You got one point correct, including "this is wrong" in your bullshit post.

People never consider the EPA's mandatory driving style when getting MPG figures. Does the EPA hit neutral on a huge hill? When they see a red light a block ahead do they drop it into neutral? When driving a car with a lot of torque do they alter their shift points? Do they alter which gear they're in at certain speeds? The answer is no, they have to follow a strict set of guidelines. I drove a 2001 Maxima 5-speed that had a city MPG rating of 19, I was always near 30 just by dropping neutral when appropriate (live in CO, tons of huge hills, places I coast for miles) and by going to 5th at around 35mph since the engine had 217 of torque in a fairly small package. This is all I did, I actually am a pretty spirited driver, not a hyper-miling douche that takes an hour to get up to 50mph.

I currently have an auto Xterra, while I don't think I'd want it in a stick, there are so many situations where I would just pop it in neutral where the RPMs are 3k or more.

Also to the dumbasses that engine brake: You are burning a shitload of gas by keeping your RPMs up that high instead of idle and last time I checked brakes were about a hundred bucks. Why the hell would you wear out your engine/tranny over a part that costs a hundred bucks and if we are talking years of ownership, hundreds in gas. Simply stupid.

That makes sense, thanks.

I have a "Diablo Sport" programmer that will actually change the shift points and firmness on the Challenger, and that would have to be electronic like you say.

When you go into "Auto Stick" mode the MDS system is turned off.

I'm in the same boat. There's scary things happening inside an automatic. I would end up becoming a cautionary tale about why you always bring your transmission problems to a professional if I tried to fix one myself.
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Doesn't mopar drive you nuts with the constant slushboxes? I like so many of the SRT8 models (particularly the 300) and it makes me insane that every single god damn one is an auto (challenger excepted I guess). One thing I like about GM is they only made the CTS-V in manual, I wish Chrysler/Dodge would get on board. I would hope anyone buying a SRT vehicle would only want stick. My old man had a SRT Grand Cherokee, while it was definitely fast as shit, it got old so fast just smashing the gas pedal and feeling the front end "hover".

Real Men don't need to give their car a handjob to feel like real men.

Paddle shift FTW.

Its not just the sports enthusiasts that prefer manual transmissions. Sticks are more efficient and save gas money as well in most instances. Having an automatic transmission also adds to the sticker price.

The author is simply dead-ass wrong.

If someone doesn't really care about "having fun" or feeling like they are in control and driving the car, thats fine. I have nothing against automatics and if you have a brutal stop and go commute and don't want to clutch for an hour, I can see reluctantly giving up the manual.

But thats not the author's point, he is saying there's no difference in fun, control, or efficiency between the two. Bullcrap. If you don't have a brutal stop and go commute and if you aren't a lazy person who cant be bothered with doing much while driving, then drive a stick. Its cheaper on the lot, saves money on gas, and is more fun to drive.

I just spent a few weeks in Ireland and England where I rented a car in each place. They charged almost double for an Auto Transmission car. So I got manual transmission cars. They were both Diesels one a Vauxhall Astra and the other a BMW 1 series. Both were fun to drive and got great gas mileage up around 50 MPG.

I have to admit my stress levels were a bit elevated driving on the wrong side of the road shifting gears with my left hand all the while trying to figure out their road signs not knowing where the hell I was going.

At home I have an FJ Cruiser with a 6MT I got for the fun factor. This is my first offroad vehicle and I never thought I would be out rock crawling in it. Had I known I would have got an Auto.

Right.

At best, it's a completely negligible difference that's almost entirely offset by the fact that people aren't machines and if they aren't timing their shifts perfectly, they give back whatever mechanical gains they may make up.

In the real world, automatic transmissions have become so advanced that they have overcome the mechanical simplicity of the manuals.

dead battery?

manual saves the day...

I knew a guy with an s10 who could upshift without the clutch...:eek:

including cost and repairs

Not with efi.

Then your transmission is ****ed up.

My goddamn camaro doesn't idle above 800 and its 45 yrs old. If you're just rolling down a hill an automatic, the engine is going to be either idling or if you're on cruise it may downshift to keep you from accelerating past your target speed. It's not going to sit at 3k if you're not on the gas at all; it's going to coast down to idle speeds.

Oh, and you're wrong on the engine breaking thing - you don't use more gas when the RPMs come up during engine breaking. The RPMs are only rising due to the compression in the motor and the motor spinning down. It's not actually using any more fuel; it's the transmission turning the motor in the absence of fuel, rather than the motor turning the transmission. The RPMs come up because there's no place for the energy that the transmission is imparting on the motor to go (i.e. the engine compression) so the RPMs spin up and the compression finally peters the acceleration out. If you were actually feeding the motor fuel to create those RPMs, it wouldn't decelerate.

And while Radar and Hemi can speak to this more than I can, the last automatic I was fortunate enough to look at the guts of had some kind of slipping interlock in it where at lower RPMs it was barely engaged, so it's not like your breaks are having to work very hard to keep the car in place. At higher RPM the 'disks' in the transmission synch together and pull harder, so it's actually able to apply the power better. However, at low RPMs, the transmission isn't doing much work at all and as a consequence your brakes aren't doing much work.

And if you're spending a couple hundred dollars on brake pads - you're an idiot. If you had to replace the brake assembly altogether, it's because you were an idiot for a prolonged period of time, burned through your pads and ****ed up your rotors. That's when you start spending a couple hundred dollars. Brake Pads for your daily commuter are dirt cheap.

I reiterate, at it's very best, sitting in neutral at a stop light is going to do nothing more than save you a set of brake pads over the life of your car. Brake pads are cheap and easy to replace on your own. But hey, maybe you're right on those XTerras that idle at 3K.

To start out by calling my post bullshit and then excoriate people for burning fuel while engine breaking and then chirping about $200 brake pads is...interesting.

As long as I have to commute through rush hour traffic, I doubt I will ever own a manual. Love ‘em though.

What's efi?


I'd totally forgotten about starting the car with the clutch. My dad did that a few times with older cars when I was a teenager, and I thought it was magical. How did that work exactly?