So rant number one is the ridiculous amount of money I spent on the 105k service for my car. This is weak, because I haven’t had a car payment in years, and this definitely didn’t add up to more than 3-4 of those.
The real rant is the loaner car. They loaned me a 2008 Acura TL, which at first blush would seem to be a pretty nice car. It had leather seats, a navigation system, XM radio, a great sound system, a funky key fob with a switch blade like key deployment method… all of which LOOKS very cool, but doesn’t really do much for the driving experience. Ok, sure, it has some power, disk brakes, fancy suspension… but it had an automatic.
And not a very good one.
I hate automatics.
Hate.
Why on earth can’t they make an automatic that shifts even remotely like a human? Read on… in all seriousness, I think I know why, because I’m a geek and I’ve been thinking about it all day.
- 1. Predictive ability of driving needs.
The biggest disadvantage of the auto transmission is that it doesn’t know what you’re about to do. The driver of a manual will down-shift PRIOR to an aggressive pass or turning onto the highway on ramp. The auto tranny can only guess that this is what you want when you goose the gas pedal. Of course, by then it’s too late, you’ve got the pedal mashed so when the car shifts it’s like some kind of rocket stage separation*: you get tossed against the seatbelt, then whiplashed by the new gear engaging. Ugh.
- 2. Predictive ability of the driver.
Yeah, that’s right. First it’s the car predicting the driver, then it’s the driver predicting the driver. You see, when I shift, I KNOW when that little lug will happen. I KNOW when I screwed up the RPMs and I’m going to get that nasty synchro adjustment. So you don’t notice the shifting whiplash as bad, because you know when it’s going to happen… and without even thinking about it, that ultimate wet grey adaptive control system has learned to adjust the neck muscles along with the leg-ankle-foot combo.
- 3. Manual throttle linkage.
Thanks to JR for bringing this one to my attention. Sure, so the car has computer controlled ignition timing, computer controlled fuel injection but I’m betting** that penetrating the floor boards is a narrow braided cable that connects mechanically to the throttle body. If so, then even if the car knew how to adjust the engine speed to match the wheel speed for the new gear ratio, it couldn’t rev up the engine without more air. Why is this so important? When one shifts, the wheels keep spinning at essentially the same rate. The engine, however, has to change speed proportional to the change in gear ratio. When shifting up, this isn’t that big of a deal, because the engine will naturally slow down while the clutch is engaged and the gas pedal is up (in a manual). This matches the relative change in engine speed that the shift will enforce. For a down-shift, though, this works against you. In a ‘double-clutch’, a savvy driver can match the engine speed with the shift (by putting the car briefly in neutral) to produce a smooth transition. Trust me, if you’re a manual transmission driver, hitting this just right*** is a feeling of pure driving joy.
Of course, my bet would be wrong. I looked it up on Acura’s TL website. The TL standard with an “Drive-by-Wire Throttle”. This means that if the software designers at Acura had bothered to care about the ‘auto-stick’ shifter, they could have done all of those driver-geek manipulations in a fraction of a second… for a perfect shift, every time. But no. They decided to instead spend their time polishing the brushed aluminum gauges.
Two thumbs down.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Yet despite all that, my next car will absolutely be an automatic. Due, entirely, to traffic congestion.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:22 am
I absolutely agree … most of the time. I’m glad our minivan is an automatic. It’s very smooth and as it’s not designed to be a performance vehicle or anything, we’re not too worried about shifting for going up hills quickly or for power or anything. But, I have to say I love that my main car is our 5-speed Mazda Protege, and that when I go back to driving the van, I reach for the non-existent shifter at every traffic light.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Of course, if you don’t like the cost or the loaner car, there’s always the option of doing the servicing at home, which will if nothing else provide an excellent reason for buying more tools. And perhaps a bigger garage to put them in.