Sorry, that’s a really ignorant comment. In countries outside US, the ability to drive an automatic is a skill for the elites. What’s really the point of driving a manual other than more work for your other arm and going slower than those using DSG’s. It’s just for style or making loud sounds without real substance called performance gain. The bottom line has always been the fastest is the winner, thus what all races are measured on. It doesn’t matter if you have a 200K souped up Ferrari, whoever beats you in a race be it on the track or on the street still has the final laugh.

Posted by Sharif on June 1:

“Manuals with a good driver will always win, manly cuz of heal-and-toe downshifts, and double-clutch downshifting. Which of course you can’t do with DSG’s.”

Any serious driver who knows anything about cars and driving them fast knows that the main reason for heel and toe downshifting is to match the engine revs to the transmission, so you don’t have a lurch and upset the vehicle balance and/or break your tires loose when the clutch is reengaged. Likewise, double clutch downshifting was made virtually obsolete by synchros on all modern transmissions, that match the gear speeds to the output shafts. Back in the day, you had to double clutch, or risk grinding all the teeth off your gears.

All the SMG’s and DSG’s do is have the computer blip the throttle to match revs, and hydraulics let the clutch in and out, and swap gears… basically doing the heel-and-toeing/double clutching for you. A modern take on the same old theory of swapping ratios, if you will. Which is better? Well, by the numbers, the computers seem to have us gear-rowers beat, but I’d still take a manual tranny over a SMG or DSG any day. That said, I don’t need a clutch pedal to have fun driving. An SMG equipped M3 is a riot, and I’ve had tons of tire smoking fun in an auto-equipped truck (F-150 Lightning).

It’s how you drive that determines the fun factor.

Stick snobs need to accept the fact that performance technology is progressing. There’s nothing wrong with liking manuals, and they are really fun to tear around the block with. But to say that they are better performers than dual clutch gearboxes is simply ignorance.

Too many “enthusiasts” around these parts think that being stick-only and bashing everything else makes you cool. No, it only makes you close-minded.

It’s like a sequential manual without the clutch work

BMW puts a Getrag manual on the 328i and lessor models.

You can be the M3 manual will be a ZF.

I’m sticking with the row your own gears.

Aside from the ability to skip-shift, DSGs are simply superior performing transmissions. Sure, many people prefer manuals for the FEEL of it, but to say that manuals perform better is idiotic. Technology wins over the human arm and foot, that simple.

For the sake of pure speed, sure, they’re great. but for the sake of the experience and feeling (or the purity of it all), they’re not. it just depends on what your focus is. for me, it would be more of a mood thing. sometimes, no matter how hardcore of a driver you are, you just feel a little lazy and you don’t want to always be shifting, right (especially in stop and go traffic)? so that’s why a DSG is good, but it’ll make you miss the third pedal and some left foot driving if you’re a hardcore enthusiast, I’m sure.