A manual box gives you lots more MPG, and is much better for overtaking 
I know claims about modern auto boxes being almost as good as manual, but that must be in the hands of gorilla drivers.
I had an auto car for about 5 years (Toyota/Lexus Soarer) and it was great for burning people up in a straight line, on a dry road 23mpg… I now get a long term average of 58mpg with a 2 litre diesel which is a lot faster in practical terms.
Peter wrote:
A manual box gives you lots more MPG, and is much better for overtaking
I’m sad to say that’s no longer true, in general. If you compare fuel consumption figures, the automatics are generally rated a little better. Among other less fundamental factors, it has to with having a zillion gears with very wide range and therefore running highly ‘over square’ when in cruise. Then when you need to accelerate the thing downshifts though ‘half a zillion’ gears in an instant and you’re immediately at peak power.
Silvaire wrote:
in an instant
That’s very far from an instant. An electric car with no transmission at all is an instant. A couple of microseconds at most.
I think the UK system makes sense – given that ~98% of cars on our roads are manual it seems logical that one should demonstrate operation during the test.
I believe taking the test in an automatic (in the UK) correlates highly with low aptitude, a very high number of lessons and frankly it being somewhat questionable whether the person has the skills to control any car at all on a public road. If they scrape through the test eventually in an automatic then there’s really no way they’re ever likely to master a manual box. Almost be definition they aren’t going to have @Silvaire’s aptitude for teaching themselves.
At the beginning of my first lesson the instructor asked me if I knew how a clutch worked. Of course, I said, and he replied great that makes it so much easier. He said the hardest to teach are those (unfortunately usually girls) who have zero technical knowledge or interest and therefore cannot wrap their heads round it because they don’t understand what it does or why it’s even there.
Peter wrote:
I know claims about modern auto boxes being almost as good as manual, but that must be in the hands of gorilla drivers.
Many modern auto boxes aren’t traditional automatics (i.e. the unresponsive slushbox automatics you might have driven, with an epicyclic gearbox controlled by brake bands and a torque converter, which is unresponsive and makes the engine sound like it’s connected to a badly slipping clutch at low speed) but are what’s known as “automated manual”, in other words they are a normal manual gearbox, but you have power controls to operate the clutch and shift (and no clutch pedal). They have a typical automatic style PRNDL shifter which you can put in D, and just let the computer operate the clutch and gearbox, but also a “manual” setting where you select gears manually (what Top Gear calls a “flappy paddle gearbox”) with paddles on the steering column, and sometimes a way to shift also with the PRNDL lever (e.g. you have something like PRNDLM, and on the M setting the lever can move side to side to step up or down a gear). These are MUCH better than traditional automatics, they are just as responsive as a manual, especially when you put them in M mode so you can select the right gear for the conditions you can see ahead.
