Car and Driver magazine launches campaign to save manual transmissions!

Spectre said:
Yes, but all your mid-to-large size higher end cars are switching over - note the M5 above, for example. It's going to trickle down to the econoboxen and ecoboxen classes eventually, just like everything else.

In the end, sure, there might be a couple of ecoboxes left with manuals... but who the hell would actually want to drive something like a Proton Savvy or Rover CityRover, manual transmission or not?
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All the "luxury" brands like Merc and BMW have always been predominately auto over here, especially the bigger size cars. 3 series and so on are still usually manual. These brands don't make up a large enough percentage to make a real difference. The last figures I saw suggested that autos have made up about 8% of UK car sales for about the last 15 years, and have actually fallen slightly in recent years.
 
I don't know, I'm 32yo and they have been saying that the end of thy stick is near for the whole time I have been driving, 16 years. Now we have new Cadillacs with sticks, a new fancy rev matching stick in the 370z, and even a Buick with a stick. If anything there are more available than ever, at least during my time on the road. Sure they might be disappearing in Ferraris, Porsches, and other super cars, but I think they will be around in regular cars for as long as the ICE is around, which is a whole other problem.
 
ninjacoco said:
My mom thought the invention of the automatic transmission was the greatest thing since sliced cheese. Yeeeeah, it's not--on both cars I've had, the slushbox inevitably ends up starting to commit transmission-seppuku and shifting really, really roughly all the time. Also, cheese is yummy.

...so guess what I never learned how to do? :(

I feel a bit bad that I gave one of my friends in high school crap for stalling his truck pretty much every time there were boobies around, but at least he got it over at the right age for that, y'know?

re: the "damn kids not learnin' how to drive, get off my lawn!" discussion--my best friend in high school was in auto shop. I wasn't. Guess which one of us didn't have a driver's license? Haha. (I think he finally fixed this problem in college.)

Shoot, I counted down the days 'til I could get a dadgummed permit, but I guess I'm a weirdo.
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The amount of people in this country that can't is crazy high. I only know one person irl with a manual car. :|
If no one you know has one you aren't going to be taught to and it's pretty sad.
 
LeVeL said:
See, consumers CAN make a difference.

Oh, and you must be brain-dead if you cant learn to drive stick. Its not rocket science. When I learned, my friend took me around a parking lot for 10 minutes and then made me drive him downtown so he could get some food. It takes a bit of practice for it to become second nature, sure, but its not difficult.

I've only owned automatics (not really my fault here... long story) and has always had to find friends that wouldn't mind letting me practice on their cars, and yet I can drive around with a manual no problem - no stalling (I think I've only stalled once and only then because the 'box in my friend's crx was looser than a fat hooker and I thought I was in neutral when I wiggled my stick a few inches to each side... nope, it was still in first), no shaking/budging, etc. I shift slow and my downshifts take forever but I don't think you'd notice if you were driving behind me.
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True, consumers can make a difference, but the problem is that if it takes Americans to convince Bavarian Motor Works to make available the M5 with an optional manual transmission... It's like a peanut-butter & jelly sandwich that the peanut-butter & jelly replaced with lettuce & low-calori salad dressing and the bread pieces replaced with two sticks of celery.

I only know one friend who owns a manual transmission car, and he was nice enough to let me try it out on a parking lot one day (didn't stall once! woot). All my other friends have automatics, and most of the people in my class are automatic as well.
 
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katwalk said:
The amount of people in this country that can't is crazy high. I only know one person irl with a manual car. :|
If no one you know has one you aren't going to be taught to and it's pretty sad.
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nist7 said:
I only know one friend who owns a manual transmission car, and he was nice enough to let me try it out on a parking lot one day (didn't stall once! woot). All my other friends have automatics, and most of the people in my class are automatic as well.
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I guess it just depends on location. Here, half my class owns a manual, the other half (me included) got used cars from parents and didn't have a choice. It shouldn't be this way, it's Pittsburgh. Every start is a hill start!
 
Personally I don't really care if manuals disappear. I mean, I don't think they will. There's still demand for them. I just don't care much. My car is an automatic and I like that. It's less work for me, it's easier, it's more luxurious... It's handy if I have to scratch myself in two places at once. I can understand how a manual would be more fun on a race track or on a nice twisty road in the hills but most of my driving is done in the suburbs or in the city. And I don't much care about economy. If I did I wouldn't drive a Mercedes-Benz.

https://pic.armedcats.net/h/ha/habanos/2010/07/22/aautomatic-for-the-people-album.jpg
 
Bah. Where was the campaign to save the straight-8 engine? ;) Or the pushrod engine? or the SLA rear end? Or the manual choke? or mud huts or cave dwelling? :lol:

I love good manuals, I've only bought manual transmissions in the NEW cars I've bought, and am spending extra effort and money putting a manual trans in my project car that never had one.

And I feel that if you need to move your left leg every once in a while to pay attention, you're mentally deficient and really shouldn't be driving, as you're just as dangerous as a person talking on the cellphone. And if you think that amongst ALL the things you do to control your car and make it go from one place to another, moving that left leg occasionally is the difference between driving and not, then I suggest putting a clutch pedal on your chair at work or home and push that beotch as often as youwant and see how far you get. I'm sure that pushing that pedal on your easy chair at work every couple seconds will keep a grin on your face for years, give you all the fun and control of driving, and save you fuel and insurance costs. AND best part is, you WILL be driving, while people actually IN cars will be "mere passengers." ;)

Buy a car with a manual because you like that car that way. But rest assured, when I'm drving my 740i, I'm in control, having fun, and paying attention and only moving my left leg rarely. :mrgreen:
 
I taught my girlfriend, a tiny blonde girl who cares nothing about cars in general to drive manual, now she will drive nothing but.

Spread the word people, spread the word. I dont need C&D to tell me that :)

Merc63 said:
Or the pushrod engine?
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Its going a heck of a lot stronger than the manual is.
 
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katwalk said:
No I am saying that they shouldn't make you do useless things that teaches you nothing and charge you for it. MAYBE they could add something like parallel parking to the lessons since I still can't do that properly without hitting the curb :|
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My instructor taught me how to parallel park and so far we've touched upon it on every road lesson, he purposely chooses roads with high ass curbs to practice on, I always seem to get within an inch of the curb and always surprise the instructor by not hitting the curb. Then again I have an instructor who prides himself on only having three people fail the road test in 5 years.
 
Dr_Grip said:
From what i've read, germany has the highest market share of automatic transmissions in europe.
It's ten percent.
No need to panic.
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Ha! That's because you're fat! Yes. Apologies, but it's true. I haff got a graff.

https://pic.armedcats.net/k/kn/knarkas/2010/07/26/0_1020_850885_00.gif

Seriously though, the manual will continue to rule Europe for the forseeable future for a couple of reasons. #1 is that "everyone" know how to drive one, unless you are handicapped. If you're not handicapped and only have an automatic license, you're lame, and people will laugh at you. You may also have it harder to find employment, should you be required to drive in the line of duty. Reason #2 is that automatics are expensive, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Expensive to buy, expensive to run. Even if new doppelkopplungsgetrieben puts out less CO2, the difference is so marginal you'll have to drive to Pluto to save in the higher price tag in reduced taxes.

Redliner said:
I find that discussion amusing.
In the total sales of new cars, automatics must be around 10% of news cars, and most of those in brands like Mercedes and BMW. The other, cheaper brands like GM, VW and FIAT don?t sell autos in the entry level cars because people don?t want to pay more for it.
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It's very US-centric.

Peter3hg said:
All the "luxury" brands like Merc and BMW have always been predominately auto over here, especially the bigger size cars. 3 series and so on are still usually manual. These brands don't make up a large enough percentage to make a real difference. The last figures I saw suggested that autos have made up about 8% of UK car sales for about the last 15 years, and have actually fallen slightly in recent years.
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I tried finding a official percentage stat here, but failed. But of course every Mercedes taxi ever is an automatic. BMW's are not taxis and I get the feeling they're pretty much 50/50 around here.
 
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Merc63 said:
Bah. Where was the campaign to save the straight-8 engine? ;) Or the pushrod engine? or the SLA rear end? Or the manual choke? or mud huts or cave dwelling? :lol:

I love good manuals, I've only bought manual transmissions in the NEW cars I've bought, and am spending extra effort and money putting a manual trans in my project car that never had one.

And I feel that if you need to move your left leg every once in a while to pay attention, you're mentally deficient and really shouldn't be driving, as you're just as dangerous as a person talking on the cellphone. And if you think that amongst ALL the things you do to control your car and make it go from one place to another, moving that left leg occasionally is the difference between driving and not, then I suggest putting a clutch pedal on your chair at work or home and push that beotch as often as youwant and see how far you get. I'm sure that pushing that pedal on your easy chair at work every couple seconds will keep a grin on your face for years, give you all the fun and control of driving, and save you fuel and insurance costs. AND best part is, you WILL be driving, while people actually IN cars will be "mere passengers." ;)

Buy a car with a manual because you like that car that way. But rest assured, when I'm drving my 740i, I'm in control, having fun, and paying attention and only moving my left leg rarely. :mrgreen:
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Ouch. Who pissed in your cereal this morning?
 
nist7 said:
Ouch. Who pissed in your cereal this morning?
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He is butthurt that some people don't like automatics and he struggles to understand the concept of personal preference. He already went onto a huge rant about that in at least one other thread :rolleyes:
 
Having recently driven the Audi TT with the manual 6-speed gearbox, I have to agree that a proper manual in a sporty car is still a league of its own -- when you wanna have fun and not only cruising around.

I grew up with manuals, all the cars I ever owned, were manuals and especially with small engines automatics make absolutely no sense, because they usually have sluggish gear changes and delayed reactions, when switching from breaking to accelerating. Automatics are particularly annoying with turbo-charged engines, that have a turbo lag. The only automatic I really liked so far, is the 7-speed G-tronic by Mercedes-Benz.

However, there are also bad manuals out there. A really good one is very rare, too. So having a manual doesn't necessarily mean, that you're having more fun. It can also be very annoying, when you have a clutch that makes you stall the engine at every traffic light or have 6 gears, when you can reach top speed in 4th gear as well and the other two are just there for fuel saving cruise-mode.

So yes, in general I prefer manual (except I'm stuck in slow traffic). But a good automatic is nevertheless better, than a bad manual.
 
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Manual transmissions are going to go the way of the dinosaurs.
There's nothing we can do about it.
Sure maybe there will be a few Ariels and Lotus's offering them for the old gearheads.
But I'll put my money on manuals disappearing completely from mainstream cars within 20 years.

My dad goes to a lot of track events and every year he see's more and more cars with PDK and other such dual-cluctch systems. The fact of the matter is that these new systems are faster than manuals. Manuals will be replaced on the track because they're slower, and replaced on the roads because of our growing desire for cars that can "drive themselves".

:(
 
LeVeL said:
He is butthurt that some people don't like automatics and he struggles to understand the concept of personal preference. He already went onto a huge rant about that in at least one other thread :rolleyes:
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Ah, I think there was another large thread a while ago debating similar issues about manual transmissions. I can understand if he is debating someone who is an extreme manual elitist whereby they look-down upon anything that's computer-controlled, but it seems that he took it as a personal insult...heh.

Canuck said:
Manual transmissions are going to go the way of the dinosaurs.
There's nothing we can do about it.
Sure maybe there will be a few Ariels and Lotus's offering them for the old gearheads.
But I'll put my money on manuals disappearing completely from mainstream cars within 20 years.

My dad goes to a lot of track events and every year he see's more and more cars with PDK and other such dual-cluctch systems. The fact of the matter is that these new systems are faster than manuals. Manuals will be replaced on the track because they're slower, and replaced on the roads because of our growing desire for cars that can "drive themselves".

:(
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Indeed. Not to mention all these hybrids coming out like the Volt, LEAF, Prius, etc. etc. Although I'm not sure if you can have a manual transmission in such alternate-powered vehicles.
 
Still plenty of manuals here in the UK, I can't see it disapearing anytime soon.

I learned to drive a manual, as did all of my family, all of my friends and all of my friends family! :lol: The sole exception is one of my friends who was injured whena woman in a 4x4 ran him over and can now only drive autos (and he was taking manual lessons before the accident!)

Of course some people choose to have an auto, and I can see the logic. Autos are easier to drive, and are less hassle around town, I find they leave you feeling without control though, I personaly like to choose exactly when to change gear.

In fact I've never considered buying a car without a 'do it yourself' box, I've even looked at cars with column shifters but never an auto! :lol:
 
Topgearfanatic said:
My instructor taught me how to parallel park and so far we've touched upon it on every road lesson, he purposely chooses roads with high ass curbs to practice on, I always seem to get within an inch of the curb and always surprise the instructor by not hitting the curb. Then again I have an instructor who prides himself on only having three people fail the road test in 5 years.
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That's interesting as I have not heard of anyone who has taken the test in recent years who was taught, unless you count pull up to a curb not near anything as parallel parking, which is what they test for and is useless if you have a one car parking spot to pull into. It's a pain in the ass to teach yourself that too because if you screw up you can scratch your own car. :|
 
Parallel parking was also covered thouroughly and repeatedly in my driving lessons.
 
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