Why not Automatic?

Well, I think it depends on the car. When you push the engine over it turns the alternator which powers the fuel injectors. However if the injectors are triggered by the ECU, and the ECU takes more than a few seconds to "boot", this maybe a problem.

-- Dominic Richens | snipped-for-privacy@alumni.uottawa.ca "If you're not *outraged*, you're not paying attention!"

Fact: I counted my stops over several days and concluded I would push the clutch pedal and shift lever ~520 times per day. I love manuals but, my day to day traffic pattern must be taken into account. I would add the following

1. The gas mileage is the same (city or highway) for MT or AT and I have proved it with a 1998 MT F vs. and my present 2000 AT. Forester
2. The 800 dollars saved with the MT will be used for clutch repairs.
3. I take care of my vehicles and have never needed a push start since I was a teenager so this is not considered
4. An AT will pull a greater load up a steep boat ramp where the MT unit will seriously abuse the clutch at best
5. My Forester AT has a 60/40 fr> > Looking to buy a new Forester with an Auto. There seems to be a strong

I used to drive Manual and liked it very much, but it is a pain in heavy traffic and as I get older, an automatic is much more to my liking.

What I hate are those who have manual and don't know how to use it. Daily, I get behind someone at a light who is driving a manual and when they start out and shift to second, they lose at least 5 miles an hour. Every shift it is the same. I start out behind them and when they shift, I have to brake. Then I accelerate until they shift again and I brake again. I do this through 4-5 gears at each light until I can pass them. There is no need to lose speed between shifts, but it seems most people do it. The Miata drivers seem to be the worst. So many people buy them because they are "cute", but don't know how to drive.

Get an automatic!

Don D.

Why are we talking about this in a Subaru group? Subarus turn the lights off when you turn the ignition off.

Well, all the ones I've driven here in NZ do (Jap and NZ spec), anyway.

-- Bruce

They do ion N. America too.

C'mon. Do they turn the wiper, seat, mirror heaters off? interior lights? there are still a few ways a person's battery could be too low to start the vehicle.

FNO wrote:

Wipers and rear window heaters, yes. . dunno about the seat and mirror heaters, my Loyale doesn't have 'em, neither does my mom's legacy. In any Subaru I've ever driven about the only way you can drain the battery down is to leave the interior dome light on, and I accidentally did this in my Loyale one cold night - went out, started the car right up the next morning. I'm not sure about the dome light's power consumption, but I doubt it's much more than an amp.

A short or a bad battery can cause the need for an alternative starting method, so this is a concern, though. Good idea is to carry a battery booster in the back or a pair of jumper cables in case they're needed.

--Decimal Cat

*snipped*

Seat and mirror heaters are also turned off when the key is turned to off position. I'm with the poster who said starting a car with "dead" battery is a non-factor. I have long ago stopped carrying jumper cables along because the only thing they ever did was jump someone ELSE's dead battery car. If I have to be stuck somewhere till help is obtained, so be it. I'm sure carrying jumper cables is a necessary item for some cars, but it is MUCH less common than it used to be (at least here in my neck of the woods in USA.) I also have had dome lights left on overnight and there was not the least bit of hesitation in the battery the next morning at startup time. (Thank goodness.)

-- Off to ride the mountains, D H Reply to newsgroup. Spam is out of control.

I beg to differ. The actual mileage afforded by the Forester AT is almost dead-on the money with EPA estimates (USA). I live in the mountains and drive none too slowly and still get equal to or above estimates for city and right in line with estimates for highway. Any claim of "almost always lower in real life" must be based on foolish folks who don't know how to conserve at all. I challenge you to drive any manual and beat my automatic by anything above 2mpg. I doubt you will beat it by ONE mpg on the same terrain at same speed. To original poster, I would say buy whatever tranny you find best fits your lifestyle and needs. Don't be afraid of the automatic at all. It performs marvelously well, IMO, and the odds are it is going to be the less expensive tranny in the long run.

-- Off to ride the mountains, D H Reply to newsgroup. Spam is out of control.

Well, well, Dale, you are in an unusually combative mode, tonight! ;-)

If you are lucky with the car you got, and if you know how to drive an AT such that it conserves gas - which most people don't. Then I agree, yes.

For example, while I love my wife dearly, she routinely gets a full

4-5mpg less on the same trips with our Passat 4Motion wagon (AT by default) than I do. Why? Perhaps because she does not consider the inertia of the car, uses the brakes too much (instead of planning ahead), or stomps on the gas at high rpms.

ATs are very, very difficult to drive efficiently. All internal combustion engines work best at wide open throttle (WOT) and low rpm. Almost an oxymoron, as far as ATs are concerned - given their torque converter and tendency to automatically upshift if you hit the metal. Most people are not the WOT smooth operators it takes to drive an AT efficiently.

As I mentioned above, that's rather difficult in an AT, and my personal statistics tell me, those fools are in the majority; hence, "almost always". (Fools? Majority? Looking at the state of this country, I am not surprised!).

Hey, you don't know how well I drive and shift WOT at 1500 rpm - if you provide the car and I don't need to worry about long-term ramifications of destroying the engine that way (which will happily run 200,000 miles at 5000rpm, but not at To original poster, I would say buy whatever tranny you find best fits

I agree, in particular, if you don't require the last bit of power because of heavy loads in the mountains or minimal on-ramps.

I think Subaru recently has been very good about resolving MT transmission and clutch problems under warranty. First time MT drivers and people who don't know about factory advisories perhaps excluded.

Can I come, too? Always wanted to. Your signature line's so inviting. You're talking about Utah, aren't you? That's a bit of a drive, for me.

- D.

I have an 03 XS manual, I have about 4000 miles on it, and I too, live in the mountains. I am averaging 29-30 miles per gallon - that is mixed backroad & highway driving. EPA sticker said 21-27 mpg for it. So I am experiencing above what the EPA rating sticker said, and about

10 - 15% better than the automatic EPA rating (20-26 I believe for the 2003).

I say get what you are comfortable with, because if you aren't comfortable driving it, it would be a total waste of 20+ thousand dollars! I drove both the AT and stick shift. The auto wasn't bad - but I really preferred the stick. I also prefer the true 50/50 AWD system in the manual.

Best of luck... Dominic

I had a battery that stopped holding its charge in my OBW. Of course that's a special case, they don't regularly die like that.

Yousuf Khan

Yes, sometimes I get real tough that way. :-)

I can agree with your premise of differences between drivers, but it seems to me that this would also cause similar drops in their mileage results with manual trannys, so I don't think it makes a lot of difference. Some folks get great results, others don't, regardless of which tranny they are driving. In my opinion, most automatics of today are FAR superior to those of even 10 years ago, and provide almost identical mileage results to those of manuals. And personally, I think the good ones (which I believe Subarus are) give plenty of peppy performance. I can only say I can easily accelerate and get through the holes in traffic about anytime I choose (which is pretty frequent), and I seldom see any others who do better, regardless of what they're driving. I wouldn't even consider a manual tranny because it just offers little that I need (even if it does offer potentially more fun.)

Never met an onramp I couldn't deal with just fine, thank you. Simply need to know the road properly to know when to time things; the Forester AT can haul up to speed in a real hurry in most situations, particularly on ramps, IMO.

My THEORY is that most folks do need to replace clutches before most automatics need servicing.

Nope. Good old western VA, near Douthat State Park, home of "mountain bike disneyland." (You have to understand, my sig refers to BIKE riding.) By the way, if you're looking for a place to ride trails, this place is cream of the crop. Over 40 miles of fantastic park trails open to biking, plus many more miles of national forest trails connected to the park trails. Some of this stuff is simply epic mountain biking. If you prefer road rides, we certainly have some gorgeous area for that too, with huge climbs easy to find, and smaller ones plentiful everywhere. The only thing hard to find is a flat road, though the road that runs through the middle of Douthat is reasonably so, especially for this area. I roadbike and mountainbike, so if you come to this area, I'd be glad to show you around on two wheels!

-- Off to ride the mountains, D H Reply to newsgroup. Spam is out of control.

Snip: Also some people do not calculate mileage correctly or use a one tank or gas gage guess. etc

Some people may do that....But just FYI....I did not make any such "educated guesses". I filled up the tank and divided the # of miles I drove from the last time I filled up (I always fill up) by the total # of gallons pumped. This gives you the total miles per gallon you have been getting since the last time you filled up. When I do the math it has always fallen between 28 & 30.

Enjoy...and may the mileage gods be with you. :) Dominic

Hmmmm.... My '02 Legacy L is Automatic. The EPA says the milage is 22/27, and I'm getting 24/29. Granted, my "city" travel is a lot more highway-like than the EPA definition of "city", and I also might be more the exception than the rule for the ATs. I don't baby the car, but I don't drive it hard, either. So far, my gas milage has been better than posted.

highway-like

Leaving the 'parking lights' on will do it. Those aren't shut off when the engine is turned off

As has been pointed out, there is a rocker switch on the top of the steering column that will turn on the parking lights even if the ignition is off, and it is possible to have the interior dome light on with the engine off, and at least on my '97 OBW, if I don't close the rear hatch firmly, the front and rear dome lights will remain on.

It is unlikely that any of these will drain you battery overnight, but a multi-day stay at an airport parking lot may be a very different story - especially in the winter. And, airport parking lots are where the hatch is likely to be not closed properly after I remove my luggage and hurry to wait in line for security.

-- Vic Roberts