May 20, 2001 11:59 PM
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The Automatic v Manual argument will rage on just as long as there are motor vehicles on the road and people to drive and argue about them and neither will be right or wrong. It is all down to the individuals’ preference and experience.
Before automatic gearboxes came on the scene the argument was about whether floor change or steering column change was the best or easiest to use. Then came the gearbox that required manual handling but there was no clutch and then a pre-select gear box where you selected the gear before using it and depressing the clutch brought the pre-selected gear into play and these forms of transmission were also argued about at length. So this controversy is nothing new.
For forty years I have driven cars with a manual gearbox right from the old days of double de-clutching to the more modern synchromesh gearbox and now an automatic car. In my younger days I wouldn’t be seen dead driving a car with an ‘automatic’ box as young men changed gears as slickly as racing drivers to impress the ladies Actually there weren’t any automatic cars to be seen dead in, so I was OK. In those days ladies, real ladies didn’t drive cars because it was reckoned that they would not be able to master the art of double de-clutching. So the ‘men’ could show off their driving skills much to the admiration of the ladies beside them. Even when the synchro box came in, it was still reckoned that the lady would not be able to co-ordinate the use of hand and two feet to effectively change gear. Off course time has proved this supposition to be nothing more than that as ladies can drive cars and change gear as slickly as men.
Manual change gave you absolute and total control of how you drove and appealed to those younger persons who liked to pretend to be budding formula one drivers as they changed down to screech around a corner, impressing no one except the traffic cop on their tail but it didn’t impress the magistrate in court a few weeks later. Indeed just to show off your driving skill you could slip neatly from second to top or vice versa. Approaching a tight bend you could change down a gear ready to go in ‘slow’ and come out ‘fast’ much to the admiration of the passengers as they hung on for dear life to prevent them being thrown around inside.
Before the advent of motorways, driving was fun where gear changing was part and parcel of the Sunday spin. But now if it wasn’t for the multitude of road works on the motorways you could drive a couple of hundred miles and never touch the gear lever let alone actually change gear.
Nowadays the automatic box is as reliable as the manual and on my Vauxhall Corsa I can select which gear I start off in depending on the conditions prevailing at the time. At the press of a button I can select the ‘sporty’ mode where the cars does its best to misbehave under acceleration and that is handy for showing the ‘boy racers’ a thing or two at the traffic lights. They just do not expect a Corsa to leave them standing especially when they see an old geezer driving it. When it is snowy and icy I can select the snow conditions where the car will take off in third and for hilly terrain I can select to only go up to third gear. I can also select the same mode for up to second gear and stay in first for really hilly driving. But in normal automatic mode I can still change gear as I want simply by lifting off the accelerator to go up a gear or pressing down hard to come down a gear or I can let the ‘box’ do its stuff on its own. The automatic box has one drawback for those who do not use it properly and that is fuel consumption. In town where the road speed is restricted to 30 mph you can find yourself in third gear all the time and emptying your fuel tank as if there was no tomorrow. My box changes up to forth at around 35 mph so I have to make it go up a gear myself at 30 mph or risk the wrath of a nearby copper. To get the best out of an automatic box you have to listen to your engine and watch the rev counter as well as the speedo and that compensates for not having to change gears manually.
With my automatic box I have the best of both worlds and still have a leg left over to tap to the music. Just one final thought, Long John Silver of Treasure Island fame would have been able to drive had there been cars in his day, but it would have to have been an automatic. With only one leg he could not have been able to handle a manual box, unless he got the parrot to do it.
