Its Me wrote:
On Sunday, January 8, 2017 at 12:42:52 PM UTC-5, Califbill wrote:
wrote:
On Sun, 08 Jan 2017 01:02:45 -0600, Califbill
wrote:


I pretty much gave up on stick shifts for daily drivers in 1968. I
remember miles long traffic jams from Laguna Seca raceway via Gilroy of
stop and go traffic. My leg would start shaking from the clutch work. And
pulling a race car trailer. Later, drop it in drive, and enjoy power
brakes.
I still like actually driving my sporty cars. A slush box is fine in
vans and trucks. I have worked very hard to avoid stop and go traffic.
I worked midnights for the past 11 years I was in DC. It was great
driving home in empty lanes on the beltway and watching the cars piled
up going the other way. SW Florida was very rural when I moved here
and a few tricks to avoid the trouble spots kept me moving right along
most of the time. They did not have much in the way of computer
customers in the tourist areas

I owned a VW rabbit. Stick shift, fun to drive. The daughters got to
learn driving a stick shift. But I guess lazy these days. Looking a
buying a,Chevy volt for an around town driver, which are not stick shift.
The last stick shift I had was the Boxster, a six-speed. The Corvette was an auto, and the Audi is. Besides, while the auto eats some horsepower, they are usually faster that the manual version. Modern automatic transmissions aren't like your dad's auto.

For example, the Audi's tranny is an 8-speed. The computer keeps it in the sweet spot for how you're driving. Poking along, the shift points are low for economy. Push it harder, and they move up for better performance. Put it in sport mode, and you get higher shift points and it uses engine braking when you let off the gas, like a manual tranny would. And you can shift it manually if you want to.

These day there just isn't much reason in a "normal" car to get a manual tranny except for cost or nostalgia. Hell, even F1 cars use manually shifted automatics.

The manual transmission on a BMW has no cost savings last I checked.
The wife is on her third and finally decided the manual wasn't worth the
trouble in traffic anymore. She can still play with the paddle shifters
but I bet she has never used them. My MB SUV has them and I've tried
them once. The Lambo I drove was a different story.