How do you like your gears shifted? Are you a DIY enthusiast, or do you prefer to delegate ratio-swapping duties to the genies hiding under your console? Despite what some manual diehards will tell you, there is no right or wrong answer to this question.
So much of it comes down to what kind of driving you do and where and when you do it. Those lucky enough to spend their entire driving year on empty, twisty, rural roads in a BMW M2 are as likely to gravitate towards a manual transmission as their counterparts who are doomed to spend a chunk of each day trudging through rush-hour traffic are to seek the sanctuary of a smooth auto ’box, even when buying a performance car.
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Or maybe, like many of us here at Carscoops, you own both automatic and manual cars. We love the mechanical connection you get from shifting your own gears, even in a car that makes no claims to being performance machinery.
How smooth can you pull away or shift between gears? What’s the optimum shift point to deliver maximum acceleration? How perfectly can you rev-match on that downshift even though you’re only pulling into Starbucks?
But autos are great in their own way. Try a modern one and you can’t help but be impressed by how they’ve come on in the last 20 years. Shift speeds have improved, some have as many as 10 ratios that deliver real launch punch at one end and relaxed, low-consumption cruising a the other. And the mapping is often so good that there’s no reason to reach for the paddles (where fitted) unless you really want to.
Traditional autos have even managed to fight back against dual-clutch transmissions, which once bridged the gap between automatics and manuals. Sure, a dual-clutch ’box like Porsche’s PDK is lightning fast, but if you do a lot of stop-start driving you can’t beat the refinement of an old-school auto with a torque converter. Then again, if all out A-to-B speed is a priority – which it never is on the road, but might be on a track – a PDK takes the win.
So which is your go-to transmission and why? Click the button in the poll to tell us how you like to shift.