I drove a new Vauxhall Corsa with automatic transmission a couple of months ago. It was the second worst driving experience of my life.

What an utterly un-useful statement without any detail. Why was it a bad driving experience? What vehicles are ranked first and third?

Very low cost automatic transmissions are terrible - the gap between gear shifts goes on for ages. The Vauxhall Corsa is an example of this; for the American market check out a Smart Car.

Is this really a good argument against automatics though? The worst example of anything is usually going to be pretty bad.

As a matter of current economics, yes, if you have a very tight budget and want a good driving experience, manual is going to be better. But automatics are as fast and as efficient as manuals a little higher up the market. And it will trickle down soon enough.

Also worth noting that most of the modern super-cars don't even have a true manual (that is, a stick-shift and a user-operated clutch). They're mostly electronically controlled dual-clutch setups since a computer can shift faster than any human can. The 2015 BMW M3 was even rumored to not have a manual option at all, and it's known for being a driver's car. I believe they're keeping it around for now, but there's some worry that the clutch/stick-shift arrangement is going away in the future because the electronically controlled transmissions are that much faster.

Well, I find the Vauxhall Corsa with manual transmission is lovely to drive so I am comparing the experience between the two. So sure, I might not have been looking at the best-of-the-best when it came to automatic gears but I was comparing like-for-like.

Maybe in another 10 years the automatic experience at my price range will be better but at that point we're 25 years on from coldtea's period where European cargo-cult bullshit started.

Apparently.

How much of it was placebo? How much of it was "feeling out of control"?

"second worst driving experience" has nothing quantifiable.

I had absolutely no preconceptions going into using the automatic - I would even go so far as to say I was looking forward to it as I'd never driven an automatic before.

I would think my number 1 complaint about the driving experience was the occasional (but not predictable) incredible lag between pressing the accelerator and the car going faster and the ridiculous over-revving when I presume the car got confused about what gear it thought I should be in.

>I would think my number 1 complaint about the driving experience was the occasional (but not predictable) incredible lag between pressing the accelerator and the car going faster and the ridiculous over-revving when I presume the car got confused about what gear it thought I should be in.

I've never seen the lag (much less "incredible") in any model I've known.

I've indeed seen the over-revving sometimes. That said, how is the over-revving any issue compared to the whole not having to even worry about manual gear shifting benefit?

It's like going to the US on a boat, because airplane food is bad. Yes, it might be, but it misses the whole point of getting there faster, easier, safer and with less concerns.

> I've never seen the lag (much less "incredible") in any model I've known.

Check out a Smart fortwo on car2go sometime and be amazed :)

Driving a car with a cheap or slow automatic transmission is a bit of an art - after a while you start knowing when and how to floor the accelerator just to tell the car that you'll need it to shift up in a couple of seconds.

It feels somewhat counter-intuitive as normally you press the pedal to speed up, but when going uphill you sometimes have to really step on it just to maintain speed.

Yeah dude it's totally because we haven't tried them. It's not because they're 'intelligent' pieces of shit with virtually no control or anything.

While in motion, a driver should maintain 100% of their focus on two things: direction and speed. Having to juggle another pedal and lever to make sure upcoming speed change would be suitable to the driver is unnecessary and a distraction. Modern cars perform gear changes good enough, at the worst. If you have a CVT, it is even better (but very expensive to buy/repair, I acknowledge that).

Changing gears manually is you paying a lot of attention to speed and direction. Once the first part of getting comfortable changing gears is past, you as the driver change gears based on paying attention to engine noise, speed, driving conditions, other vehicles.

You end up paying a lot more attention to everything, vs being largely on autopilot with automatic transmission. Or at least having the option of being a lot more on auto pilot with auto transmission.

Of course this varies driver to driver, but having driven both types for about 10 years, I personally find mysel way more engaged with the manual vehicles.

>It's not because they're 'intelligent' pieces of shit with virtually no control or anything.

Really, and you need control of what and for what?

Anything quantifiable?