[SentraSE-R]

Originally Posted by Thymeclock

Reliability is not the issue. Both are reliable.

Originally Posted by Thymeclock

One has maintenance needs and costs, the other doesn't. That you choose to ignore.

Your "maintenance needs" issue goes back to the reliability issue that you claim you don't use. First you claim clutches are reliable. Then you imply they're not, the one day in ten years they're down for maintenance.

As for costs, your automatic cost you the price of two clutch jobs the day you chose an automatic transmission on your options list, and it costs you the additional price of a clutch job every year in decreased fuel efficiency compared to a hypermiled manual transmission version of your car. There are no clutch maintenance costs compared to automatics. There's only a net clutch cost advantage - an advantage that only goes up when another 2003 Accord or 2001 Civic's AT bites the dust, another Plymouth/Dodge Caravan/Voyager joins the long list of AT failures, etc. When the AT on my '87 Chevy Astro died, it cost me more than I've spent on clutch replacements for all my MT cars put together, and the transmission shop said all those GM 4L60-E transmissions failed, typically before 100k miles.

Originally Posted by Thymeclock

When did I ever say that "they're all wrong"?

When you ignore what the rest of the world drives. Your metropolitan driving conditions occur world-wide. You've chosen to deny that other posters in Seattle, San Francisco, and LA can get >30k miles out of their clutches. You've made claims about the advantages of automatics and the inferiority of clutches that are not supported by real-world usage patterns.