Hello i am new here :)
 

Hi I am new here. I drives Honda's, These days I have a Honda Civic 2008 MT. Always loves to drive manual car, because you can get more out of it in-terms of fuel and performance. In short it is much more efficient.

Welcome to Fuelly. Something far more satisfying about driving a manual, would never driver an auto unless medically advised to do so.

I have driven both. Drove manuals for 25 years then drove automatics for 25 years and now a manual for the last six years. Hate it. I should never have given up on the auto box.

Why would drive something you didn't like for 25 years? If I buy something I don't enjoy, I sell it as soon as...

Until I got an automatic I had never driven one. Then I had three over 25 years. I bought the Jazz (manual) but I hate it is not automatic. If I ever buy another car it will be automatic but now I only drive about 10 miles a week so there is no incentive to change.

No doubt driving Auto is really relaxing and comfortable. But Driving Manuel feels much safer as you are more focused on driving. Manuel also feels better, for example you have to overtake a slow going lorry or bus so you quickly moves down 2 gears and press the throttle and the car goes. On the other hand you have to wait for the Auto to shift it self down for you.

I could shift down with my auto by just popping the lever back a notch then the kick down would take it down another gear. If you didn't want to wait on the kick down then slide it down two gears. Away from the lights, there was not much that could pull the way my cars did (autos are rare in the UK other than CVT models).

Autos are rare because of many valid reasons. They are more expensive to buy in the first place, and often dull the driving experience. They use more fuel which costs more to run, but also raises the emissions and therefore the carbon taxes. I'm looking at small auto cars for my friend and the tax is 10-20% of the cars value. Then there's the fact they require more maintenance and are more complex, therefore more likely to go wrong. Alot of the conventional autos were slow to respond and slower to accelerate too. Overall, it's the combination of all these negative factor's that did, and still do, put people off autos even though they've improved vastly over recent years.

Out of the 15 cars I owned, one was auto and it suited the car well due to it being a massive 7 seat, 2 ton SUV, a manual would have been hard work in a vehicle that size, besides the fact that it's not even available.

The days of autos being less reliable are in the past. The only car within my immediate family that had issues was the brother's 2000 Accord V6. That transmission had issues in the Accord and Odyssey. The car had also been through two floods. For the Sonic/Aveo I had, there were more reported problems with the manual. Design and manufacturing defects don't see a difference.

Maintenance is more for the auto simply because there is more fluid and a filter. It is only needed at 30k, 50k, or 100k miles though.

In the US, we rarely get manuals geared reasonably. The manufacturers think only people looking for performance want one. Our Fit/Jazz would be spinning the engine at a 1000 more rpm at 60mph than the automatic.

In 25 years of driving automatics, I only had one transmission problem. It was actually caused by a faulty carburettor (remember them). Petrol went down the vacuum pipe to the actuator, causing the diaphragm to perish which allowed the engine to suck the fluid out of the transmission. I thought I had broken a ring (sudden blue smoke from the exhaust) until the transmission stopped driving. It cost very little to replace.