It’s well known in the gearhead community that fewer and fewer people are learning how to drive a standard transmission. According to a 2016 report, only 18% of Americans know how to drive a manual transmission. In addition, the number of cars that have a manual transmissions sold in the US hovers around only 5% of the total. This number is down significantly from 1987 when manual transmissions made up about 25% of the car sales in the country.
Many makes and models (including everything from Mercedes since 2011) can’t even be purchased with a manual transmission at all in the US, which makes it challenging when a car aficionado wants to get something a little extra special. But not all hope is lost. Standard manual transmissions are slowly going the way of the dodo, but semi-automatic and automatic-manual (or manumatic) transmissions still allow a level of control that can allow the convenience of an automatic but the fun of a manual.
Your Car Can Do All of the Work, Or Just Some of It
Many modern cars with automatic transmissions—especially those that have fun in mind—will give you more options on your shifter than just Drive. Let’s once again look at Mercedes for an example. All of their cars are automatic, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t choose your gear. New Mercedes models are equipped with the G-Tronic transmission which can happily stay in fully automatic mode 100% of the time. But you can also put that transmission into Sport+ or Manual mode and take full advantage of the paddle shifters that are unobtrusively located behind the steering wheel.
Shifting in an automatic-manual transmission isn’t anything like shifting in a fully manual transmission. For one thing, there isn’t a clutch pedal. Everything that needs to happen to manually change the gears in a car with this type of gearbox happens behind the scenes as soon as the paddle shifter is hit. Another different aspect is that you have limited control over the gears that you are allowed to choose.
A Smarter Gearbox Protects You From Your Own Bad Decisions
The new automatic-manual transmissions make sure that your desire to act like Mario Andretti with much less experience doesn’t mean a broken gearbox. In a typical manual transmission, the wrong gear can mean disaster. It can damage the transmission, the clutch, and if you do it abruptly enough, the engine. An automatic-manual—fortunately or unfortunately—won’t even give you the option.
Automatic-manual transmissions these days have their shifters located as paddles on the back of the steering wheel. Some models used to use the gear selector to manually change gears as well, but that has largely been phased out. The paddle shifters (or if you are a Top Gear fan, the flappy paddle gearbox) only give the option of going up one gear or down one gear by interacting with either the right or left paddle—usually the left downshifts and the right upshifts. This means that you can’t skip gears. And the transmission will also make sure you don’t try to downshift when your RPM are through the roof, which used to be another recipe for manual transmission disaster.
The Ease of an Automatic With Options for A Good Time
Sure, having an electronic babysitter in your gearbox doesn’t sound like too much fun, but manual-automatic transmissions can give you the best of both worlds. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to constantly fiddle with changing gears in stop and go traffic. If you want your car to be comfortable and a bit boring on your commute or long drives you absolutely can.
But you can also pop it into Sport+ mode and have a grand time whenever you have want a track day or find the perfect secluded winding road. You can switch it into manual and put your engine in a lower gear when it’s snowy or you don’t want to ride the brakes coming down a mountain. Sure, there’s no clutch, but the end of the fully manual transmission doesn’t mean the end of the fun you can have in your car. It just means that you have even more ways to have a good time all packed into one car.
