Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions

Re:Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transm... by jfitbsidbfb on Thursday November 17, 2016 @03:06AM (#12975405)

This is unfortunate given that manufacturers regularly game fuel mileage tests fof automatics to give buyers a sense of better gas mileage(to justify the higher price). Real world tests by consumer reports and others continue to show that manual transmissions get better gas mileage in real world conditions on top of being much more reliable.

And before someone mentions it, a clutch wearing out during the working life of a modern manual car is a joke. I've driven multiple manual cars to over 200k miles and never had to replace a clutch. If you wear out a clutch your car is defected or (more likely) you're utterly terrible at driving stick

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Re:Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transm... by viraptor on Thursday November 17, 2016 @03:51AM (#12975632)

> a clutch wearing out during the working life of a modern manual car is a joke

Could use a reference. The wear will depend a lot on your area - mountain roads will kill it faster than suburban commute. But either way, I tried to find anything more authoritative than a forum post (which say anything between 100k and 300k), and it's pretty hard to do. Have you got a link with an actual survey or producer stats?

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Re:Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transm... by jfitbsidbfb on Thursday November 17, 2016 @04:13AM (#12975771)

I can't find anything official either. Most of the guys I know also drive stick and none of them have worn out a clutch unless they take their car to the track. Seems to be a pretty well known among stick drivers that manufacturers build them to last the life of the car these days. Can anyone from Europe chime in on this?

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Re:Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transm... by ollie87 on Thursday November 17, 2016 @04:45AM (#12975951)

European here, only ever owned manual cars, had about eight cars in my lifetime. Never needed to replace a clutch, mostly a mix of urban and rural driving. My yearly mileage has varied from 25,000 miles a year to around 8,000 now.

It helps that I actually know how to drive and not burn the fuck out of a clutch too I'd imagine. You see very dumb people in my country using their clutch to hold their car stationary on a hill, what the hell that is all about I'll never know.

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Re:Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transm... by fnj on Thursday November 17, 2016 @02:51PM (#12980817)

Correct. It is very possible to burn out a clutch in less than 3000 miles if you are clueless, but if you are a good driver, 300,000+ miles is not unusual.

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Re:Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transm... by jfitbsidbfb on Thursday November 17, 2016 @04:13AM (#12975774)

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Re:Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transm... by gotofritz on Thursday November 17, 2016 @03:12AM (#12975435)

Do you have any data to back up your statement?

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Re:Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transm... by ptaipale on Thursday November 17, 2016 @04:00AM (#12975687)

Huge amount of different tests. Manual gearboxes are generally more efficient, but not in all situations, and the modern dual-clutch automatic boxes outperform manual transmission in many cases.

But overall, there are hydraulic losses in classic planetary automatic gearboxes, and they are also heavier.

For instance,

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/01/save-gas-and-mone...

Personal experience: I regretted buying a Renault Laguna with automatic box. Horrible fuel economy. Even the torque lock didn't help, also highway economy was quite bad which was very surprising. Other than that, a nice car.

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