We in Belgium are making the shift from all manual to all automatic.
For a real drive (race? Rally?) I absolutely agree that manual is just better.
For day to day commute, automatic is just a lot easier. And that, combined with the fact that in a few years every car being sold here will be an EV, will result in my kids never learning to drive stick.
There may be EVs with manual transmission if Toyota decides to put it into production. I wonder if they can come up with some advantage from pairing electric motors with a manual transmission.
Yeah I'm in the same boat. I love manuals all day every day, but got an older automatic Honda Accord as a commute daily because it's just so much easier.
When people actually BUY cars with manual transmissions, then they make sense. Until then, economies of scale will win, and it's much easier and cheaper for a manufacturer to produce a single offering that works for everyone rather than multiple offerings that require multiple part numbers and tooling.
Both my cars are DCT. Would I love to have a manual again? Yes. However, these shift faster than you or I ever could. We haven't been played, people just don't buy the things they keep asking for, because they aren't practical or because they can't afford it.
I've owned about 10 cars in my life. Six of them have been manual. Three of the four others were never even offered with a manual transmission as an option. And, not for nothing, but it's nice not having to deal with a clutch in stop and go traffic.
And while cars may be about driving for the likes of us, they're merely a means of transportation for most people. Hell, the majority of people can barely gauge the size of their vehicle, and drive terribly in general. Your suggestion that all cars should be manual because all cars are for driving enjoyment is a false premise to begin with. For some people cars are a status symbol, for others it's the best means of transportation because there's no mass transit near them, or because they simply prefer a car to mass transit.
Especially modern automatics that do everything possible to insulate the driver from... well, everything. At least I can have fun in older autos that I can make behave the way I want. CVT's are just a travesty.
I drove an automatic for the first time yesterday. Tryna put my foot down to merge but the car had other ideas and changed gears. Granted, it changed down to give me more power, but I'll decide when I want to change gears thank you very much.
Yeah 100%, I've been driving around a bit more today and I'm starting to get the gist of it, it just threw me off the first time it happened cuz it happened while tryna merge lol. I'm used to using my hands for the throttle as I got my bike license first, its not a 1:1 transfer aha
Edit: I should add that I'm in the UK and I'm learning, I've done alot of lessons and my instructor says I'm test ready. I'll be doing it in a manual but I wanted some experience on the road without the pressure of an instructor before my test in a couple of months so I'm driving a family members car. It's much more powerful than my instructors car so the finesse is really important and I'm not used to it
Older autos that just use a kick down throttle cable are okay because you learn where in the throttle travel it will shift, and it wont change. but modern cars are awful for it, the damn computer always seems to have a different shift point for "economy".
Yeah me too. I have an automatic Accord thst I commute in, which is good cause I'm usually so brain dead that even shifting for open highway driving would be a chore. But my fun car for offroad shenanigans is absolutely a manual.
I have a subaru Crosstrek. It's automatic but can flip to semi-manual using shift paddles and auto clutch. I piss off my car friend by saying I drive a manual, since it's technically not.
The crosstrek isn't even a real automatic either, it's got subaru's really shitty homebrew CVT that had all the weird failure problems. So you're a double poser! Lol