Staring into space for Thursday.

[hirez]

[Poll #1848621]

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I have a six speed turbo diesel and I'm not afraid to use it!

Toot! Toot! VRROOOOM, said Mr Toad.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Two or three pedal operation?

(Yes, I recalled we now have several transmission options on modern vehicles just after posting the poll.)

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

I also have a six speed turbo diesel, and utterly adore it. I never wish to go back to 5 gears, or to petrol. I can pootle about economically, or if the mood takes me can go KABLAMMO, leaving behind me a cloud of noxious vapours like squid ink.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

..I'll have a bag of charcoal briquettes, please.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I meant the other shop.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Here you go. I don't know what you're going to do with an entire box of that stuff - the bloke behind the counter made me sign the special register.

[lee-chaos.livejournal.com]

Auto with the luxury of steering wheel flappypaddles ftw.

[nemesis-to-go.livejournal.com]

An auto box? Some of us are still double-declutching!

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

I was gonna point out my six-speed "performance transmission" (the same engine and powertrain as in the Toyota Celica and the Lotus Turbo Elise, but in a sort of boxy station wagon thing-- second gear doesn't really pick up until about 60mph, and you don't shift until 5000+rpm. Redline is at 8500. It's pretty awesome, and great for merging onto highways and for smoking goons at stoplights when they underestimate the potential of what appears to be a Dad Car), but double-clutching is pretty hardcore. So aside from that parenthetical wank, I bow to your automobilism. Rock on, sir. (What do you drive?)

[nemesis-to-go.livejournal.com]

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

I had a CX 2400 Safari once, C-matic that was; where does that fit into your abstracted reality modelling, eh?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

See also pre-selector boxes, DAF and Ford CVTs, the magic bloody hydrostatic drive in NH combine-harvesters, column-changes on old Mazda pickups and, er, Austins ditto(?), the backwards nastiness of the 2CV and the extra lever of an OD-equipped Landie.

Um. How did the C-Matic work? The Autocar article assumes one already knows.

And then there's the remarkable footage of people driving restored 50s/60s US trucks with multi-lever splitter boxes. At least one change seems to involve hooking an elbow through the steering wheel in order to move both levers at once.

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

Ummm... Torque converter, centrifugal clutch, 3-speed manual box. I think that's the right order. I've no idea how it coped with gear changes on the move though; the box wasn't constant mesh.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Your first question implies that there are people for whom changing gear involves concentration. How odd!

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yes it does. I defy most people to change cog on a manky old Leyland/Rover vehicle w/o careful appraisal of the job at hand.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Ah, this is where the whole YMMV issue comes in.

[neilh.livejournal.com]

I briefly drove an ancient 9-5 auto as a loaner while my rear end was being straightened out, damn thing was always in first gear...but maybe I've got a heavy foot.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Haribo for me, ta. ;)

I can't drive. These car thingies are beyond my capacity to handle. (I am so lacking in road sense, I don't ride a bike, and my husband doesn't even like me pushing a shopping trolley...)

[aoakley.livejournal.com]

Returning to the topic; yes, having an automatic does make dealing with traffic congestion easier in my experience.

I don't live anywhere that has traffic congestion, and now they've sorted out the lights at the arse end of PE Way / Tewkesbury Road (both of which are almost entirely arse end, to be honest) so that the posh Cheltenham town centre traffic is given priority over the scum and villany of Princess Elizabeth Way (such as GCHQ commuters), I don't commute to anywhere that has congestion. Ergo my old-fashioned manual stick-shift works just fine for me for the vast majority of my life. If there's long-term roadworks, I'll take the bus.

The exceptions mostly involve surprise sudden weekend tailbacks on the M5 which I somehow failed to detect despite having developed an almost OCD habit of checking motorway cameras on my smartphone before entering the on-ramp, Birdlip Hill / Air Balloon roundabout at seemingly any random time, almost anywhere in the West Midlands conurbation again seemingly at random, and Bristol M32 northbound at going-home time if I've had a meeting there. For those odd occasions, the whole handbrake-clutch-shunt-cluch-handbrake thing is very annoying, and since I encounter congestion so very rarely, I often worry that I'll jerk into the car in front, or will stop too suddenly and get shunted from behind.

But on the odd occasions that I have been hiring out an automatic, and happened to be in a proper urban city with proper traffic problems - Los Angeles, for example - having an automatic has made congestion easier to handle. It's like driving a bumper car at a fairground, one pedal for stop, one pedal for go.

For some reason, whereas in heavy congestion with a manual I would engage the handbrake, in traffic in an automatic I tend to just rely on the pedal brake.

There's a downside if you think this through, though. If everyone migrates to automatics, then traffic jams become that little less unbearable, which leads to fewer people avoiding them. Air conditioning, ditto. My theory is that cars should be plesant places to be in whilst driving at a reasonable pace, but that they should be discouragingly unpleasant places to have to sit in traffic in, thereby making people avoid congestion, thus reducing congestion in a marvellously self-balancing way.