CNBC Says only racing enthusiasts buy manuals, let’s correct them
 

Enjoy

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_JuyDN0qzRY

The reason I converted my auto Suburban from an auto to manual was
1. Reliability
2. Economy

I refuse to have a google account and can’t comment but if you do be sure to show that not just elite race drivers want a manual and that cost of ownership is a huge reason

AKA Every autotragic seems to die between 100k-200k with rare exceptions manuals for me at least keep going.

Manuals are staying for longer on commercial vehicles around the world, but for private vehicles which are neither a more specialized sports car or a penalty box aiming third-world markets their availability is increasingly lower even in Brazil where automatics took a while to become more widely accepted.

Ehh...my Echo’s auto outlasted its radiator when I sent it off at 280-something-thousand miles.

But let’s bet honest. Americans are lazy about driving. Lack of blinkers during lane changes, high beams at night, crappy lane discipline - for a car culture, we actually care almost zero about driving. So of course automatics, which take another driving burden off, are popular as hell here. If you lack any sort of economy mindset (like my wife), autos pretty much do the same or better for FE. DCTs dominate the number columns in buff books, so casual car guys get the “faster” car, but they don’t care about the feel.

So what they are saying isn’t really all that far off. Manuals are dying. That’s just how it is - and why I’ll cherish the 5-speed in my Civic for a good long while. 186k miles means I can slow roast the experience and have it for many years. By the time it goes away, I’ll have a thin crop to choose from, I suppose.

Manuals are dying off in big trucks too. The automated manuals are taking a big portion of the market. My company has a large national fleet and has only bought automated manuals for a few years now - I’d be surprised if there’s more than a few dozen actual manual trucks left in our fleet - but trucks get some advantages from an auto which cars really don’t, so it’s a bit of a different situation.

I am almost sure that at 35, I am the youngest person to know how to drive a manual trans in my family - including in-laws, which is a really huge family, lol. I laughed my ass off when my nieces, the oldest of which was maybe 10 or 12, was awed by window cranks in our Kia.

CNBC Says only racing enthusiasts buy manuals, let’s correct them

I thought it was about this:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives...diotsguide.jpg
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives...diotsguide.jpg

Manuals, automatics and automatic manuals will be history soon enough; when steam electricity prevails.

Nowadays with Toyota's HSD effectively getting rid of a transmission to rely on the electric motors in order to emulate a CVT, and European regulations now favoring hybrids, it won't surprise me if in the next 10 years most of the new cars sold in Europe get rid of the manuals.


It's not only a matter of lazyness. Driving a manual during rush hour can be quite painful. I have runner knees, and my father tended to complain that I didn't want to drive his car which has a manual transmission. I haven't driven for a while, and even considered some hand controls adaptation.


Even though an AMT is not exactly the same as a proper automatic, at least for road usage it's more beneficial, while city traffic and even some off-road conditions would be more suitable for an automatic. On a sidenote, when the need to replace some American fire engines imported in the '90s arose in São Paulo, Volkswagen fitted conventional automatic transmissions to some trucks.


I'm 30 and have actually been favorable to automatics for a while. My first contact with someone who drove automatics on a regular basis happened when I was 12 and moved to a condominium after my father got discharged from Brazilian Air Force, and the neighbor next door had an automatic Volkswagen Quantum.

Of course it isn’t only laziness, but 99% of the market is also not physically hindered as you are. When a manual is a genuine hardship, of course I won’t judge someone for choosing an automatic. But 99% of the American population isn’t physically hindered, so I really do think it is a symptom of the generally lazy attitude towards driving in this country. People don’t take it that seriously, so they like the appliance factor of an automatic. If folks took it as seriously as gun owners here do about procedural safety, or artisans do about crafting good products, I would bet we would still have a 10-25% market share of manuals here.

Your fleet is pretty typical. The automated manual take rate is rapidly closing in on 100% for on-highway trucks. The only people buying manuals anymore are owner-operators but they don't buy very many new trucks these days.

Vocational trucks have a higher manual take rate but that is shrinking too. (Log trucks, dump trucks, cement mixers, etc)

Automatics get better mileage today than a manual (the way most people drive not hypermiling). The days of a 3 speed auto vs a 6 speed manual are long gone.

I've never had an automatic fail nor has anyone in my family. I tend to age out of cars these days instead of running them until they die (I keep cars until they are 10 years old)

That said, my parents E150 van had 330K miles on the original automatic, their Silverado is over 200K, and their Prius is at about 190K. (They traded the E150 on the Prius w/ Cash for Clunkers)

Every SUV/pickup I have ever owned had the transmission failing before 200k
Minivans ditto above, got rid of 1 slipping bad with 120k. (Brand doesn’t seem to matter much)

Sedans, I will agree most live longer.

My relatives haven’t had better luck, my niece got an older low mile RAV4 transmission fail at 68k, all these raised height CUVs and crossovers seem to be following the same trend.

I have never had a manual transmission or clutch fail, though I bought a car with bad synchros (though I have never fixed it)

I tend to keep cars until they are 20-30 years old, odd part is I usually have fewer problems in their Twilight years than around year 10.

I guess you never know but the trend of putting a sedan transmission in a CUV doesn’t seem to be working well for longevity

Automation in general is the future. It eventually performs better than humans, and that's a good thing, because it allows us to focus on creative endeavors rather than the mundane. We'll have self-driving cars one day, and they will be better in every regard. This coming from a manual transmission enthusiast. I sold the Prius instead of the Acura TSX because I appreciate the fantastically constructed antiquated technology in the Acura over the Prius... and this must be how Curmudgeons are made. Often I wonder if I made the wrong decision, but I'm leaving open opportunity for a CyberTruck or something equally futuristic.