Manual
- Thread starter Ricochet J
- Start date
Soldato
[TW]Fox;28950519 said:
Nah, more shiny white shoes than beige.
Pull both paddles on a Porsche and it's almost like a clutch? Might be a bit difficult with lock on I suppose!
Caporegime
Modern autos are the way forward. It's an advancement that is superior to it's replacement, which is why I will always opt for it. You will always have those who prefer things a little old fashion, they will be the same people who probably still have a Nokia 3310.
Basically, after spending over a month in an auto car for my traffic ridden commute to work I didn't like coming back to manual one bit.
For my own car I would still prefer an old fashioned non paddle manual but have to admit that lately I've been starting to like certain cars I never have before, which wouldn't be at their best with poor manual boxes.
At this point I'm just starting to think I need to finally pull my finger out and finish my bike licence as that would be an ultimate toy for me and possibly save me some pennies over a second car (which I can't afford anyway right now).
Its the way the whole world is going though. More and more of a car is becoming auto.
You see more cars with auto electric handbrakes now, auto gearboxes (now they are very good and don't punish you on fuel economy and performance like they used to and in fact some cars have better performance/economy now with the auto).
We have auto parallel parking and reverse parking now as optional extras or even standard on some cars (The new Merc GLC I test drove on Saturday has that as standard)
A lot of cars have driver assist options which i can see will become standard features more and more such as adaptive cruise control.
And even one car I looked at has auto lane change for motorways. You signal you want to change lanes and the car uses its cameras and radars to safely move you across into the lane.
So less and less input is needed from the driver which is a shame.
Youngsters growing up today will hardly ever need to do anything with up and coming cars which will mean when you stick them into a manual shift, manual handbrake, manual parking/lane changing, no cruise control car I suspect they won't even be able to drive the car.
You see more cars with auto electric handbrakes now, auto gearboxes (now they are very good and don't punish you on fuel economy and performance like they used to and in fact some cars have better performance/economy now with the auto).
We have auto parallel parking and reverse parking now as optional extras or even standard on some cars (The new Merc GLC I test drove on Saturday has that as standard)
A lot of cars have driver assist options which i can see will become standard features more and more such as adaptive cruise control.
And even one car I looked at has auto lane change for motorways. You signal you want to change lanes and the car uses its cameras and radars to safely move you across into the lane.
So less and less input is needed from the driver which is a shame.
Youngsters growing up today will hardly ever need to do anything with up and coming cars which will mean when you stick them into a manual shift, manual handbrake, manual parking/lane changing, no cruise control car I suspect they won't even be able to drive the car.
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
I suspect you'll probably find yourself forced out of a manual then - they are harder and harder to find in powerful cars these days.
Look at the manual/PDK split on something like a 911 Turbo..
Soldato
It's not about being old fashioned, you might aswell call the steering wheel old fashioned too, some people like a car that is engaging and something they have control over, nothing beats the fun that you can have manually changing the gear and being able to red line a car and play with the throttle etc. Modern cars practically drive themselves, everything is electric or automated, they feel very remote and disconnected, almost like playing a computer game, I personally hate that, I love driving cars and a large part of that is feeling part of it mechanically, otherwise I might as well train a monkey to be chauffeur and drive me around instead.
Soldato
[TW]Fox;28950661 said:
Maybe in the future when my cars or the cars I like become too old and too much of a chore to run, for now and the near future they aren't a problem, most of my car interest is from the late 80's and 90's and early 00's, back when they had mechanical attachment in most areas, new modern cars don't do anything for me and leave me cold, nor do I have any interest in really powerful cars as I find them unusable on the roads.
No danger of that any time soon. Young people will learn in and drive the cheapest cars, which will be manual everything for a while yet IMO.
It all feeds down quite quickly though. Look at aircon. Used to be a luxury and almost every car comes with it now.
Auto gearboxes will follow suit.
Plus I meant the children of today. They may well learn to drive in cheap cars and their first car may not have many of these auto features but very quickly they will be driving cars with auto everything and will soon forget how to drive/use a normal car.
Hell in a week since Ive had a hire vehicle after losing my volvo in the floods I have twice left the headlights on and once walked away without putting the handbrake on and that was only after 5 years of driving cars with auto headlights and auto electric handbrakes.
God knows what I would be like after several years of driving a car which auto parks and auto changes lane. I suspect I would then find it hard to park a car without these features (after all much of parallel parking is experience and practice) and I might find myself signalling on motorways and wondering why the car hadn't changed lane.........
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Caporegime
There hasn't been an advancement in the steering wheel though, so that's not a good comparison.
You can have an engaging and fun drive in an auto. You don't need a clutch to do that.
Not the wheel itself, but the gearknob hasnt progressed much either.
Cars now can steer themselves on motorways and (for better or worse) PAS systems have changed a lot too.
Automatic steering is nearly as real as automatic gearboxes
I'd disagree! The PDK in mine is night and day batter that a manual box. However, the one down side is you loose all sence of speed with it as its quiet seemless.
This is all my personal opinion though.
This is what still confuses a lot of people I think. DSG is not an auto box.
I don't understand how folk who like "fast cars" still swear blindly that they'd have a manual stick-shift box over a DCT type box. I understand the nostalgia of the traditional manual box but the reality is that is you like driving cars fast, on road or track, a DCT style box is better in every conceivable way for the driver.
I don't think it will be that far in the future where there are three types of transmissions available to mass market: Auto, DCT and no-box-at-all box.