Quote:
Originally Posted by Coachrhino11
I live in Austin and traffic here sucks pretty dang bad. Before anyone here says it, I already know there’s many who live in larger cities and drive stick daily, and that is absolutely your choice. Traffic pisses me off enough, not sure I’m wanting to add more to have to focus on.
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I lived in Austin for two years, so I'm familiar with the traffic. It's ridiculous.
But I have a manual BRZ and an automatic Jeep, and I found the manual to be
much better in heavy traffic than the automatic. With the auto, I had to have my foot on the gas or the brake pretty much all the time. Traffic was never the right speed where I could just coast in the Jeep. In contrast, with the manual, I could take it out of gear and coast slower than idle speed without having to ride the brake or accelerator. Or I could put it in first and creep along as low as 6 MPH in gear, which the auto wouldn't do without speeding up and forcing me to brake. I had so many more options with the manual that it was actually less work and less frustrating.
The
only situation in which I have ever wished I had an auto was going uphill in stop and go traffic on the I-10 bridge over the Mississippi outside Baton Rouge. That probably took 1000 miles off the clutch and was annoying as hell. But I never had that problem in Austin, even with the hills it has, because the hill approaches weren't nearly as long before traffic would move again.
Maybe things are different for you, but I just don't see heavy traffic as a valid reason on its own to avoid the manual. I think a lot of potential new owners who don't have a lot of experience driving a manual see these comments and become afraid of the manual unnecessarily.