Being only a short step from cremation, my grandkids all said I had to leave them automatics. Apparently my kids didn't pass on the manual gene.
The paddle-motivated automatic on my Fit and SER are the first automatics I've owned and I started driving in the early nineteen fifties.
Thats 156 cars.
The paddle shifters give me a chance to drive like Michael and Felipe.
Even on track they are fun though the SER is more fun, being better programmed and a lot more power. Being a six speed CVT it doesn't lose much in mpg either.
And on long highway trips I do get better mpg than my manualled brethern.
And before you get too attached to manual, drive a couple of Porsche, Infiniti, or BMW paddlers. The day is coming ...

 

156? If that's not a typo or a joke, that's 3 cars a year every year.... if that's true I feel like i have to give you the *finger* just for being part of the evil overclass.

 

That depends on which finger.
Evil? Just cause we raced and like cars? And its 58 years of vehicles where we, and my company, owned 5 or 6 cars, racers, and trucks simultaneously. You want evil go inside the beltway.
You probably really have it in for Rick Hendricks.
By the way, though I intend to be in the running for being chosen as one of the 144,000 having the most toys (You should see my tool room and shop) I'm not even one of the leaders. I know one who has owned over 300 cars during less time. He does trade at least one vehicle every quarter.
There are car guys and then there are CAR GUYS like Jay leno. He has more at one time than I've had my whole life.
PS I didn't get mine by inheritance either.
Cheers.

 

Perhaps Mahout ment "56 years" and not "156 cars." Since he is only a short step away from cremation, perhaps his fingers are stiff and arthritic. I'm probably very close to his age, and I have driven almost every imaginable type of transmission:
- '53 DeSoto with the infamous Tip Toe Shift with Fluid Drive. Two speeds in high range, two speeds in low range, with a clutch and column shifter to select the range, and a vacuum-controlled solenoid to go from the lower gear to the higher in each range (just lift foot off the gas).
- '60 and '62 Ramblers with three speed column shifters.
- '64 SAAB with four speed column shifter
- Various VW's with 4 speed floor shift; various VW's with 5 speed floor shift.
- '93 RX-7 Twin Turbo with 5 speed floor shift, and a clutch best operated by a 500 lb. gorilla.
- 2002 Honda S2000 with outstanding 6 speed manual (still in the garage)
- 2008 BMW 335i with excellent 6 speed Steptronic automatic.
- And last but not least, the 2009 Fit Sport with its very capable 5 speed automatic.
Let us not equate manual transmission with manliness, and by implication, automatic transmission with lack of testosterone. It ain't that simple. When I had the RX-7, I was living in the Boston area, and commuting in traffic that had nearly every day half an hour of extreme stop and go, during which time speed would not exceed 10 mph, and the clutch would be pumped literally hundreds of times. A good part of the time, I was suffering from sciatica, and the pains would shoot up my left leg while pumping that heavy clutch. I would not have minded an automatic then. Just last week, I was caught in an incredible gridlock on I-95, and moved only 8 miles in 2 hours (overturned tractor trailer was responsible). I was gratefully in the BMW, which made life much more bearable.
I think the issue may be moot in just a few years, as the really good twin clutch transmissions, which I would call automated manual transmissions rather than automatic transmissions, phase into the marketplace. When that automated manual clealy gets better performance and the same mileage as the conventional manual, and has manual overrides as needed, it will supplant the conventional manual. I am old enough to remember when the choking function was performed manually, eventually to be replaced by automatic chokes and then by fuel injection. If I were a few years older, I would perhaps remember the manual spark advance lever. I think we are all glad that function is computer controlled.
I wish I could resurrect the DeSoto and its Tip Toe Shift. Put next to a really good VW/Audi DSG transmission, you could really observe the enormous progress which has been made. That DeSoto would blow out huge clouds of oily smoke from its tailpipe; and its back seat witnessed a few memorable encounters from my Senior year in college. Sigh......

 

your 93 RX-7 had a hard clutch?
mine and the ones I knew were slick as glass. In fact my fastest lap of Road Atlanta was in a 93 RX-7; the video is still warm to the touch.

 

The clutch worked really well. It just took a fairly powerful left foot to depress it, and when my sciatica was acting up, it was especially taxing. I presume you needed a really strong clutch spring to contain the torque of that engine. By comparison, my S2000 has a feather light clutch, and as we all know, that is a very low torque engine.

 

The 93 RX-7 had barely 200 ft-lb as I rember, like nmost rotaries. If it didn't have almost no mass reciprocation changes it would have been a disaster. But those suckers reved faster than anything else.

 

217 lb-ft of torque, but available at about 3000 rpm and up. That rotary revved over 8000, but let us not forget that the Ap1 S2000 (which includes my 2002 model) has a 9000 rpm redline. That is with Honda's VTEC, which is simpler than the iVTEC in the Fit. VTEC kicks in the high lift cam followers at about 6000 rpm via a solenoid. The transition is sudden and extremely noisy, but that's half the fun. The iVTEC is quite smooth and seamless. For the uninitiated, the S2000 has only 153 lb-ft of torque, but that peaks at 7500 rpm, and the power peak is 240 hp at 8300 rpm. That represents 120 hp per liter, with normal aspiration, i.e., no turbo or supercharger. The RX-7 that Mahout and I are waxing sentimental about had two turbos: the first kicked in at low rpm, and the second joined it sequentially at about 4000 rpm - crude but effective, and good for 255 hp.

 

I would raise the third gear ratio too and the final gear too by a marginal amount...

...or add another gear and fut a 5:1 diff ratio!! :P

Marko!!