Quote:
Originally Posted by VIERsr
M cars still have manual transmissions, no drama.
But I think the transmission topic deserves deeper considerations, manual gearboxes make sense when the rest of the car follows the same philosophy, on the wild and analogue 1M the manual gearbox would have been the only viable choice (as it was), an automatic gearbox wouldn't have made sense, when I drove the modern and heavy M3 G80 (both manual and auto) however I found no reasonable reasons to choose the manual gearbox due to the general "digital" feedback of the driving experience, the manual gearbox is simply not up to date with the rest of the car and I found it only a (very reasonable) romantic choice of a few die-hard purist enthusiasts.
But although it is still good that Bmw offers it for an M-car (as does Porsche), I don't really see a match for the M240i's philosophy.
Other sporty but not hardcore cars have been offered with manual transmissions (e.g. Jaguar F Type or Aston Martin V8 Vantage), and the market has rejected them severely for the same reasons.
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One thing I've learned lately is that these turbo cars launch you into oblivion with only the slightest touch of the throttle due to low end torque delivery. They are like ICE equivalents to a Tesla. In a manual you are shifting every second just to keep the car tame and under the speed limit. There's no satisfaction from "revving" the engine out like older engines especially NA. From that standpoint I'm starting to feel the manual just becomes a chore vs true driver enjoyment.
Porsche from what I understand still builds their turbo cars to revv out a bit more in power delivery. They also still have NA cars like the GT4, 4.0 GTS, GT3, etc that are exceptionally suited to high end power and manual transmission sports car buyers who want that experience will gravitate towards those cars.
With that said I'm going to start experimenting with tuning an N55 to have a more linear throttle, torque by gear, etc to see if it can be better adapted to manual enjoyment but I an sure I will still prefer my manual NA cars.