It's worth noting that some cars are better with a dual-clutch. The new BMW M cars for example. BMW isn't putting money into developing their manuals anymore so they are extremely lacking and over a generation old tech. In those cases you would be better off with the dual-clutch. I'm embracing the new technology, but keeping a special spot in my heart for the old-school manual.
Traditional Automatic < Manual ≤ Dual-Clutch
Here are my thoughts on auto versus manual versus DCT, and I've perhaps spent way too much time thinking about this...
In the past, I've been all about manual transmission vehicles. And my perspective I suppose is a bit different than most because I get downranked all over the internet for having this opinion in regards to performance vehicles; in the past, manual transmissions have always, hands-down, been about performance and efficiency. If you drove an automatic anything... it was a clunking POS that would hunt gears when you flogged it, would over-rev itself, would upshift too soon, and would simply have no idea what to do when someone like myself got behind the wheel. They've always been poorly crafted, and poorly executed janky devices that always took the thrill out of driving. That has nothing to do with the fact that they shift for you, and everything to do with the fact that they simply do it wrong. Let's not forget about the parasitic losses of torque converters. That's the reason they're referred to as slush boxes.
But sometime around the year 2007 there was a revolution in auto transmission technology. I believe this was around the time when "locking torque converters" came into existence. I recall the Mercedes SLK and SL were some of the first vehicles to do this, and it was only in Sport mode. I had been driving a friend's automatic 2004 BMW 330ci for a while with an auto transmission, and it pretty much blew my mind and allowed me to understand what a great auto transmission was about. After that, my BMW fetish really started to take on a life of it's own and I started stealing the keys of all of my friends who owned 335's for late-night joy-rides through the twisty parts of town. It was the 335 that I ended up becoming infatuated with... and after driving both the manual and the auto trans versions, it was the automatic that I truly fell in love with. It had this extremely solid predictability to it, and felt like a real precision instrument that would just tick off gears like nobody's business... and it was always in the perfect gear to boot. So my entire perspective of "slush box" had been turned upside down, and I no longer had any reason to despise auto transmissions.
But as it turns out... it's not simply about manual versus auto, or high end versus low end vehicles. Some of these manufacturers excel in one, but not the other. Porsche for example makes the best feeling manual transmission I've ever driven. Something about the throw of the stick, and the way the clutch engages just feels magical, and allows the car to be driven at full boil easily. Their Tiptronic transmissions have always made me feel like the soul of the car was gone, although I've heard the PDK transmission is among the best in the industry... I haven't driven a PDK vehicle yet.
My brother just bought an Audi A3 with a DCT, and... that transmission does nothing for me at all. Perhaps it's the fact that the car seems so slow with the 2.0t engine? I've driven the Audi TT in the past with a manual transmission and I have to say it felt pretty fantastic.
So anyway... it seems these things can be pretty hit or miss... and there's a lot more to evaluating a transmission than simply whether it has a clutch.
What I know for certain is that ZF auto transmissions do it right.
rops:^^^
