That article left out one major disadvantage of automatics, i.e. repair bills. On the average 'family car' this can mean repair bills in excess of $2000. $2500 is common, on more ritzy cars, the sky is the limit.
There are others: much reduced engine braking. This feature is not just used on steep grades, it combines with the general dynamics of driving the vehicle to give increased stability.
Reduced brake-pad/shoe wear.
You get to pick the shift points.
No annoying kickdown when you don't want it.
No change up without manually selecting a lower gear which defeats the purpose of an auto.
No servicing repair bills to speak of except a clutch kit. The miles between clutch failure do vary considerably with driving style and traffic conditions. eg my '96 with 106,000 miles is still on its original clutch.
No transmission cooling system or an upgraded one for towing required.
The reduction of another complex system in the car to bugger-up.
More than just a parking pawl to stop your vehicle when parked on grades.
The ability to 'clutch-start' in the event of a tired battery or starter-motor failure.
You have described the hydraulic clutch release system. What I was refering to with hydraulic actuated clutches, is that as the clutch-plate wears, it will disengage at a higher pedal-point,.. a cable system can be adjusted to give the same pedal-point (distance from the floor) for engagement no matter how worn the clutch is.
I guess I misunderstood your post entirely. I thought you were dissatisfied with Toyota's new design and were young. I was just trying to point out it was restyled to attract a younger market. The rest of my response was just a feeble attempt to be funny. Didn't mean to offend and apologize if I did. I've added accessories to both my Toyotas to make them look distinctive but even stock I DO like my Camry and like to race it as it is very peppy. My wife is usually the one bitching when I do as she considers it her car. :-) So I usually just race my truck when she isn't with me. :-) Plus it has a power adder that makes it peppier. davidj92
I've been driving a mix of automatics and manual transmission cars since
1970. I usually buy my cars every five years (2) and keep 'em for 10 years, putting 120 - 170K miles on them. Never in all that time have I had to replace or repair a transmission of either type.
Ever take your foot off the accelerator in a stick shift car on ice?
OK, I'll buy that. In exchange for increased clutch pad wear.
I can hardly stand the excitement.
In a Toyota product?
Not sure exactly why I'd want to do this.
Commented on above.
Yeah, towing with a stick is sure a lot of fun.
This was an argument 30 years ago against power door locks, power windows....
Aren't you supposed to turn your wheels to / away from the curb and not rely on your transmission?
I just replace my battery every 3 years to avoid this problem, and I've never had a starter fail since 1970, either.
Right on! If non-boring means going to the garage every other week to have a GM car fixed, I will select boring. As for the other non-boring, I keep a Maxima in the other bay of our garage. That makes two quite dependable vehicles in the fleet. Bob
Seems every mpg report I've seen, when comparing manual vs auto favor the manual. You can't avoid the slippage of the torque converter unless your automatic is one of those really expensive ones that uses a clutch instead (Ferrari, Maserati, BMW, Porsche). Wonder why they go to that expensive alternative? Sure the new auto's have lockup torque converters but those don't come into play unless you're cruising on the highway.
And if acceleration is important to you, I've never seen a auto version of a car that was faster then manual.
Jason, you're hearing something that was not stated. Clutch plate wear does not move the engagement point on a hydraulic release system. When the clutch plate is ready for replacement, you will likely have to completely release the clutch pedal to get a tenuous engagement. But free play at the top of pedal travel remains unchanged with a hydraulic release system.
Automatics are nasty, horrible, dangerous (in many cases) inefficient and frankily useless.
I've driven most kinds of car, from 600cc reliant robin 3 wheelers, to
200+mph supercars. i've done road racing, autotests (autocross i believe its called in the US) and am developing a sopecialist service vehicle for sale. i ahve also analysed accidents. I would also like to point out that i have driven cars with BOTH distinct types of automatic transmission, and it has to be dais, that the type in common usage in the Us (and which is in both of the vehicles i own in the Us)is by far the poorer
"Today's manual clutch is the same antiquated system that's been around for the last 100 years, and it's a fundamentally unsafe way to control a car."
Funny thing is, the synchromesh hasn't been about for anywhere near that long. 1928 I think that was invented. That was quiote a radiacal improvement as it meant you didn't have to manually match the rpms when changing gear (a process cmmonly called 'double-de-clutching") It was later radiacally improved by porsche (in the 50s iirc)
by contrast, current automatic gearboxes are pretty much the same as they have been since the 40s, so which is the unchanging dinosaur?
Efficiency is a big drawback for automatics of the standard type (typically wasting 10-15% of theine power) its not alone in being a major drawback.
The biggest of those has to be the shifting themselvers. Since the shifting is under the cars control, and not the drivers, how can that be safe? how can the car being able to tell what gear you should be in, and switching to what gear it feels it should be in, a good idea? The wife has an automatic civic, and ging around some corners, its nearly crashed me because its suddenly decided to change a gear, or two, and change in power to the wheels leads to instabillity. This, is one of the reasons that you get the '1, 2, 3' or whatever on the automatics because they know that sometimes, having an arbitary gearchange is DISASTEROUS. This isn't just a problem with the civic, the 05 camry thats about to be lemoned (faulty airbags) does it to, Aas well as a police interceptor.
In europe, i don't think theres a police force at all that will run a car with an automatic gearbox. how can you controla pursuit, if yuo can't even control the power going to your wheels all the time.
How many racecars use automatic gearboxes? erm, none. Why? again, SAFETY and CONTROL. They don't want cars changing gears on a road which the car can't see (remember a gearchange takes place whent he car is moving, typically 1-3 seconds, and at higher speeds, thats a lot of ground covered.
To someone educated under the british driving system, i can tell you thatchanging gear i automatic to me, and takes no thought at all. Indeed, if i had to look to see what gear i was in, or to change gear, i'd have failed my driving test. There are certain things, in cars that make the bad driver able to drive safer, but wlil make an avdanced driver get in trouble. Most here see ABS as a nice safety feature. to me, ABS is a liability. Why? because there are many times and situations where i will want the wheel locked. On loose snow, or gravel, for instance, a 4 wheel lockup is the fastest wa to stop (material packs up under the tyres, making stopping shorter than rolling). Automatic transmission is the same, but the point on the competancy scale where it stops being an aid, and can be a liability is much more towards the incompetant side.
Anyway, i'm drifting from the article, ewhich contradicts itself quite a bit." The lack of a foot available for the brake pedal is even more critical since the car is now moving faster" every time *I* shift gear in a manual, i have to take my RIGHT foot off the accelerator, (at which point it's available for the brake) put my left foot ON the clutch, change the gear, take my left foot off the clutch, and then put the right foot BACK on the acecerator. at no point am i using the clutch and acceraltor at the same time, so why have i not got a foot for the brake?
"oughly 25% of all fatal automobile accidents are caused by driver inattention." is followed a bit later by "and demands infinitely less attention from the driver." So, an automatic requires less attention be paid to driving, and a quarter of accidents are casued by lack of attention. Is it me, or are those two somehow linked? if i'm concentrating on the driving, i'm not concentrating elsewhere.
"shifting while turning a corner" - this would get you a fail in the UK driving test. its a no-no, but wait, most automatic transmissiosn WILL do that, tut tut. It happened yesterday in fact. me and a friend went to Tallahassee, to pick up a car, he drives a manual silverado mainly, and I was shodowing them, in my BattleWagon (a mobile support vehicle i use for work) around a corner, and boom, changed gear, and out went the back end, stalling the car, and leaving it sideways on the road. It changed gear, lift-off oversteer happened
In short, its a badly written article, self contradictory, written by someone who has great difficulty in driving a manual transmission vehicle. (which is why, in the UK, if you pass the tset in an automatic vehicle, your license doesn't allow you to drive manuals)
The only kind of automatic trans,mision i like, is one barely found in the US. Its main pioneer is DAF in denmark, (they now make semi's and heavy trucks), and is now being extensively used by many car manufacturers for their small city cars. Its the CVT. It doesn't have the drawbacks of a standard 40's automatic transmission, that of 'random' shifting gears, since it has no fixed ratios. i had one in one of my early battlewagons (a 1985 volvo 340) but it only, currently, has about a 240hp limit. Maybe a bit less. However, that means it can handle european cars upto about 2 litre, and american cars upto about 4.5 litre.
I've gone on too much, but basically, that article is a bunch of crap.
Mitch wrote: || Libe|ralsarelairs| ''...?!|,,XXX=@liberalsarelwankers.com> wrote: ||| Jason James wrote: ||||| Seems that because a lot of conservative types (read older folks ||||| who like to car-pool to go lawn-bowling) have picked the Camry in ||||| years gone-by and dont look like switching, has caused the Camry ||||| to be somehow tainted as an uninspiring vehicle. ||||| ||||| Personally I couldn't care-less but, I think on a technical level ||||| this is bullshit. The only thing on the car which can be likened ||||| to being functional only with no regard to 'feel' is the clutch. ||||| It is too long a throw, and tooo indistinct, making well-matched ||||| rev-changes difficult,....or is it just my car? ||||| ||||| Jason ('96 manual) ||| ||| This is bloody 2005. No need for Stone Age standard transmissions. ||| Get an AT, already. ||| ||| || Nothing stone age about a manual transmission, especially if you like || efficiency and you know how to shift. || || Mitch
I have better things to do with my hands than shifting.
Enthusiast magazines such as Car and Driver, Automobile, Road and Track, and Motor Trend call them boring because they aren't all that sporty in style or handling. Most owners would call those traits dependability and predictability which is what 90% of the driving public wants. My wife had a '99 Camry which she loved. We ended up selling it to our daughter for reasons I won't bore you with. I love driving that car. It's smooth as silk and quiet as can be. In fact, one of the reasons I bought my Tundra is that it drives very much like a Camry. I know some people will think that strange but both vehicles are reliable, comfortable, and easy to drive. Great value for the money.
The only problem we've had with the Camry was bad front strut mounts. The dealer fixed them at no cost even though we didn't buy car from them and it was out of warranty. I know that not all Toyota dealers are not like that, I've seen some of the horror stories here and on other lists.
There are virtually NO manual boxes in police, pursuit, or emergency vehicles here in the states.
That's not true. In Touring Car class, the driver is not coordinating shifting and clutching. This is done by mechanisms ... leaving the driver to select gears via a "smart stick." So while there is no automatic shifts, the clutch/shifting is not done physically by the driver.
Join the herd commuting 20-40 miles on the interstate into a metropolitan center ... you'll kiss off that manual box.
Shifting while turning the steering wheel hand over hand is ... complicated. With an automatic, both hands are available for turning the wheel. So your emotional cry is inappropriate.
Coffee, cell phone, flipping off another driver, swatting the kids, rolling down a window, scratching ones crotch, operating the radio / stereo, etc etc. LOL
Oh really? says who? I know of at least 5 in use in georgia by the GSP. Many more soon i hope. (I'm working with many law enforcement officers in georgia, on a new vehicle program)
Hmm, according to a friends brother, former works driver Anthony Ried, they have a clutch in them. that, like rallying, use a sequential box, to reduce HOW time (hands off wheel) as well as remove the accidental gear jumping that used to kill earboxes.
only 20-40 miles?
I used to do THAT every single day, for eyars, never had a problem. Also did much longer runs every day in and around london. average speed 4mph, was the norm at places. a 40 mile would take about 2 hours.
its not an emotional no-no, its that shifting whilst turning is a BAD THING. transfer of power in a bend often results in a loss, or near-loss of control. THAT is why its a FAIL on a UK driving test, just like crossing your hands on the wheel, speeding, or running a stop sign. Its a safety issue, plain and simple.
I hope to hell you're a long way from me, since you've got no idea about vehicle control. Only in the US would you have a license, you'd not get one elsewhere, i'll wager.
It's time for you to pull you head up and look around. :-)
I did not make the distinction clear enough for you. But we are on the same page.
You must understand what "commuting" means. I'll clarify: stopped to 20 mph, stop. Repeat about 20 times per mile.
Rubbish. That regulation dates back to non synchromeshed transmissions. The regulation illustrates the superiority of an automatic in that situation. When I first qualified for a Commercial drivers license, the law stated you must not shift gears while crossing rail road tracks. Examination failure for doing so. In real life, you shift while your starting out over the tracks ... especially when you're just starting out from a stop. In a semi, you go through 4 gears just reaching 15 mph.
You lose, buddy. 12 yrs driving line haul in the western US and a 1 million mile safety award (no accidents). You?
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