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Comment by frognumber | Hacker News Reader

When I bought my car, TCO for manual was higher than for automatic. Base purchase price was about $500 lower, but required a pretty frequent maintenance schedule. Automatic was nearly maintenance-free (although the little maintenance required had higher unit costs).

I ran the numbers. Automatic won for cost.

For a cheap car, manual makes little sense for a rational consumer.

Ergo, they're only left on fancy sports cars.

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Manufacturers are notorious understating maintenance items for automatic transmissions, like "lifetime" fluids and skipping filter changes.

A typical manual maintenance schedule will keep the gearbox running for a very long time. The typical automatic maintenance schedule will keep it alive for its "lifetime", but that lifetime ends up being a few hundred thousands miles and instead of more maintenance at the end of that interval, you end up with a dead transmission.

For a cheap car I'd especially prefer control over power delivery.

Why do you prefer it less on an expensive car?

Expensive cars usually have more power than cheap cars. You can enter a highway, safely overtake someone or climb a steep incline in a larger selection of gears. Also, fancy cars tend to have better automatic gearboxes that behave well in more situations, compounding the advantage.

Cheap fossil cars with shitty automatics can be quite stressful to drive. With a manual clutch and transmission you are in control, know how the car will behave and can relax. It might still be slow, but you know exactly how slow in every situation.

>Cheap fossil cars with shitty automatics can be quite stressful to drive

This is a self inflicted problem. They're programmed for fuel economy (we're talking a small fraction of an MPG here) at the expense of drivability. The might even get worse fuel economy in practice because drivers learn you gotta floor them to tell the compute "no I'm serious, give me the ponies".

> This is a self inflicted problem. They're programmed for fuel economy (we're talking a small fraction of an MPG here) at the expense of drivability.

I find it hard to believe that the Smart car I rented once shifted terribly for fuel economy reasons. It just sucked. I’ve never been so worried that I’d get rear ended leaving a stop sign (during the unbelievably slow shift from first to second), and putting the pedal to the metal didn’t make any difference.

Maybe it sucked too but fuel economy absolutely is a large part of why modern cars all drive like mush.

If you ever have a the opportunity to drive a Nissan from the "hurr durr Nissan CVT bad" era like 2008-12ish it'll feel like a sports car by comparison to just about any modern crossover. "Oh you want revs, let me give you revs"

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