Quote:
Originally Posted by spikyone
I have to say as a European, all this talk of rev matching, wearing your engine out, wearing your clutch out, etc. is amusing but somewhat curious. Here, the vast majority of drivers are taught to drive a manual ("stick"). And no driving instructor in history has ever concerned themselves with those things. So I wonder whether a lot of the worries about downshifting are the result of a culture where over 90% of cars sold are now automatic. Just my thoughts.
It's not rocket science, and for the majority of drivers it really shouldn't be something that you worry about.
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I think there's a big geography factor in how Americans use cars and our mindset. America is a very large country and we use our cars a lot (average is 12,000 miles per year (~19k km), we expect them to be worry free for 100,000+ miles (~161,000 km) and don't really call something reliable unless it can hit double that without worry, 322,000 kilometers without a major service or failure is the target.
I've seen posts from Europeans worried about buying a used car at 60,000 km (well I guess we're seeing US buyers post that too as 86's come off leases). Most americans wouldn't buy a car used that little in order to save a few bucks unless it's labelled as unreliable (or they need a 3 year old car for whatever reason). It makes sense that our driving habits are about preservation "gotta baby it to make sure it hits 150,000 miles without me needing to put any more money into it!"
Comparing AT to MT is a no-brainer if you assume that an AT is a component that 'never requires service' and even if it does, a fluid flush or two is typically cheaper than a clutch or two over the expected ownership period and easily offsets the initial costs.
I totally agree about how a car 'should' be operated, there's a story that the European and Japanese manufacturers had problems selling cars initially in the US until they realized that we lugged all their engines. They had to retune their cars to even run low rpm so that the guy who's only driven big displacement low revving American V8's used to cruising down the road at 1,400 rpm didn't test drive one of their cars keeping it under 2k and saying 'it runs like shit, I'm not buying this'. I've definitely had more than one conversation about my 86 that involved "Wow you cruise down the freeway at 3k rpm? I bet that engine doesn't last too long." Never mind that the Miata has been doing that successfully for decades...
More revs = more wear and tear as far as the average user is concerned, no wonder the first time buyer of something like this doesn't want to downshift revving his car up to 4k rpm as he comes to a stop while every AT keeps the revs under 2k as you coast down.
Also explains why Euro manufacturers struggle to sell low end cars here, compared to a Civic or Camry the long term running costs would be a joke and they could never move enough units to make it profitable (otherwise they would).