To anyone wondering why some people prefer the control a stick offers over automatic, I tell them: it’s like listening to Beethovens 5th over the radio vs ACTUALLY CONDUCTING the orchestra.
It’s raining out and the road your on starts going up a hill. Theres a lot of water on the road so you’re not driving fast. An automatic sees your rpms dropping because you need more power to go up the hill. It doesn’t know its raining. It downshifts to give you more power to get up the hill. You went from 50 mph at 1300rpms to 45 mph at 5000 rpms. All that power now going to your tires creates more opportunity for your wheels to loose traction in the rain and fishtail.
In a manual you put in a gear that keeps your rpms high enough to maintain speed but not 5000 rpms to “go faster”. The power to the wheels stays exactly where you want it to be based on the road conditions. Replace with snow, sleet, etc etc.
Wat? Its not 1995 anymore. The computers are smart enough not to send your rpms to the moon when you arent pressing the gas. And the system may not necessarily know its raining, but it sure as hell knows more about the moment to moment traction on each wheel than even the driver does! And lets not even get into the fact that you don’t make more power that way anyway, or that your tires are hopefully not so shit or bald as fuck and at risk of fishtailing during totally normal situations.
Every car I owned so far was a manual and only rentals were sometimes automatic. But that’s purely due to cost. I dive out of necessity, not for fun and an automatic is so much more relaxing in stop-and-go rush hour traffic than a manual stick shift.
To anyone wondering why some people prefer the control a stick offers over automatic, I tell them: it’s like listening to Beethovens 5th over the radio vs ACTUALLY CONDUCTING the orchestra.
As someone who’s never conducted an orchestra or driven a manual, this simile doesn’t really help at all.
In an automatic the car decides when to shift gears and to which gear. And it also decides how softly or hard it should do this.
In a manual car you have to do all of this yourself, but that also means you decide when and how to do it.
As someone who drives a manual, I’m going to go try and conduct an orchestra
It’s raining out and the road your on starts going up a hill. Theres a lot of water on the road so you’re not driving fast. An automatic sees your rpms dropping because you need more power to go up the hill. It doesn’t know its raining. It downshifts to give you more power to get up the hill. You went from 50 mph at 1300rpms to 45 mph at 5000 rpms. All that power now going to your tires creates more opportunity for your wheels to loose traction in the rain and fishtail.
In a manual you put in a gear that keeps your rpms high enough to maintain speed but not 5000 rpms to “go faster”. The power to the wheels stays exactly where you want it to be based on the road conditions. Replace with snow, sleet, etc etc.
Wat? Its not 1995 anymore. The computers are smart enough not to send your rpms to the moon when you arent pressing the gas. And the system may not necessarily know its raining, but it sure as hell knows more about the moment to moment traction on each wheel than even the driver does! And lets not even get into the fact that you don’t make more power that way anyway, or that your tires are hopefully not so shit or bald as fuck and at risk of fishtailing during totally normal situations.
Its like being a meteor instead of a satellite orbiting the earth
Every car I owned so far was a manual and only rentals were sometimes automatic. But that’s purely due to cost. I dive out of necessity, not for fun and an automatic is so much more relaxing in stop-and-go rush hour traffic than a manual stick shift.