DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour        al@motorwayamerica.com

For the first few decades in automotive history, almost without exception, cars were equipped with manual transmissions. Although an automatic transmission was first developed in about 1900 for marine use it wasn’t until almost 40 years later it became available for everyday use in an automobile.

Oldsmobile was the first mass-produced brand to offer an automatic transmission as an option. Thus began an era that allowed people to reclaim use of their left legs by freeing them from clutch duty. It was almost like a driver saying, “I have people to shift gears for me.”

Fast-forward to today and relatively few vehicles are available with a manual transmission anymore. It seems there are only two types – the base cheapo and the European sports vehicles (sedans, convertibles or coupes, it doesn’t matter. Think BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz). For the sake of discussion we’ll eliminate the base, economy cars from this article because they’re around for a reason.

The two types of drivers had what they wanted – the performance drivers had manual transmissions that were generally bolted to high-revving powerplants, which somehow increased the testosterone levels of their owners; and the luxury and/or everyday driver who had an automatic transmission that freed him from having to concern himself with another aspect of driving.

Then a new innovation appeared. It was a manual mode for an automatic transmission. It allowed the driver to actually control shift points like a manual transmission, but at any second he or she could pop it back into automatic mode and it would take over once more.

At first these were kind of novel and many manufacturers pushed them like the second coming of Orville Redenbacher. But just like having an $80,000 vehicle that can off-road like a mountain goat, the percentage of drivers who took advantage of this “toy” decreased to an almost non-existent number. Great men, such as me, scoffed at them and coined such prescient phrases as, “If a driver wants to shift gears so badly he should buy a car with a manual transmission…and the manufacturer will throw in a clutch for free.”

But wait it gets worse! Some car companies began putting in paddle shifters on either side of the steering wheel, apparently to give the driver the feeling of piloting a Formula 1 race car. Yeah, there’s nothing like the neck-snapping feeling of slipping the transmission lever in the “M” position and using the shift paddles to drive your Honda Accord through the turns at Le Mans. The only way you’re going to spin tires is if you’re on ice or gravel. 

By definition, an “automatic transmission” is one that doesn’t have to be shifted, it does it automatically!

For the purpose of full disclosure, I once had a BMW 550i for a week of evaluation and it came equipped with a double-clutch automatic transmission. For the first day or three I tried to use it in the manual mode and I was convinced it was the biggest pile of dung I’d used since the transmission in a Smart car — probably a car with the worst transmission in the history of the universe.

However, I was slowing down because of an impending stop light at an intersection near my house and I thought about how much it acted and sounded like a manual transmission as it slowed down. Then, for some reason, I sped up and accidently tapped one of the shift paddles and- — VOILA!!!! — a whole new world opened up to me. I learned how to sync (pardon the pun) with the transmission and except for the lack of a clutch this was a manual transmission!

However, just as one date with Judy Frey when I was a sophomore in high school failed to convince me I was a Casanova, so, too, did an enjoyable few days with a double-clutch transmission fail to convince me that it made sense to get an automatic transmission you can shift.

I add this phenomenon to two others that basically sums up my personal philosophy: people who drive a convertible with the top down and the windows up…and people who have a Mercedes or BMW with whitewall tires…are crying out for help…and nobody’s listening.