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How America lost its love for the stick shift

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Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#531

Post by vinay427 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #482
int_handler wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving a manual car isn't about efficiency. It is about driver engagement. Yes, you can row your own gears with paddle shifters, but no automatic will ever give you the same kind of engagement or connectedness with the car as a manual with three pedals will. But yes, if there is a smoking gun for the death of the manual in America, it would be our crumbling, congested roads and absurdly long daily commutes.

Have you driven one of the new automatics or an electric car? The best engagement happens when you don't have to think about what gear you're in, or plan for the downshift lag. That's true engagement! My plugin hybrid minivan with an e-cvt knocks the socks off of my old 5-speed Subaru wagon. A Minivan! (Edit) The reason why is that it takes me about a second to shift gears. A modern automatic can rev up before I'd ev…

For many people, myself included, engagement with the transmission and engine speed is part of the "engagement" we want when driving. If you're more interested in the handling dynamics, etc. I could see how an automatic could remove other distractions.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#532

Post by Zombieball »

tlrobinson wrote: post #491
raydev wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintaining the appropriate gear requires that you're focussed on the world around you.

So does “staying in your lane” and “maintaining appropriate speed”. Adding arbitrary other things requiring focus doesn’t seem like it would help prevent accidents.

I can’t speak for others but I personally find driving a manual does help prevent accidents. Driving an automatic feels a bit mundane. Just hold the gas pedal in the same spot the whole time. It’s easy to slip into a boredom state (zone out) and not focus on the road. Even more so when tired.

A manual car sort of kicks you in the butt every now and then: “hey, you’re in the wrong gear. Stay sharp, and upshift!”

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#533

Post by Spearchucker »

gwbas1c wrote: post #482
int_handler wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving a manual car isn't about efficiency. It is about driver engagement. Yes, you can row your own gears with paddle shifters, but no automatic will ever give you the same kind of engagement or connectedness with the car as a manual with three pedals will. But yes, if there is a smoking gun for the death of the manual in America, it would be our crumbling, congested roads and absurdly long daily commutes.

Have you driven one of the new automatics or an electric car? The best engagement happens when you don't have to think about what gear you're in, or plan for the downshift lag. That's true engagement! My plugin hybrid minivan with an e-cvt knocks the socks off of my old 5-speed Subaru wagon. A Minivan! (Edit) The reason why is that it takes me about a second to shift gears. A modern automatic can rev up before I'd ev…

Well if you're an experienced stick-shifter and familiar with the car you don't have to think about what gear you're in. Combination of revolutions, engine noise, speed and gearshift position make this and planning for the downshift lag as natural as breathing air.

Only time I think about gears is in low range, when I'm in an off-roader.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#534

Post by Annatar »

If you look at all the modern muscle cars (or in the case of the Corvette and Camaro ZL1) hypercars and supercars camouflagef as muscle cars, they all come with the manual transmission as the standard option, and most of the enthusiasts choose that. I watch Youtube car videos constantly and have seen a very encouraging uptake of manual transmission cars in America by generation Y. It's like a new era is dawning. Very encouraging.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#535

Post by ChuckMcM »

This is why my car has a 'manual gearbox preservation society'[1] decal on it :-). It is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy which I pointed out to a Subaru VP at some length, if you only offer the manual on your 'low trim' cars you double penalize it, both from the perspective of people who want a bit more luxury and the things like radio systems or navigation systems that only come in the 'higher trim' packages.

One of the things he told me was that the cost of getting a car through California smog certification had to be covered by the sales of the car, and limited production run cars have higher production costs because the assembly line has to be re-tooled during the run.

All I know is that it makes me sad, and I'm glad that Mazda, for the moment, still offers a manual on all their trim packages for many of their cars.

[1] https://thecurbshop.com/collections/tmgps

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#536

Post by ChuckMcM »

city41 wrote: post #310
t0mbstone wrote: post #163

Speaking as someone who has owned a number of sports cars with manual transmissions, I can tell you why I finally made the switch to automatic: Adaptive cruise control in stop and go traffic. I used to have to deal with a six-speed manual transmission in stop and go traffic for an hour every day, and it was pure torture. I mean, sure, it was fun for a weekend drive in the mountains, but it sucked the rest of the time…

My wife and I both have manuals and we sit in stop and go traffic every day. Having to shift in traffic doesn't even register with my brain that it's really anything at all. I simply don't notice.

Same here, my hands and feet just "do their thing". I don't think about it particularly at all.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#537

Post by Marazan »

jrbancel wrote: post #128
joeblau wrote: post #59

My brother has an R8, Viper, and Vantage (All Manual) and I would rather drive a Tesla over all 3 of them. Manual is fun and you get the feeling of control and I love driving them, but in reality, there is a reason they are on their way out. The main problem is that the replacement, automatic, make driving feel worse. The computers that manage automatic transmissions are so bad that they make automatics feel terrible…

"Automatic" is way to broad to be correct. A DCT (Dual Clutch Transmission) like the Porsche PDK is not remotely comparable to a torque converter based transmission. Yet, both are categorized as "automatic".

And one of those cost approximately my annual salary and the other doesn't.

Telling people automatics are great when you are referencing a type that the majority of people will never have a chance of owning is a classic Hacker News manual-vs-automatic discussion trope.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#538

Post by sngz »

rrdharan wrote: post #320
dkr88 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I test drove a 2008 WRX a while ago and the clutch was pretty heavy, IIRC. I remember thinking to myself "this would be a major pain in traffic".

I tried to learn to drive stick on a Subaru WRX, I believe it was a 2002 or 2003 model year. It did not go well. Almost ended a friendship and I had leg cramps for days. Fortunately I managed to get the hang of it later on a more forgiving Mazda Protege.

i learned to drive stick on my WRX and it was the only manual I've ever driven for 5+ years. It wasn't until I had to pick up my brother in laws car from the shop where I noticed how heavy my clutch was and how boggy the first and 2nd gear are at low speeds.

but i never had the cramping problem and love driving it in stop and go traffic. keeps me entertained / sane with something to do. recently noticed my left calf is bigger than my right

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#539

Post by skrebbel »

cyphar wrote: post #527
skrebbel wrote: post #522

A popular topic on HN is how Europe does XYZ better than the US. Particularly in traffic, actually. But here, the Americans truly got it right. Most people just want a car to get them from A to B. Manual has little to go for it among non-car-geeks, other than "people think it's normal" (in Europe). Automatic is sold as an expensive option here but that makes no sense to me - how can a chip be more expensive to produc…

> Automatic is sold as an expensive option here but that makes no sense to me - how can a chip be more expensive to produce than a physical gear box? I'm not sure what you mean by "chip" here -- all cars have gear boxes (in some form -- you need to have a way of converting the engine's rotation into wheel rotation without stalling or overworking the engine) the question is how they work and what controls the gear rat…

O wow, call me filter bubbled. I just plainly assumed that automatic gear shifting would be software controlled. Thanks.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#540

Post by Annatar »

tlrobinson wrote: post #485
int_handler wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving a manual car isn't about efficiency. It is about driver engagement. Yes, you can row your own gears with paddle shifters, but no automatic will ever give you the same kind of engagement or connectedness with the car as a manual with three pedals will. But yes, if there is a smoking gun for the death of the manual in America, it would be our crumbling, congested roads and absurdly long daily commutes.

Why is a stick and three pedals the optimal number of controls for “driver engagement”?

Having just come back from Hockenheim with my racing license, I can tell you that driving a manual car very fast is much harder and more demanding than doing the same with an automatic. That's precisely why I drive a manual: it's more challenging and makes me learn more about race driving techniques, not to mention controlling the car. It demands of me to be an ever better driver. I have to be at least twice as good as other participants with automatics. I like that.
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