this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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American manual/stick driver here.
Manuals are cheaper, more responsive, lower maintenance than wet-automatics. So even here where automatics are common, knowing that my skill gap vs you is literally saving me thousands in maintenance costs is definitely a big portion of my superiority complex.
However, with the dawn of CVT automatics, this is no longer true. CVTs are nearly maintenance free, have instant response, ideal power delivery.
So technology has changed, but not everyone recognizes the new era of advanced automatic transmissions.
But I'll absolutely still look down on any old-style wet clutch / torque converter based automatic.
I must've just never driven the right CVT then; to me they always feel really weird and sluggish, never behaving the way I'd expect/like
This answer hits the nail on the head.
Autos used to be really shit, in a country where fuel is expensive, and distances smaller, you'd only get an auto if you physically couldn't use the clutch.
Nowadays, they're much better.
If I don't end up fully electric on the next car, it will definitely be CVT.
How many dragons have you tamed?
Manuals are also an effective anti-theft measure here in the US, as most of us (myself included) don't know how to drive them properly.
I've read multiple stories of thiefs realizing they were stealing a manual transmission, and literally just giving up after driving a few feet. Pretty hilarious.
Define "instant response"
CVTs are always "in gear", and quickly adapt to whatever torque vs RPM band your engine needs.
Manual transmissions can "shift ahead of time", so with enough brainpower and paying attention, you should usually be in the correct gear for any situation. But any particular gear-shift takes time to accomplish.
Traditional Automatic transmissions all take time, and the clock starts after the user pushes the pedal (unlike manual which starts when the driver notices that another gear would be useful, often ahead of time).. So automatic transmission is always slower.
And yet any time you change throttle input they change gearing and have horrible "lag". While they may be always engaged they're never in the right "gear".
Brits still use miles per hour. You might be thinking of the Irish, they use KM/H.... although they don't like being called Brits 🫠.
Even the zf8?
I can't say I'm a car buff unfortunately, so I can't say I've experienced that particular transmission yet.
Reading up on the transmission: it sounds like the torque converter could be replaced with mild-hybrid electric engines to help kickstart the transmission. This is very interesting to me, and I think that's a great way around the problems of traditional torque-converters.
I'd imagine that Mild-Hybrid ZF8 (torque converter replaced with electric motor) would be a serious contender in feel and response.
There's too many different cars with the ZF8 and too many different configurations to generalize. It seems like a promising design, but I'm going to bet that mild-hybrid ZF8 is the best feel. There's just a lot of downsides to the traditional wet-clutch / torque-converter frontend of transmissions IMO.