Quote:
Originally Posted by SupraLove
There are places besides the U.S., you know. In Germany, manual rules the road. That's the only reason Porsche decided on the 7-speed. Had the rest of the world moved to DCTs, they would only have used the Porschedoppelkuplungsgetriebe. :wink:
But the thing is, the rest of the world really has not moved to autos. In most of Europe, manuals rule. I doubt the trend will change too much -- by 2020 perhaps 50% of cars in Europe will be manual, and that's still a sizeable chunk.
But if manuals disappear entirely from existence in America, I'm moving to Europe. I can't live without that round, H-imprinted movable knob in the center console.  |
I wonder what will happen in Europe though, automatic transmissions are getting more and more gears, and I feel like even Europeans are warming up to them (Jeremy Clarkson I think doesn't complain about automatics much lol limited data set). In Asia I'm pretty sure automatics are seen as a luxury feature and thus are attractive. The fact that now they are getting more gears than manual transmissions means they also outperform manuals, which doesn't help the cause.
I suppose one good feature of manual transmissions that is more difficult to achieve with an automatic is start stop systems. An auto can employ start stop but there will be some lag since there is no gear shift selector or clutch pedal to let the car know when to start up again, and if it requires one to shift to neutral to achieve, then I bet most drivers won't bother with it. Whereas with a manual transmission you can have the engine fire up as soon as the clutch is depressed, or when clutch is depressed and shifter is put into gear, and it would not affect driveability.
It would really suck if manual transmissions died out, we just have to keep praying that more companies make brave moves like the manual CRZ and manual 911 etc. and offer manual transmissions even when there is little incentive to do so. I also hope that they start paying attention to specifying special shift schedules on performance cars with manual transmissions to improve the EPA test numbers. If the EPA numbers look higher, then more people will consider buying the manual transmission for fuel savings, whereas the way things are going now, people look at the automatic and think "well it'll improve my gas mileage so I'll save money in the long term".