Quote:
Originally Posted by PetitFrereMaxima
I think cvt is nice. But the real fun and performance comes from a manual tranny. There is nothing as exciting as clutching and switching gears. Shifting to higher gears and backing it to lower gears for power and help with braking some times. My 08 has cvt, but when I drive my friends VW Passat 5-speed manual tranny, I can conveniently say performance is remarkable.
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Fun and excitement? Yes, the manual tranny is definitely more fun and excitement for many folks . . .
UNLESS you regularly drive in stop and go traffic where 15 MPH is a normal speed. The manual loses its fun and excitement in the traffic we have in large cities these days.
I traded my last manual (5 speed '78 Datsun 200SX) in on a Maxima with automatic after finding I was shifting almost a thousand times each work day, stuck in miserable traffic, but seldom averaging over 20 MPH. I was raising plenty of blisters on my shifting hand, and wearing out my left leg (and spilling my coffee and dropping my donut). But fun and excitement? None at all.
Performance? No; not the manual. Those days are ending. As the CVT is continually improved, it will (if not already) reach a point where it outperforms any shifting tranny for the simple reason there is not that instant at each shift point where absolutely no accelleration is taking place. Simple physics.
But there is a far more important factor we should all be concerned with, and the government has passed legislation to insure the car manufacturers are DEFINITELY concerned with it, and that is fuel efficiency. Like it or not, fuel efficiency will be the mantra for these next few decades.
AND the manual is no longer more efficient than the so-so CVT in the '08 Maxima, and is actually LESS efficient than the new CVT in the '09 Maxima. Anyone who passed high school physics can understand that, all else being equal, a tranny that never shifts will be more efficient than one that has to shift. Again, simple physics.
The manual was all we had in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. And it was more efficient and more fun than the automatics of the 1950s through the end of the second millenium. But within another decade or so, it will be viewed as an amusing plaything of those still mentally living in a bygone era. That is sad, but that is the reality of our future.