New Ford Bronco

[cedica]

No punks interested in a stick. Might as well be a helicopter cockpit.

Are you saying that Fast & Furious franchise is a work of fiction? I watched it as a documentary.

[angry]

I hope/plan to never own an automatic, I’ll be the last holdout.

You aren't the only one. I learned to drive on a stick and every vehicle I've ever owned has been a stick.

I also appreciate the value of it as an anti-theft device, particularly when I lived/worked in Los Angeles, SF Bay area and Miami. The only "problem" I've ever encountered is when I had to valet and none of the valet drivers knew how to park my car.

[Matt]

I hope/plan to never own an automatic, I’ll be the last holdout.

You aren't the only one. I learned to drive on a stick and every vehicle I've ever owned has been a stick.
I also appreciate the value of it as an anti-theft device, particularly when I lived/worked in Los Angeles, SF Bay area and Miami. The only "problem" I've ever encountered is when I had to valet and none of the valet drivers knew how to park my car.

I'll be holding out, too.
The anti-theft piece is just icing on the cake.
Someone got into my FJ a few months ago when I left it unlocked overnight in the driveway. I found it parked crooked about five feet downhill from where I left it, seat scooted way back for a tall thief, but still there! An acquaintance with a manual tranny left her keys in an unlocked locker at a Denver rec center. Security cameras captured a woman watch her leave, raid the locker, then go out into the parking lot holding up the key fob, pressing the button until she found the car. She got in and shortly thereafter, got out and threw the keys on the ground in a huff. Ha!
Many basic skills are being lost as people devolve into useless shites and let tech do everything for them.

The valet thing never occurred to me. Damn

[Scott P]

I still have my old manual 4x4, but the advantages of a manual have disappeared. Other than push starting and anti-theft device, what advantages do they offer? A few decades ago, manuals used to offer more gears, better gas mileage, and better performance. Now the opposite is true. Automatics offer more gears, better gas mileage, and better performance.

[mtree]

I still have my old manual 4x4, but the advantages of a manual have disappeared. Other than push starting and anti-theft device, what advantages do they offer? A few decades ago, manuals used to offer more gears, better gas mileage, and better performance. Now the opposite is true. Automatics offer more gears, better gas mileage, and better performance.

That's mostly true, but not completely. I know the power I can manually generate (or manipulate) on my Jeep is far superior than what I could on the automatic version. The auto version was a dog going up hills. Otherwise, yes, autos these days offer better performance.

[angry]

what advantages do they offer?

Fun factor of shifting gears and not getting bored driving.

[Scott P]

I know the power I can manually generate (or manipulate) on my Jeep is far superior than what I could on the automatic version. The auto version was a dog going up hills. Otherwise, yes, autos these days offer better performance.

What year? The newer Wranglers have an 8-speed auto. Pre-2018 the Wrangeler autos had 3-5 speeds.

On paper at least, a 2018 and newer Wrangler should have lower gears available with the automatic.

[Conor]

one could easy wire in a kill switch to their fuel pump or starter circuit. It's what I'm doing to my "modded" offroad vehicle. Of course, there's already a series of switches for lights, lockers and the like, so it's easy to have some light switches or a combination thereof to trigger the starting system or fuel pump. A dream of mine is to road the vehicle across the world, so I'm more worried about countries in south america and africa than I am about denver. Dual batteries with a voltage sensing relay that can "self jump" builds in nice redundancy. All this costs money, but it isn't really that expensive. I'll happily trade a few dollars solving problems I don't really have for the convenience of not having to drive a manual transmission. I've never really driven a vehicle that is desirable to thieves I guess. My grand am was worth about $700 when I gave it away.

My high school car was a manual and I had fun driving it. In suburban Phoenix and a 3 mile commute to high school, it was awesome. I took a trip to cali with a couple of girlfriends my senior year and it was "miserable" sitting in traffic working the clutch (one of the girl's car) and I swore I would never again own a manual transmission. Today, my car is still packed with girls but in a very different way and I am happy to have made a promise to myself to not have a manual transmission, especially with all the screaming for blankets, goldfish and juice boxes. Times certainly do change...

[justiner]

[TomPierce]

what advantages do they offer?

Fun factor of shifting gears and not getting bored driving.

You can also start a stick with a dead battery if you have even a moderate downhill slope to get going. "Popping the clutch" is a lost art...along with priming a white gas camp stove, belaying without a GriGri, etc etc etc.

-Tom

[Will_E]

One other notable advantage to a manual is reliability. The most common first major failure point in a modern vehicle is the automatic transmission. And they’re very expensive to replace or repair.

[nyker]

For stick vs auto, depends on the vehicle and how you're using it.

I've always had a manual transmission car for the above reasons people cite. I learned how to drive on a manual Ford Tractor.

When younger, as a father-son hobby we rebuilt 'classic' mustangs (model years 1965-1973), finding dead clunkers and making them live again

In those days of less responsibility, I didn't take road trips or travel anywhere since we couldn't afford to. Over the years used a couple of the faster cars to race and manual trannies ruled (this was because in a manual, better gear ratios were more easily available, they allowed better control of useful torque curve when 'revving' higher better matching it to the engine powerband (when matched to the right rear axle ratio), they were lighter (more valuable in racing), cheaper, easier to work on, less complicated and sheer fun driving).

Growing up driving in New York, I found manual trannies were better with control in the snow-most cars were rear wheel drive back then. Maybe some of the new automatics are better now, don't know. I hear 4Runners have this crawl feature and things like that which could make a stick less advantageous. I drove in a rental 2020 Mustang GT last year which with 460hp even in automatic trim was a rocket off the line and had a long power curve. Also, when i came out in the morning before school and my car was dead, I often could jump in a pop the clutch to get it going, not really possible in an automatic.

With all that said, I haven't actually registered a car to myself in a long time as I've used rentals for work and most travel for in my professional adult life since owning something doesn't make sense currently.

If I were to get a vehicle now, which I actually soon might, I might lean towards an automatic given the longer trips I'd be making and the inevitable traffic which is everywhere now which would make a manual less appealing. I'd also less likely get a car I'd be racing anywhere so those advantages would go away.

The new Bronco would be pretty cool in manual though, unless there some better automatic feature with something like the "his/her" shifter like GM put to add into vintage Musclecars or some 4Runner-like all-terrain drive control features.