So how many of potential owner opted for 6 speed manual

[visualguy]

Originally Posted by s4awd

So what's your explanation as to why you like your 6mt maxima better? . The RT guy just said, although the dct is an awesome automatic, they'd just prefer shifting their own gears. I'm assuming your explanation will be pretty close to theirs .

The auto gearbox on the Maxima wasn't good. You could make the car perform much better in real-world situations (mountain roads, passing on the highway) with the manual. On the G37, on the other hand, the auto gearbox is fine, and the clutch is far from great, so I liked the auto better.

You can still shift gears manually on the BMW DCT. In fact, it's designed to do that very well. It's just that you don't get to operate a clutch manually, so if you really love doing that for some reason (I don't), then I guess you would go with the manual.

The only downside I see with the DCT is that I might get too lazy to shift myself ever...

[truths2k05]

Dct is also a bitch to get the car to pull off in first gear smoothly, it either lags or it lags then takes off. Dct is fine thereafter. If you get DCT you will never shift it in everyday driving, it will be an automatic in everyday use.

[visualguy]

Originally Posted by truths2k05

Dct is also a bitch to get the car to pull off in first gear smoothly, it either lags or it lags then takes off. Dct is fine thereafter. If you get DCT you will never shift it in everyday driving, it will be an automatic in everyday use.

Yes - I heard that some DCTs suffer from this problem, but I haven't seen it reported for the M5 DCT.

[MWM]

I find it interesting that nobody mentions a key point behind choosing manual -- in every situation you choose the clutch take-up.

Say what? Yes, the take-up. Like, how fast you feed it in. Beginner manual drivers operate the clutch the same way in every situation and find it a chore. Expert manual drivers operate the clutch differently given the situation and find it a finer control point over the chassis. I might give the pedal a quick half-press as I simultaneously snick out of fourth into neutral, let the pedal out, and pause the shifter there in N while I stab a bit of throttle before I press the pedal again and snick into third like a hot knife into butter (because I rev-matched the half shafts or whatever in the gearbox so the synchros didn't do any work at all and that baby took third like it was all she wanted to do during that moment in time) during a highway off-ramp. That alone is worth the choice of having a clutch pedal. But I digress . . . back to the point of take-up, when setting off from a dead stop there are choices to make about quickness vs. smoothness and those choices are affected by the grade the car is on. I can't imagine the computer to read my mind and mood and the grade of the road the car is on to get it right. It's up to me, and given current technology, I'll do a better job in the aggregate.

[visualguy]

MWM - What was the point of the double clutching? What is it good for? I also don't get your point about setting off from a stop on a grade. You can modulate that fine with an auto as well. Actually, doing it with a clutch/handbrake on steep grades (like in SF) is a pain.

[MWM]

@visualguy -- it makes the shifter slide into place much much easier. More so if you're coming down from high RPMs, like 3,500 rpm in 4th and downshifting to 3rd (putting you more like 4,500 rpm in 3rd) or if you're on the brakes hard and dropping 2 gears because you want to rocket out the other side of the turn.

I'm one of these loons who tries to improve his driving every time behind the wheel. Being more in tune with the car is very enjoyable.

If you rode in my car I could demonstrate in 2 or 3 minutes -- you could try shifting the car into 3rd with and without the double-declutch rev match.

[visualguy]

MWM - Double clutching may be smoother than single clutch rev matching - I've never tried double clutching. The point, though, is that this is not an argument for having a clutch. You get smooth rev matched downshifts on the DCT without having to operate a clutch manually.

I still don't see much of a point in operating a clutch manually these days... If you find it to be fun, then that's good enough, but I don't see what purpose it serves in terms of getting the car to act better.

[MWM]

Looks like you answered yourself if I'm reading right -- you'd rather the computer worry about shifting being perfectly smooth and I'd rather I worry about shifting being perfectly smooth. Neither is wrong, just different philosophies. Well, and I'd argue you do have finer control over the chassis with a clutch pedal, especially when leaving from a stop. You can approximate how firmly you want to launch a DCT car by how quickly and deeply you jab the throttle on alighting . . . but you're trying to control 2 things (engine speed / clutch engagement quickness) with one input point rather than controlling each independently. Well, and it seems somehow the lawyers insert themselves into that equation over the engineers -- many M3 DCT owners complained about the cars being sluggish off the line even when they want to lunge. If it's really easy to make the car lunge then the attorneys begin to get afraid that they'll get sued over it. Luckily when I have precise control over throttle and clutch the attorneys' opinions can't enter the equation like they can when one or more of those things is controlled by software. Anybody else notice that drive-by-wire throttles in cars now aren't quite as quick to answer your demands as hard-wired throttles? Anyway, at some point words fail and you'd need a live demonstration to see just what I mean.

One thing the increased level of involvement does for me is to make street driving more fun at lower speeds. When car control is brutally efficient via heavy automation, you gotta go a lot faster to make it anywhere near interesting (because your brain begins firing on all cylinders to manage the driving workload). Or at least, I'll speak for myself. Don't get me wrong, I've done a fair amount of track driving but given my schedule it's a lot easier to fit in 30 min of fun a dozen times a week than trying to fit in track time.