?

 

I can't think of one, by all logic they should of disapeared years ago, in fact I remember reading in one of the magazines as a kid how they would most likely be gone by the mid '90s just because no one bought them anymore, and in fact they were gone from most of the domestics, but thanks to companys like Honda and their slick little shifters they seemed to survive even in regular old sedans. It's just one of those odd things, a design that was right from the beginning basically and has stuck around, the perfect user interface in my opinion. And there is always going to people around who want them, maybe not a lot, but hopefully enough to justify someone making them. I know when I bought my first new car I only looked at cars available with sticks, and do that to this day, no stick, no business from me.

 

[quote=Ancient Mariner;2296251]I think that modern prop airplanes use this technique with the variable pitch props, but we need a pilot to throw in on this; I'm not really up on the mechanics of the process. quote]

Pilot checking in, the constant speed prop is pretty much this, but it is slightly different. Helicopters are almost EXACTLY like a CVT though; you set the power and the blade pitch handles the rest. and i think youre right: Once we perfect it, there are going to be two "power settings" for the engine to run at: max power and max efficiency or a mix of the two. Either way, its going to be easy, fast, and efficient. Looks awesome on paper, but the experience leaves little to be excited about

My view on this has been tweaked a couple times, but heres what im saying about tranny debate. There will always be two kinds of driving. Driving to get there, and driving to drive. I personally drive to drive, and getting there is just an added benefit . The purpose of flappy paddle gearboxes is to make the trip as easy as an auto but with the control and experience of a manual when they want it, since this has always been the issue with auto. For that purpose, more power to 'em, I'm not surprised they are even faster! However, I still think this is aimed at the people who are getting there just to get there (even if theyre at the track trying to go the fastest!). But for people like us who drive for the theater of it all, the MT will simply never go away.

Blimey I hope you know I'm not knocking on autos, youre entitled to whatever mode of shifting you want! Plus with a MINI, the driving experience is plenty there no matter what tranny you go for!