I donated my 20 year old Honda Del Sol two-seater stick shortly before the pandemic. It had a lot of miles on it and, with no commute, I just wasn't getting the use out of it to make it worth keeping. It was fun but there's no way I'd buy a stick today even if I were to have a "fun" car.
And I say this as somebody who loves manuals (I’m an amateur race car driver).
Anyhow, electric cars are better all around -- at least those with "one pedal driving" where the speed pedal goes all the way to zero or nearly zero.
My dislike of automatics is the indeterminate lag between request for a particular speed and when the car decides to shift to the appropriate gear to get to that speed as quickly as I've indicated I want to get there. Plus with ICE cars there's all sorts of other tedious inertia to contend with around engine RPM and turbo spool state and such. At least a manual provides better determinism around throttle behavior.
Joking aside, the worst traffic is when you stop every 4 seconds and then creep forward ten feet before stopping again. If I wasn't planning to go car-less I think I would buy an electric car for that nonsense.
Even "stop and go" traffic eventually has some average speed and sometimes it is low enough that you've got to clutch in to come to a full stop and clutch out to go faster; modern engine management's pretty good at keeping the motor from stalling. Probably I annoy people by letting the lead in front of me get to be a couple car lengths before I decide to go, but that's on them... we'll all get there eventually.
Electric cars are the best in that you're basically always in first gear, the redline is basically infinite, and the car doesn't stall when the engine's not moving, so you don't need a clutch.
If I'm running the air conditioner, it steals enough power that it has to downshift an extra time. It's bad enough that the constant shifting makes my son carsick. Luckily, it has a manual mode I can use to just drop it into 5th gear and it has the torque to smoothly climb the hills on cruise control that way, eliminating my son's carsickness.
But now I live in a city where I can take the metro to work and I don't own a car anymore. I hope I'll never need to drive again, I hate driving so much.
But in regards to driving a manual in traffic, does a diesel not make it easier? An engine suited to lower RPMs, but with more torque, seems perfectly suited to clutching in/out to shuffle along.
Give more space to the car in front of you and try to stay at a constant speed. You will see truckers do this a lot.
It also is much better for your car and mental health. You don't need to accelerate to a complete stop over and over.
I do this every time I'm in very bad traffic (Think inching along and coming to a complete stop multiple times).
However about 10% of the time I get some idiot behind me that thinks that I'm going to slow so they speed around me just to come to a complete stop 2 seconds later.
But in LA traffic, I'd rather drive an automatic so I can put my brain into "autopilot" while playing an audiobook rather than have to constantly be shifting by hand. It irks me how so many manual-lovers have this superiority complex over people who just want a car that will get them from A to B. Have fun with your manuals, but don't speak as if I'm an imbecile because I don't think driving manual is fun in heavy traffic.
Enjoy it while it lasts. As of a couple years ago, more than half of all new cars sold in Europe are automatics. That doesn't seem too surprising, I imagine the same logic that made manuals appealing in the past is why automatics are appealing today.
I love manual transmissions and will never buy an automatic unless forced to. I'd rather buy a used car with a manual than anything new.
Also some of the diagnostic scanners will have a way to disable the auto stop/start, or so I've heard. I have a scanner but haven't tried it on her car.
> I drive a 1st generation Honda Insight
1st gen Honda insight is "1999–2006" (1) so this anecdote is dated. Manuals were more efficient, but currently no, they are not so any more.
Apparently that only changed recently, shortly after this time period (2)
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Insight
2)
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1127-marc...
https://www.greencarguide.co.uk/blog/automatic-vs-manual-car...
https://www.car.co.uk/media/blogs/fuel-alternative-fuels/do-...
https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/9kye2h/comment/e72qx6...
In addtion, no heavy duty pickup comes with a manual anymore, but the ones that did years ago, de-tuned the engines in the manuals, so people didn't burn up the clutch. Modern Diesel Heavy Duty pickups only put their full 1000 ft/lbs to the wheels in 3rd gear or higher, something they can't enforce in a manual. Also, in most manuals (granted, its been a few years since I drove one) with turbos, pushing the clutch stats unspooling the turbo, where in most automatics, it does not. (since its knows your shifting, and not just coasting)
This is so true. As someone who owns a fairly modern truck (2019 F250) that missed the good transmission by a single year. My truck would dearly love to have at least one more gear between 2nd and 3rd when I'm going up the mountain. I end up having to choose between trying to keep my inertia high (tough with corners) or give up and let it drop down to 35-40 so that 2nd gear isn't trying to tear the engine off the mounts.
I may end up putting in shorter differential gears to work around that. Don't really want to fork out for a new truck.
The car was a little janky from a dead stop, when running solely on gas. I probably would miss the precision for maneuvering you get with a clutch. I didn't, actually, because of the electric motor doing these operations perfectly.
https://www.topspeed.com/toyota-manual-for-hybrids-game-chan...
It seems the advantages of manual transmissions no longer exist.
With an automatic, there's a threshold where the car decides to downshift when asking for a particular increase in forward velocity; that set point will wander depending on current RPM state and velocity and drive gear ratio.
Modern cars are bad enough with turbos and fancy valve timing and throttle by wire stuff where the behavior of the thing is a big stack of jitter, but adding a transmission to the mix makes the response times even more random.
At least with a manual transmission, the behavior of the throttle pedal is far more predictable and direct -- down the engine will go faster (modulo the current drive gear) and up the engine will slow down and slow the car down. Often you're in the incorrect gear for a particular desired acceleration but there's a feedback loop that you participate in to recognize / avoid the issue (mash pedal, not much happens because you're in the wrong gear, you get feedback and decide to change gears). With an automatic, you're just yelling down to the engine room asking the hamster to get on a different wheel.
For me at least, that lag is very effective at disconnecting me from the experience of driving.
The lag is only part of the issue -- it's the determinism of the lag -- the 125ms lag between "more power please" and getting more power is actually more lag than the instant ka-chugachug of asking for more power and getting feedback of "you're in the wrong gear, bubba" if you're in a manual transmission car.
As far as "I won't change gears for you unless you ask" transmissions -- I've never driven such a car, I'm sure they're quite nice. I somewhat dislike the gear changers with no affordance to indicate what gear you're in (this applies to wingding manumatic cars, motorcycles, and modern bicycles with thumb / finger triggers) -- I don't use them often enough to have the muscle memory of "up for lower gear ratio" or whatever, I have to think about it and look at an indicator and fiddle with it to get the right ratio for what I want.
I'm sure with practice it would eventually be fine; but in actuality I've found that the electric car is actually exactly what I want.
Nobody in the US loves or drives stick shifts. There's been a steady drop in manual transmissions here from about 12% of the market in 2000 to 2% of the market today. The noise around them is just a very small vocal minority of enthusiasts who pine for the "old days". I'm definitely one of those enthusiasts, but I have to face reality that they're effectively gone. I haven't had a stick for a daily driver since about 2010. I do still have older manual sports cars that I can drive and enjoy when I wish.
That is something that exists entirely in the minds of auto journalists. The number of manually-shifted cars has been in steady decline for decades. These last several years, it went from something like 3.7 % of new cars to 2.4% to 0.7% to 1.9%. You can see how a deceptive headline could be manufactured around the last two years of data.
I’ve driven some real nice autos, but when it comes to a car I enjoy driving, give me a nice sloppy GM T-56 or the crisp shifts of a BMW ZF stick. They’re just more fun. It’s the reason why I don’t have a C8 corvette.
But when it comes to day to day puttering around, auto all the way, and give me as many convenience features as you have. Radar cruise control? Yes please. Nothing worse than riding your clutch for an hour straight every day.
Good dual clutch gearboxes are amazing, but even "classic" ones like BMW's ZF6 or ZF8 are really close. ZF8 is so good BMW uses it in the M3, instead of a dual clutch.
With these options, I'd never go back to stick shift. This after having half a million km driven on manual transmissions.