"James Wilkinson" wrote in message
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What on earth could anyone have against an automatic?

They tend to change gear at the wrong time when I'm not expecting - in
particular when in a manual car I'd stay in third gear on the approach to a
roundabout and floor the accelerator while staying in third rather than
having the transmission engage second half-way round and get a sudden extra
burst of power. Knowing this foible, you very gingerly increase the power to
accelerate away, and go from sluggish in third to kick-in-the-back in second
without any control of the transition between the two.

I also find it much harder to set off from rest smoothly in an automatic:
you gradually increase the throttle pressure and at some point the gearbox
engages and the car surges forwards, whereas in a manual you get the
fine-tuning of being able to let the clutch in gradually.

Finally, it's virtually impossible to change down smoothly if you manually
select L as you are about to go down a steep hill where engine braking is
needed - again down to the lack of manual control of the clutch and the fact
that you are selecting a lower gear than you might select in a manual.

I've never driven a DSG automated manual car (I'd like to try it) but that
would probably suit me better, when used in manual mode - let me decide
*when* to change gear but let the gearbox handle the mechanics of changing
gear smoothly without me having to match engine speed to new gear.

But I'd have to be very lazy not to want to do all that myself anyway ;-)