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I downshift to brake everytime I have to stop, bar none. Sometimes I just blip the throttle and downshift through the gears until 2nd gear, then start braking as needed, other times I heel-toe it because I have to brake while I downshift. I never downshift into first, since second is good enough to get down to 10MPH, the rest can be done by the brakes. I like to go easy on that synchro, it seems to not like being shifted into at speed on my Prelude.
One thing to watch out for is mechanical overevs. If you downshift to 2nd gear when you're going 60, you will break your engine as soon as you let the clutch out. You may see pistons and con rods fly out of the side of your block.
As for the future of DCTs, they will replace the vast majority of driver operated clutch/manual cars. Any performance car worth its salt will be getting them in the near future (5-10 years). Inexpensive cars may still stick to regular manuals, but the days of the manual transmission are numbered, and they will be over soon. Again, I will always stick to a row my own5 or 6 speed manual, given a choice of course.
I love having to use all of my appendages to drive, I love predicting how much power I need/want and change gear and throttle position according to what I want accordingly, I love blipping the throttle for downshifts (that's a good noise), I love deciding at what RPM I want to shift to the next gear (7.5k rpms? 8kRPMS? how bout a little more...)
Of course, that's just me. I know a lot of people. First there are my coworkers, most of which are accountants, I know my friends, from college and from high school, I know most of my family, and that's about 170+ people right there (extended family) and out of all those people I know, out of all of the acquaintances, there was only one other person that heavily preferred manual sporty cars, and he now drives an autotragic prius. Everyone else enjoys their automatics, even the G37S owner, and the Mustang lover I know. That goes to show you what predicament we are in...
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