Quote:
Originally Posted by stefan
My experience here in Alberta is that most DCT drivers cannot drive manual and are too ashamed to admit it. This usually comes out at HPDE. But they are quick to point out that DCT "shifts faster than manual" and "saves fuel". Which.. is hilarious because you own an M car.. and care about fuel consumption.. but that's another argument.
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Someone else earlier pointed out this not to be true, but in my experience too (speaking for North American buyers - completely different in Europe of course), probably half of the buyers who opt for automatic transmission do so because they simply don't know or can't be bothered to learn how to drive manual (and I'm not talking only BMW owners). The other half, some do it for performance, some for resale, some because cars they like simply aren't offered with manual transmission and then only I believe comes the group of buyers who truly prefer it.
Don't really know what the percentage of each group would be, but it's not really that important either.
Any of above reasons are fine, but the truth remains, in North America, less people than anywhere else in the world are capable of driving manual transmission cars, and these numbers are dropping with newly licensed drivers. Personally I think that's sad, but some of you might ague that. Recently I talked younger cousin of mine into learning how to drive manual. He ended up buying his first car, and he's decided to go with manual transmission. And you know what, he loves it. His words "I'm glad I did it, I feel slightly cool about it, different from most of my peers and I'm actually enjoying it, and it's a skill I'll forever have".