MrSpeedy
East Midlands
www.vintagediesels.co.uk
Posts: 4,786
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For me it depends very much upon the car.
For thrashing around the B roads and generally just having fun then it has to be a manual.
Fit general kid ferrying/shopping/ driving in town etc then I don't think you can beat a spazmatic.
That said I use very different vehicles for each purpose. (Vitesse for thrashing, S210 for kids)
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bortaf
Posted a lot
Posts: 4,549
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I really have no preference, i jump from one to the other sometimes a couple of times a day, sometimes changing form RHD to LHD aswell... It all adds to the fun! I must admit though, when i'm sitting in traffic crawling along through the town i do prefer an auto transmission. /\ this /\ If you asked me 20 years ago i would have said manual but moderns autos are NOTHING like the (for instance) old ford C3 (3 speed from cortina/granada/escort ect) they actually work, i drive maybe 3 or 4 differant cars a day so i get to see the good, the bad and the ugly and my nowdays opinion is "as long as it's doesn't have paddles or is a semi auto i don't mind I have to add my main problem with semi autos is based on smart cars, i get a fair few of them in and i hate them with a passion only normaly used for the ex
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R.I.P photobucket
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Hmm, that incessant debate…
I’ve driven both for as long as I can remember so for me its horses for courses and will depend on what the majority of my driving will be. Let’s give an example. On a weekly commute from Cheshire to Swindon my big lazy auto 4.0L Range Rover was ideally suited. On a daily Macclesfield to Derby one (windy, hilly and full of quarry wagons), it was hopeless and the engine/box combination just wasn’t happy, so was replaced with something quick and manual.
Here, you are sitting in constant traffic, on a highway or virtually off road and personally speaking, an auto does all those things best, so it’s back to a Range Rover! On the very odd occasion you do find a proper “drivers” road, I also find the ‘sport’ setting along with the 4.6 is actually a lot of fun and a lot happier combination than the 4.0L was.
I did have an Isuzu D-max in Malaysia which was 3.0L diesel and auto which has to be the worst pairing I’ve ever driven. The box just didn’t go with the engine at all on anything but long highway motoring and was an evil match. I knew I wasn’t staying in KL that long so put up with it, but was heartily glad to move it on when I left.
So for me, it’s a driving rather than an age thing, but I’d need to live outside of Manila to even contemplate a manual here.
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It's a strange one for me, apart from driving Mrs Minty's cars, my acty, and the cuore for a year I've been forced into automatics purely by my car tastes and the models I like only being available in automatic-
smart 2000-2003 (computer controlled clutch) I had the pulse which had option of auto or push forward to go up gear and backwards to go down a gear. I always tended to let it do the work. There were lots of delays but I never did work out if it was down to indecisiveness from the box, if there was a technique to forcing the gear changes with accelerator control, or if it was actually turbo lag rather than gears causing delays.
smart roadster 2003 - 2008 (computer controlled clutch)
This came without the fully auto option so was forced into knocking it up or down and i later installed aftermarket paddles. I felt like I was more in control in this but software had improved too.
Nissan cube 2009-2012 (fully auto)
You could tell that this was fully auto and what really converted me, no hesitation on changes and you could just get on with cruising along.
Nissan cube 2012 - 2015 (CVT) This was a backward step imho- I had the - and + on the steering wheel to control if required but it didn't feel like it drove as nicely as a normal auto. Not sure if this was down to the box or other differences- it had more miles and was an earlier car.
Nissan Elgrand 2015 - present (normal auto)
Again a normal auto rather than cvt but does have a knock stick up or down option which I use very occasionally. This is the best auto yet - maybe because it has the power to back it up - but it happily cruises at whatever speed I've taken it too and it responds quickly when I slam down to accelerate - leaving a 40mph zone on a roadworks stretch of a motorway is my favourite.
I often think what's the point in having that extra complexity and hassle when you can just not worry about clutch control and stalling in an auto, but when I do switch to manual to drive the acty or borrow mrs minty's car for the odd day I do enjoy throwing it into gears and feel a sense of achievement in timing a gear change just right.
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I have both. In a big american cruiser auto makes perfect sense. In the buggy manual is the only way (although I briefly thought about the VW semi-auto manual-without-a-clutch setup, briefly)
I think the problem is the really curse word autos outs there. I had a modern fiat 500 as a hire car in the US where manual just wasn't an option, and it was always in the wrong gear. The kick down had a good second or two lag, so you would give it a boot full to pass something, and it would make lots of noise but nothing happened. Truly awful thing.
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Do quite a few miles in my manual transit custom so love jumping in a lazy auto at the weekend. Used to be the same and class Autos as old mans cars. Now I love them.
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Auto for stop start in city traffic and for lazy cruising, manual for serious stuff. Been using a manual Hilux for road inspections the last couple of days and found it far superior to the automatic RAV4 I had been using. Better than the manual Holden Colorado I used for one day too. The old Hilux fits me just right whereas the Colorado is simply horrible. Thing that annoys me with automatics is that no matter how carefully you drive them they tend to eat brakes faster than a manual would. And stupid people who just slap the shifter in park, ignore the handbrake, and hope the car stays there no matter how steep the slope.
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Also my wife hates driving my manual Falcon. I think she's afraid of it even though she dailied an automatic Falcon for years.
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GM's Powerglide and Ford's C6 ridgeback are said to be pretty much indestructible. A bit dinosaurus but there's nothing wrong with that.
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I can switch between the two quite easily, but 16 years hopping between cars in the motor trade, and latterly all sorts of ag/plant machinery means it's something I need to be able to manage.
I've had an auto in at least one vehicle for about 11 years now, and only recently gone back to an all manual fleet when I couldn't find a suitably priced auto option for the BMW conversion in my 110.
My biggest gripe with autos is ones where the engine ever and box are hideously mismatched. A lot of the early front wheel drive autos with 3 speed boxes are bloody awful, as are -to my mind- most diesel auto Japanese four wheel drives, the 3 litre Hi-Lux Surf being one of the worst.
I'd agree with the early Smart cars being horrible too.
Of simple/robust autos, then you don't have to look much further than the ZF 4HP22/24. It was one of these behind a 3.9 V8 in a 4 door Range Rover that convinced me autos were actually not bad at all, and I've owned several vehicles with them in through the years. Relatively unbustable, and not that complicated to sort if they do. You can still ruin them with the wrong engine up front, but I'm yet to be completely dissapointed by one.
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Ryannn
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,421
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When I got my first auto, S-Type (2.7 twin turbo), it was great to be able to just stamp the pedal into the floor and let the car do the rest. It would easily spin the rear wheels for some time and absolutely flew. A mate of mine who was totally against autos was then persuaded to buy a V8 auto 5 series and he loved it for the same reason. So yeah, it very much depends on the car.
My current daily has tiptronic, so if I want to pick a gear, I can.
In comparison, I had an Diesel XE Auto as a hire car recently and the box was terrible. Had the range with 7 gears but it was so lazy on pickup. I had to drive it in sport most of the time if I wanted it to be responsive at roundabouts or junctions.
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dikkehemaworst
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 1,593
Club RR Member Number: 16
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. Whats not so funny is forgetting that your driving LHD for the first time and realising you'r placing yourself in in the road as you would when driving a RHD, and noticing your driving along the dotted line instead of to the side of it. I did that. Briefly. [/quote]
Fresh of the Ferry in ireland I steered the car ( for me) on the wrong side of the roundabout. That was scary 😬
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I have had all types of different gearboxes and in certain cars definitely has to be an manual such as the V8 Rover SD1 I had years ago. It was race tuned, was great fun and extremely quick and wouldn't have been the same with an auto. However I have had and still own SD1 6 cylinders and would only own an auto in them, cruising at 50-60 and hit the kick down makes a great noise puts a smile on my face.
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1984 Rover SD1 Vanden Plas 2600 Auto 1985 Rover SD1 2300s Auto 2005 MG ZT 1.8 Manual
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I once had the misfortune to drive several hundred miles through the central North Island of New Zealand in an automatic Isuzu Bighorn. It couldn't make up its mind what gear it wanted to be in. This could have been exacerbated by the huge off road tyres that the owner had chosen to put on it though.
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Manual for me, my mum has an auto license and that dictates all of her car choices, she's always been one for funky cars too, Renault savanna, smart forfour, cube, 500l (the fat one) perhaps it was a feature of the style of cars, they weren't really "sports" cars so they weren't very good having driven them when I had my license, she's got an abarth 595 now which I'll have to get a go in sometime, the boxes were sluggish and I felt disconnected from the cars. I have owned a couple of autos myself, a discovery v8 which was used for off-roading and was great for hillstarts and slow descents. The cars that were auto were both vw's a golf and a Jetta (mk2's) I'd say they were ok and changed gear quickly if the foot was pressed, I just wish they had 5 gears so the car wasn't screaming above 50mph. All my fun cars have been manuals, Subaru, Mgf, 20v golf, and loads of others, there's just something about dropping down to third and booting it or rev matching smoothly, modern dsg's aren't anything to be sniffed at, I'd definitely have one if I could afford one but since my life doesn't revolve around a race track manual is good enough. My commute is long but isn't one full of traffic, I'd probably want an auto if it were or I'd have a proper muscly left leg.
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I have had all types of different gearboxes and in certain cars definitely has to be an manual such as the V8 Rover SD1 I had years ago. It was race tuned, was great fun and extremely quick and wouldn't have been the same with an auto. However I have had and still own SD1 6 cylinders and would only own an auto in them, cruising at 50-60 and hit the kick down makes a great noise puts a smile on my face.Exactly this. I dailied a four speed automatic Ford Falcon with the 3.9 litre OHC six for some years. When nailed hard in top gear it didn't dick around with third but kicked down to second and fair howled. If kept going at wide open throttle it would hook top gear at 170 km/hr.
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Jun 10, 2017 10:12:45 GMT
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I'm manual, just because my left leg needs something to do, which in an auto is slam on the brake pedal thinking its a clutch
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BT
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,772
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Jun 10, 2017 10:16:49 GMT
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I've always been a manual man, however about three years ago I bought my first auto. It's an Audi DSG paired with a 260hp v6 and has the flappy paddles on the steering wheel and I absolutely love the thing!
It's very good fun. Not lazy like I assumed they would be, however I don't know if I could go with a normal auto. They seem a bit boring.
Every other car I've owned (40+) have all been manual.
I am looking for a cheap hack, work run, a few runs down to Devon and Cornwall in the summer and I'm in a right grind as to if I should go for a auto or manual. I think auto scares me as there is a lot of room for failure.
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Jun 10, 2017 10:37:39 GMT
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I'm gonna be a strange one for you all to figure. Although I am a petrol head right to my core I don't actually enjoy driving. These days there are so many idiots on the road, I find it infuriating. On longer journeys 99.9% of the time, my Wife Michelle drives and she will only drive autos. (She had sciatica once and it changed her from manuals) So I get to sit and chill and observe. Only last week, on the way to Santa Pod, some of the idiotic drivers I witnessed were downright dangerous! One even crossed from the far right lane to the hard shoulder to undertake someone at way over 70! I personally also prefer autos. It's enough to do avoiding idiots without having to worry about what gear to be in. But then, I am 46 and probably far too laid back than I should be lol
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96 E320 W210 Wafter - on 18" split Mono's - Sold :-( 10 Kia Ceed Sportwagon - Our new daily 03 Import Forester STi - Sold 98 W140 CL500 AMG - Brutal weekend bruiser! Sold :-( 99 E240 S210 Barge - Now sold 02 Accord 2.0SE - wife's old daily - gone in PX 88 P100 2.9efi Custom - Sold
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Jun 10, 2017 11:46:52 GMT
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Similar to smokeem, I'm a 46 yo petrol head that doesnt like driving due to the actions of others! However, i cant bring myself to allow the wife to drive. Always owned manuals until last year when a spares car for the toy turned up, and it was an auto! And one i was soon to find out was running on borrowed time with it being in a Mk2 Mondeo! But all the horror stories never showed and i got a year out of the car.
The car that might have changed my mind was a Mazda 5 i drove in Florida, but the Mondeo i couldnt put my finger on what i didnt like about it until what chaps here have mentioned about being a match to the engine, a 2l in my case. So for me i will be staying manual as i cannot be sure that the next Ford i buy will have a good or economic enough with a matched auto box in it!
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