[Toyota 1]

Toyota offers MT and AT for the GT86/BRZ/FRS but gives very little information about the two transmissions in brochures and on their website. In fact only the 0-100 km/h-times (or 0-60 mph), which show us that the MT (7.6s) is a bit faster from a complete stop than the AT (8.2s). That is no surprise as the clutch-pedal in the MT-car makes it possible to "jump over" some of the characteristic naturally aspirated boxer engine torque dip by letting the clutch go on high rpm, while the AT-car has to go through the whole "valley".

I was wondering if the MT and the AT-car are equal in terms of acceleration once both cars are moving?

I saw that the AT-car, which has a torque converter, has different gearing ratios. The first gear is hardly any different. In the second gear the AT-car has 5.8% longer gearing (AT 2.060 vs. MT 2.188), which means that a tiny bit less torque is given to the tyres. The upper gears have a bigger difference. Final drive is the same. So you could get the idea, that the MT-car is faster from a stop and also once both cars are moving beause of the gearing.

On the other hand I saw that the AT-car drops down to 5000 rpm when shifting from first to second. The MT-car drops further down below 4500 rpm. If you look at a dyno-test of the engine you see that the engine starts to pull at about 4750rpm, so the MT-car loses speed when dropping this far down.

So the MT-car in this driving situation has a shorter second gear by 5.8% but drops also lower in the rpm range after shifting into second. Shifting speed of the AT is probably also better, so I think both cars are about equal when we speak about the range up to 100 km/h or the first two gears.

How the torque converter inflicts the whole gearing I dont know because Im not an engineer. Can you really look at the different gear ratios and say the MT-car is faster because of shorter gearing? For me it looks as Toyota wanted to make the cars equal, at least for sporty driving on backroads which takes place mostly below 100 km/h. But as I said, there arent hardly any informations or numbers from Toyota.

I found some tests made by magazines but you cant trust them 100%. A track test of a car is very much inflicted by tires, temperature, driver and in case of the FA20-engine the fact that its performance gets better with more miles. So Im more interested in a technical point of view.

Toyota offers some track testing days for their customers in some countrys. Has anyone been on such an event? What do they say there about the differences between the two transmissions apart from only 0-100 kmh-times?