Originally posted by Hohbein Originally posted by baff Originally posted by Hohbein Manual all the way. Automatic is for wimps! You can drive 'alot' faster with a manual (of course depending on engine size), you can really rag the engine as much or as little as you want. Once you've learned how to drive manually, it'll only be a matter of months before it's second nature. I don't even think about driving any more, it just comes naturally. Infact, I find it hard to drive an auto now, due to the lack of a clutch etc. MANUAL!
Having moved to automatic there is no going back.
As for manual being faster?
The only reason they don't use automatics in Formula 1 is that they have been banned. My Car has infinite gears I don't feel the transmition change and I can't work shift that fast.
Manual can be good fun in a sports car.
It's not about how fast you can change the gears (although beleive me, it's not hard to change faster than an auto), it's about leaving the engine revving for as long as YOU want. In an auto you can't stop the car from changing up a gear, even if you feel you could get a few more MPH from the selected gear. This is why you can drive faster using a manual car.
F1 cars would -NEVER- be automatic, for one it'd be impossible to create an automatic gearbox that can withstand 1000bhp, it'd also slow down the drivers 10 fold if they couldn't select their own gears for certain circumstances.
F1 cars were automatic for a bit, but they changed the rules to disallow them as they felt the driver wasn't doing enough to warrant it still being called a sport. Auto's are faster.
When every car on the line has a perfect take off, the sport becomes dull. Automation in F1 are often the key to many victories and as technology advances the rules of the sport constantly change to restore human control to the driver. If you removed the driver from controlling the F1 car completely it would go much faster. The human is the limiting factor in much of the cars design.
Since the 1990's F1 gearbox's have been "semi-automatic" this is as close as they are currently allowed.
What you "feel" is less likely to be as correct as what very highly paid engineers "feel" when they design the gearbox. My car doesn't have any "selected gears". The transmittion is infinite. It is always at the perfect ratio. Not limited to a best fit choice between 5 gears. When you de clutch to change gear, you take the power off. I don't ever take the power off.
Originally posted by naldric Originally posted by Phoenixs You don't learn to drive with manual when you take your licence?
I think it's not mandatory in the States (you learn in whatever car the school got lol), in Japan you can get a AT or a AT/MT licence (from what i heard), in Europe you have to learn to drive with a MT to get you licence. Don't know about the rest of Europe but in England, if you want to drive a manual, you must pass you test on one. It is possible to take you test on an automatic and only be allowed to drive automatics, but automatic gearboxes are still comparatively rare here.
Originally posted by baff Don't know about the rest of Europe but in England, if you want to drive a manual, you must pass you test on one. It is possible to take you test on an automatic and only be allowed to drive automatics, but automatic gearboxes are still comparatively rare here.
Yeah its the same in Belgium. Almost all people drive with an MT here. Most of the people that have an AT are old people or people with an handicap.
I for one just love it to pull my engine to the limit.
Originally posted by naldric Originally posted by Phoenixs You don't learn to drive with manual when you take your licence?
I think it's not mandatory in the States (you learn in whatever car the school got lol), in Japan you can get a AT or a AT/MT licence (from what i heard), in Europe you have to learn to drive with a MT to get you licence. Over here you only take your lincense on a manual (Norway). Logical. Since that is the one that is the hardest to master. So everyone should have that knowledge. Automatic takes 1 minute to learn.
Originally posted by Nihilanth Yeah, just another comment on the hills thing. If you're on a hill of ANY slope, your car is GOING to drift when you first start moving. It's not something you can get rid of with enough skill, it's just a simple fact. Holding down the clutch essentially puts the car in neutral, so if you're on a hill and you hold down the clutch (which you have to do to start the car and start moving) with the car stopped, you're going to drift back down the hill a couple feet. If you live in a very hilly area you may want to consider not getting a stick just because of that reason. All it takes is one idiot to stop an inch from your bumper on a hill to ruin your day with a standard transmission.
In my car I never drift backwards on any slope more than about 1/2 a tire's rotation. A technique that I use when unsure of the vehicle I'm driving is to use the hand brake to hold until the clutch is biting. I never have to do this in my own car but I will do it as a demonstration to someone who asks about it.
To the OP: Tell the salesman your concerns and he/she will volenteer to teach you.
OT: most motorcycles use a wet clutch and if there's ever been a clutch you should slip that's it. It's a basic and essential technique for a bike to be able to slip the clutch when starting off.
Originally posted by baff Originally posted by Hohbein Originally posted by baff Originally posted by Hohbein Manual all the way. Automatic is for wimps! You can drive 'alot' faster with a manual (of course depending on engine size), you can really rag the engine as much or as little as you want. Once you've learned how to drive manually, it'll only be a matter of months before it's second nature. I don't even think about driving any more, it just comes naturally. Infact, I find it hard to drive an auto now, due to the lack of a clutch etc. MANUAL!
Having moved to automatic there is no going back.
As for manual being faster?
The only reason they don't use automatics in Formula 1 is that they have been banned. My Car has infinite gears I don't feel the transmition change and I can't work shift that fast.
Manual can be good fun in a sports car.
It's not about how fast you can change the gears (although beleive me, it's not hard to change faster than an auto), it's about leaving the engine revving for as long as YOU want. In an auto you can't stop the car from changing up a gear, even if you feel you could get a few more MPH from the selected gear. This is why you can drive faster using a manual car.
F1 cars would -NEVER- be automatic, for one it'd be impossible to create an automatic gearbox that can withstand 1000bhp, it'd also slow down the drivers 10 fold if they couldn't select their own gears for certain circumstances.
F1 cars were automatic for a bit, but they changed the rules to disallow them as they felt the driver wasn't doing enough to warrant it still being called a sport. Auto's are faster.
When every car on the line has a perfect take off, the sport becomes dull. Automation in F1 are often the key to many victories and as technology advances the rules of the sport constantly change to restore human control to the driver. If you removed the driver from controlling the F1 car completely it would go much faster. The human is the limiting factor in much of the cars design.
Since the 1990's F1 gearbox's have been "semi-automatic" this is as close as they are currently allowed.
What you "feel" is less likely to be as correct as what very highly paid engineers "feel" when they design the gearbox. My car doesn't have any "selected gears". The transmittion is infinite. It is always at the perfect ratio. Not limited to a best fit choice between 5 gears. When you de clutch to change gear, you take the power off. I don't ever take the power off.
Firstly, F1 cars were -NEVER- automatic. Never have they been and never will they be. In fact, the only 'real' sports car with an automatic gear box is the Mercedes Mcclaren SLK, which would set you back over 300,000 quid.
I honestly don't know what planet your on, but if you think your car has 'infinate transmittion', your certainly not on earth! Unless of course your car runs on electricity. There has never been a Petrol or Deisel, gearless car. Small scooters or Mopeds sometimes work gearlessly, but nothing bigger than a 125cc engine would cope with that kinda punishment.
Your car may indeed change gear smoothley, which most new automatics of course do, but to say it doesn't change gear ATALL is both naive and quite frankly retarded!
When your automatic changes gear, it does 'power off' very briefly, it'd be impossible for it to maintain power AND change gear. It may be quick, it may be smoothe, but it DOES happen. It may even change the gear faster than a manual driver in a similar car would. Where the difference is, is that the manual driver can leave the car to rev until say.. 6-7,000 RPM before changing gears. Most automatics will change gear when the engine hits around 4-5,000RPM (obviously depending on the way it's been tuned).
Take this for example:
I drive a Citroen C2 VTS. It's got a 1.6 125bhp engine and does 0-62 in 8.3 seconds, with a top speed of 125MPh.
Citroen also make another car, called the C2 VTR. It too sports the EXACT same 1.6 engine. However, it's been fitted with.... DUM DUH DUMMM, an automatic gearbox! (it's actually semi auto, you can flick between modes as you please). As the VTR is automatic, it only weighs in at 110bhp. Further more, it'll only hit 62 in 10.9 seconds - a collosal difference if you happen to be racing one another. And yep, you guessed it, it tops out at 121MPH, 4mph slower than the MANUAL VTS.
There you go, living proof that manual IS faster than automatic. Two cars, identical engines, different gear boxes. The Manual will always come out on top.
In F1 there were two things that were automatic and were banned.
One was the "pit lane" button that allowed the car to shift to 1st and maintain the exact maximum speed for the pit row for that track.
The other was automaticly adjusting wings. (Variable geometry much like an F-14.) This allowed the cars to be clean on the straights and dirty on the corners.
Both were banned to allow teams without those technologies to better compete.
Originally posted by Phoenixs Originally posted by naldric Originally posted by Phoenixs You don't learn to drive with manual when you take your licence?
I think it's not mandatory in the States (you learn in whatever car the school got lol), in Japan you can get a AT or a AT/MT licence (from what i heard), in Europe you have to learn to drive with a MT to get you licence. Over here you only take your lincense on a manual (Norway). Logical. Since that is the one that is the hardest to master. So everyone should have that knowledge. Automatic takes 1 minute to learn.
Well actually.... It took me about 15 minutes to learn. But then again, i was learning to drive a ford expadition. It's a monster, but that is what my mom needs to drag around 5 kids all the time. I'm taking a driver's ed course right now, and will have my license some time in january (now only a permit, so i can drive with one of my parents). I've driven my dad's toyota solara, and that is a stickshift, but it really wasn't that hard to do. It, though, took me a much longer time to get down.
Ooh, at my driving school(which i have to go to in 15 minutes or so, we get to drive an H2 with a super charger. How much gas can it waste? also there is a mustang, a PT cruiser, and some buick that we can drive.
Oh yeah, and you don't need to learn to drive a standard to get your license here, you just need to know the rules of the road, and do fairly well on the driving portion of the test.
It's not hard to learn to drive a manual. The key is learning on a car with a forgiving transmission. My car is like that, but the truck I learned on wasn't. It was really easy to kill it. It's not hard at all to learn, but in the US automatics are so common that most new drivers never bother to learn.
Originally posted by Lanmoragon When I do go up to the city its either to go to a baseball game, in which case we take the train, or if its for a friday/saturday night type of thing there is usually somebody else who drives that has an auto. I also don't travel that often when there is much traffic (work usually starts mid-late afternoon and goes until 9 at night). Right now after looking and test driving a few models, I sorta have my heart set on the Mazda3 5 door. I sat inside of one today (somebody at work just bought one) and its pretty sick. A little more powerful than a Honda civic, sporty look, tons of standard options, pretty good gas mileage, and an ok price. If I was going to buy a little more "ordinary" looking car I would just get auto, but I really think the shifting looks good with a sportier car. Hopefully this sunday I can get a chance to get some time practicing with a manual. Also might be good to learn how to drive manual anyways.
To let you know, I bought a 2005 Mazda 3 (4 door) last July for my wife and the car I think is really good. We put 30K in our first year...we have a 25 mile commute to work and back...plus all our friends are in LA and San Deigo. Because we car pool to work I have to drive the car sometimes and I did not want an auto, but she cannot drive stick, so we compromised. We got the car with "Tip-troninc"(SP?) transmission...so she can have her automatic, but I can slip the shifter over and drive it like a four-gear shifter. While not as nice as my 5 speed, it does allow me a small measure of control over the car. I get about 28-30 actual miles per gallon and it has survived rather well with the minimal amount of service it has received. My wife does not always give it it's scheduled maintanence and it has run like a champ. So I would say that the Mazda 3 is a good choice.
"It is easier to be cruel than wise. The road to wisdom is long and difficult... so most people just turn out to be assholes" Feng (Christopher Walken)
Originally posted by Lanmoragon My car broke down and it wasn't worth fixing it, so im in the market to buy a new car. I have looked at a couple of models and am going to test drive them tomorrow. Favorites are the Mazda3 5 door which somebody at my work has and loves it, a few Hyundai models, possibly a Mitsubishi Lancer.
One question I have is how easy is it to learn stick? Since I will be financing and paying monthly for the car, price-for-value matters alot. Automatic transmission usually adds $800-$1000 to the price sticker, which if I wanted to spend an extra $800 it would be on something like the front/rear spoiler or a moonroof, etc. My mom drives a newer car that is a manual, so im sure I could learn how to drive it, but I would have to learn how within the next 2 weeks or so. I also like the look of driving a stick though im sure I will get told that its really a pain in the ass. So is getting an automatic transmission worth the extra cash?
Yes an automatic is worth the extra cash. But buy a manual now and learn it, and get it out of your system, because once you marry and have kids, you will be getting an automatic-- I guarantee it.
Originally posted by baff Originally posted by Hohbein Manual all the way. Automatic is for wimps! You can drive 'alot' faster with a manual (of course depending on engine size), you can really rag the engine as much or as little as you want. Once you've learned how to drive manually, it'll only be a matter of months before it's second nature. I don't even think about driving any more, it just comes naturally. Infact, I find it hard to drive an auto now, due to the lack of a clutch etc. MANUAL!
Having moved to automatic there is no going back.
As for manual being faster?
The only reason they don't use automatics in Formula 1 is that they have been banned. My Car has infinite gears I don't feel the transmition change and I can't work shift that fast.
Manual can be good fun in a sports car.
manuals are faster because they have better gear ratio's, and more gears allowing more efficent RPM's and using your engines power much more efficently thus the better gas mileage.
however in town for non racing use they are just as worthless as auto and equal in all rights.
but the new automatic transmissions like the one on the brand new toyota solara, and some other cars have the efficency of an automatic simple because they are also 5 speed, can manually shift to an extent, and have all the advantages of auto and manual.
however those are really expensive and im assuming he wasnt talking high end imports, with expensive options(it might be standard on the brand new models but im not sure)
manuals in a high own automatics for gas mileage and speed, and if you dont have to stop ever at red lights, stop signs, etc. they work better.
but if your in town they dont they were not designed with stop and go driving in mind.
your automatic is just easier and more practical for where you live, and it doesnt have infinite gears of that i assure you.
they are all 4 or 5 speed, meaning they have 4 or 5 gears not counting reverse and neutral.
where as on race cars standards can go up to 6 or 7 in really rare instances for better efficency.
98% of the teenage population does or has tried smoking pot. If you''re one of the 2% who hasn''t, copy & paste this in your signature.
Comments
Having moved to automatic there is no going back.
As for manual being faster?
The only reason they don't use automatics in Formula 1 is that they have been banned. My Car has infinite gears I don't feel the transmition change and I can't work shift that fast.
Manual can be good fun in a sports car.
It's not about how fast you can change the gears (although beleive me, it's not hard to change faster than an auto), it's about leaving the engine revving for as long as YOU want. In an auto you can't stop the car from changing up a gear, even if you feel you could get a few more MPH from the selected gear. This is why you can drive faster using a manual car.
F1 cars would -NEVER- be automatic, for one it'd be impossible to create an automatic gearbox that can withstand 1000bhp, it'd also slow down the drivers 10 fold if they couldn't select their own gears for certain circumstances.
F1 cars were automatic for a bit, but they changed the rules to disallow them as they felt the driver wasn't doing enough to warrant it still being called a sport. Auto's are faster.
When every car on the line has a perfect take off, the sport becomes dull. Automation in F1 are often the key to many victories and as technology advances the rules of the sport constantly change to restore human control to the driver. If you removed the driver from controlling the F1 car completely it would go much faster. The human is the limiting factor in much of the cars design.
Since the 1990's F1 gearbox's have been "semi-automatic" this is as close as they are currently allowed.
What you "feel" is less likely to be as correct as what very highly paid engineers "feel" when they design the gearbox. My car doesn't have any "selected gears". The transmittion is infinite. It is always at the perfect ratio. Not limited to a best fit choice between 5 gears. When you de clutch to change gear, you take the power off. I don't ever take the power off.
Don't know about the rest of Europe but in England, if you want to drive a manual, you must pass you test on one. It is possible to take you test on an automatic and only be allowed to drive automatics, but automatic gearboxes are still comparatively rare here.
I for one just love it to pull my engine to the limit.
I drive a dodge dakota mt, and its pretty cool. Gets ok gas for a truck.
i for one love manuals and prlly wont ever go to automatics :P
Over here you only take your lincense on a manual (Norway). Logical. Since that is the one that is the hardest to master. So everyone should have that knowledge. Automatic takes 1 minute to learn.
In my car I never drift backwards on any slope more than about 1/2 a tire's rotation. A technique that I use when unsure of the vehicle I'm driving is to use the hand brake to hold until the clutch is biting. I never have to do this in my own car but I will do it as a demonstration to someone who asks about it.
To the OP: Tell the salesman your concerns and he/she will volenteer to teach you.
OT: most motorcycles use a wet clutch and if there's ever been a clutch you should slip that's it. It's a basic and essential technique for a bike to be able to slip the clutch when starting off.
Having moved to automatic there is no going back.
As for manual being faster?
The only reason they don't use automatics in Formula 1 is that they have been banned. My Car has infinite gears I don't feel the transmition change and I can't work shift that fast.
Manual can be good fun in a sports car.
It's not about how fast you can change the gears (although beleive me, it's not hard to change faster than an auto), it's about leaving the engine revving for as long as YOU want. In an auto you can't stop the car from changing up a gear, even if you feel you could get a few more MPH from the selected gear. This is why you can drive faster using a manual car.
F1 cars would -NEVER- be automatic, for one it'd be impossible to create an automatic gearbox that can withstand 1000bhp, it'd also slow down the drivers 10 fold if they couldn't select their own gears for certain circumstances.
F1 cars were automatic for a bit, but they changed the rules to disallow them as they felt the driver wasn't doing enough to warrant it still being called a sport. Auto's are faster.
When every car on the line has a perfect take off, the sport becomes dull. Automation in F1 are often the key to many victories and as technology advances the rules of the sport constantly change to restore human control to the driver. If you removed the driver from controlling the F1 car completely it would go much faster. The human is the limiting factor in much of the cars design.
Since the 1990's F1 gearbox's have been "semi-automatic" this is as close as they are currently allowed.
What you "feel" is less likely to be as correct as what very highly paid engineers "feel" when they design the gearbox. My car doesn't have any "selected gears". The transmittion is infinite. It is always at the perfect ratio. Not limited to a best fit choice between 5 gears. When you de clutch to change gear, you take the power off. I don't ever take the power off.
Firstly, F1 cars were -NEVER- automatic. Never have they been and never will they be. In fact, the only 'real' sports car with an automatic gear box is the Mercedes Mcclaren SLK, which would set you back over 300,000 quid.
I honestly don't know what planet your on, but if you think your car has 'infinate transmittion', your certainly not on earth! Unless of course your car runs on electricity. There has never been a Petrol or Deisel, gearless car. Small scooters or Mopeds sometimes work gearlessly, but nothing bigger than a 125cc engine would cope with that kinda punishment.
Your car may indeed change gear smoothley, which most new automatics of course do, but to say it doesn't change gear ATALL is both naive and quite frankly retarded!
When your automatic changes gear, it does 'power off' very briefly, it'd be impossible for it to maintain power AND change gear. It may be quick, it may be smoothe, but it DOES happen. It may even change the gear faster than a manual driver in a similar car would. Where the difference is, is that the manual driver can leave the car to rev until say.. 6-7,000 RPM before changing gears. Most automatics will change gear when the engine hits around 4-5,000RPM (obviously depending on the way it's been tuned).
Take this for example:
I drive a Citroen C2 VTS. It's got a 1.6 125bhp engine and does 0-62 in 8.3 seconds, with a top speed of 125MPh.
Citroen also make another car, called the C2 VTR. It too sports the EXACT same 1.6 engine. However, it's been fitted with.... DUM DUH DUMMM, an automatic gearbox! (it's actually semi auto, you can flick between modes as you please). As the VTR is automatic, it only weighs in at 110bhp. Further more, it'll only hit 62 in 10.9 seconds - a collosal difference if you happen to be racing one another. And yep, you guessed it, it tops out at 121MPH, 4mph slower than the MANUAL VTS.
There you go, living proof that manual IS faster than automatic. Two cars, identical engines, different gear boxes. The Manual will always come out on top.
Phew, I hope i've cleared things up now!
In F1 there were two things that were automatic and were banned.
One was the "pit lane" button that allowed the car to shift to 1st and maintain the exact maximum speed for the pit row for that track.
The other was automaticly adjusting wings. (Variable geometry much like an F-14.)
This allowed the cars to be clean on the straights and dirty on the corners.
Both were banned to allow teams without those technologies to better compete.
Go Schumacher!!!!
Over here you only take your lincense on a manual (Norway). Logical. Since that is the one that is the hardest to master. So everyone should have that knowledge. Automatic takes 1 minute to learn.
Well actually.... It took me about 15 minutes to learn. But then again, i was learning to drive a ford expadition. It's a monster, but that is what my mom needs to drag around 5 kids all the time. I'm taking a driver's ed course right now, and will have my license some time in january (now only a permit, so i can drive with one of my parents). I've driven my dad's toyota solara, and that is a stickshift, but it really wasn't that hard to do. It, though, took me a much longer time to get down.
Ooh, at my driving school(which i have to go to in 15 minutes or so, we get to drive an H2 with a super charger. How much gas can it waste? also there is a mustang, a PT cruiser, and some buick that we can drive.
Oh yeah, and you don't need to learn to drive a standard to get your license here, you just need to know the rules of the road, and do fairly well on the driving portion of the test.
It's not hard to learn to drive a manual. The key is learning on a car with a forgiving transmission. My car is like that, but the truck I learned on wasn't. It was really easy to kill it. It's not hard at all to learn, but in the US automatics are so common that most new drivers never bother to learn.
To let you know, I bought a 2005 Mazda 3 (4 door) last July for my wife and the car I think is really good. We put 30K in our first year...we have a 25 mile commute to work and back...plus all our friends are in LA and San Deigo. Because we car pool to work I have to drive the car sometimes and I did not want an auto, but she cannot drive stick, so we compromised. We got the car with "Tip-troninc"(SP?) transmission...so she can have her automatic, but I can slip the shifter over and drive it like a four-gear shifter. While not as nice as my 5 speed, it does allow me a small measure of control over the car. I get about 28-30 actual miles per gallon and it has survived rather well with the minimal amount of service it has received. My wife does not always give it it's scheduled maintanence and it has run like a champ. So I would say that the Mazda 3 is a good choice.
"It is easier to be cruel than wise. The road to wisdom is long and difficult... so most people just turn out to be assholes" Feng (Christopher Walken)
Having moved to automatic there is no going back.
As for manual being faster?
The only reason they don't use automatics in Formula 1 is that they have been banned. My Car has infinite gears I don't feel the transmition change and I can't work shift that fast.
Manual can be good fun in a sports car.
manuals are faster because they have better gear ratio's, and more gears allowing more efficent RPM's and using your engines power much more efficently thus the better gas mileage.
however in town for non racing use they are just as worthless as auto and equal in all rights.
but the new automatic transmissions like the one on the brand new toyota solara, and some other cars have the efficency of an automatic simple because they are also 5 speed, can manually shift to an extent, and have all the advantages of auto and manual.
however those are really expensive and im assuming he wasnt talking high end imports, with expensive options(it might be standard on the brand new models but im not sure)
manuals in a high own automatics for gas mileage and speed, and if you dont have to stop ever at red lights, stop signs, etc. they work better.
but if your in town they dont they were not designed with stop and go driving in mind.
your automatic is just easier and more practical for where you live, and it doesnt have infinite gears of that i assure you.
they are all 4 or 5 speed, meaning they have 4 or 5 gears not counting reverse and neutral.
where as on race cars standards can go up to 6 or 7 in really rare instances for better efficency.
98% of the teenage population does or has tried smoking pot. If you''re one of the 2% who hasn''t, copy & paste this in your signature.