Wouldn't a manual transmission be better in city traffic?

[Elkins45]

I didn’t own a passenger car with an automatic until 2023 but now that I do it’s really spoiled me for city driving. I love my Mazda but I don’t want to drive it in city traffic anymore.

 

[02SE]

We still have two manual transmission cars, but they are just for fun drives. Rarely is any kind of real traffic encountered. I can't recall the last time I drove either in a larger city.

 

[ATex7239]

Automatic all the way.

 

[The motor guy]

Manual trans all the way. Always had, always will although getting harder to find here in the US. If I had to drive in the city/heavy traffic auto trans would definitely be preferable, but I don't . Not sure if the trend in stop/start will survive city/heavy traffic. Time will tell.

I'm thinking about getting a honda atv for the manual transmission. These cvt offroad vehicles are boring to drive imo.

 

[Snagglefoot]

Talk about transmissions is so yesterday. The EVs with Auto Pilot will take care of your daily crawl through traffic. Just relax and surf your smart phone.

 

[fdcg27]

It really depends upon the traffic.
We daily drove sticks for years and rarely had any complaints, except for those rare occasions when one of us would be stuck in a long stop and go conga line as a consequence of either road work or a serious accident up ahead.
In most traffic situations, the lights are well timed and you can just leave it in second and roll in and out of the throttle as needed without ever using the brakes or the clutch.
In really heavy traffic, your left leg got a bit of a workout.

 

[bighead2586]

I swear about every 800ft we have a stop light now in my area and combine that with all the people who drive 10 below the speed limit, you can get stopped at 5 in a row. Combine that with having a trailer and I think that's just hell on the transmission heat wise. After that hurricane I think the timing is off too on all these lights. Anyways, wouldn't a manual transmission be better in this situation? Minus the hassle of shifting? You don't necessarily have to go through all the gears just to stop in a line of cars

I think it depends on your attitude toward driving. If you view your car as an appliance to get you from A to B a manual will drive you nuts in anything other than open road driving. If you like the experience of controlling your speed, optimizing momentum through slow traffic, and accelerating quickly and smoothly from a lower speed, then heavier traffic is an opportunity to explore and improve your skills and interact with your car.

I'm somewhat in between in that I love driving, but if I'm in the wrong mood I get tired of the shifting and wish I was driving an automatic. All in all I like the control you have over the car in a manual vs an automatic. I also feel like it makes me a more attentive and overall better driver because you can't mail it in like you can in an automatic. You also are less likely to lose your sense of speed and get a speeding ticket from not paying attention.

 

[The motor guy]

Driving a manual depends mostly on the driver's habits, if you drive it like most people drive an automatic in city traffic, the clutch(maybe your knee!) won't last as long. But you also control the gear selection and you can see what's going on in front of you, and predict what's going to happen and can always be in the right gear at the right time and minimize shift and stopping, so it can be not too bad. The dumb automatics are annoying and probably the 3 shifts down and back up, everytime you're on and off the gas, isn't great, but most of them survive that well enough too. I tend to drive the Outback like my Focus, so it just goes from low idle to fast idle in traffic for the most part.
I certainly don't mind the odd time I get into city traffic with a manual, I just try to go the average speed of traffic and not actually stop too often to minimize slipping the clutch. Probably if I was in stop and go for more than a couple minutes everyday, I might want an automatic?
We've never replaced a clutch or done any work on any of our manuals, and the 3 cars so far seem to be scrapped or sold up near 200k miles. But we live out in the country, so if I come to an "effective" stop instead of complete stop, often the clutch is really only slips for a couple complete stops on most of my trips.
I used to do autocross with my old Focus and did dozens of race launches with it, but even with sticky-ish tires, its weight distribution and fwd prevents too much load on the clutch, and I didn't power shift it into 2nd, as it would just light up the inside tire and send you wide.

My .02$ is if you have some mechanical sympathy, almost all manuals will go the life of the car with a couple fluid changes.

They don't necessarily do that. My automatic doesn't always shift all the way down. It will do like 10mph in 3rd at idle in parking lots

 

[CarlB]

I swear about every 800ft we have a stop light now in my area and combine that with all the people who drive 10 below the speed limit, you can get stopped at 5 in a row. Combine that with having a trailer and I think that's just hell on the transmission heat wise. After that hurricane I think the timing is off too on all these lights. Anyways, wouldn't a manual transmission be better in this situation? Minus the hassle of shifting? You don't necessarily have to go through all the gears just to stop in a line of cars

Yes, beats riding the brake pedal constantly.

 

[Strumpan_]

Just my 2 cents, if you cant slip a clutch in stop and go trafic, maybe dont even think about a manual car.

 

[Badgerstate]

No because unless you have something with granny gear, youd just be burning up your clutch instead.

 

[Patman]

I have never seen the transmission temperature go above 170F in my Corvette even when crawling along in bad traffic on a 90 degree day. This 8 speed auto runs very cool. Most of the time it doesn’t even get above 140 degrees.

 

[demarpaint]

The short answer is no. If you know how a clutch works, and a torque converter in an automatic it becomes obvious that a stick is going to wear out faster. Plus as already mentioned in heavy traffic like we see in the Metro NY area it can be a royal PITA driving a stick in traffic. I started driving in the mid 70's, I had in my fleet at least one stick since about 6 months after I started driving, and still do today. Even with a granny gear, there's still some slight wear every time you take off from a dead stop, granted less that something w/o it. Once my van is gone that will be the last stick vehicle I own.

 

[Lyman]

After many many years of driving a Semi, No!

 

[The motor guy]

After many many years of driving a Semi, No!

You don't even have to touch the clutch every time on those though. Mainly just starting off I think.

 

[Lyman]

You do if you stop.

 

[The motor guy]

You do if you stop.

Same thing stopping taking off etc

 

[cbear]

Don't ever get a sore back or knee injury. If I over do it, my back will sometimes lock up. Makes drive a stick pure hell.

 

[Drifter]

No way . I spend alot of time in stop n go traffic. Austin,Tx has some of the worst. It would be miserable not to mention clutch component wear.

 

[ekpolk]

I was a die hard manual transmission purist early on. I loved my 1988 Civic Sedan 5-spd manual, which I bought new and drove for ten years. Two things changed my outlook. First, I did a stretch of temporary duty that forced me to do some routine big city commute driving. That was marginally tolerable, but an exhausting drag. Then I sustained a knee injury which made it nearly impossible to drive my beloved stick (at least not with either pain or serious awkwardness) for several months. For a bit, my wife drove me to and from work (not a huge deal; we lived on base).

After these experiences, I realized that there was really no practical reason to stay with a stick. Fun, sure. Would I condemn a "purist" who decides to stay with a stick, never. But for me, the choice was obvious and overwhelming, and I've neither looked back nor regretted it.

Fast forward to today, in a very odd irony, my new 2025 Camry (they're all hybrids now with the current iteration of what Toyota calls the eCVT; no belts and cones, just electric motors geared together), does a reasonably good job of simulating manual trans behavior if you choose to activate that feature (mine's an SE and even includes paddle "shifters"!). In every other automatic where I've tried the manual shifting feature (07 Avalon, 17 BMW 1-series, 23 Highlander), I've dismissed it, finding it to be an absolute abomination. In the current Camry, though, it's actually sort of fun to "play" with it, and I do so once or twice a week when I feel like it. Apart from the obvious lack of clutch action, it comes close to feeling "real."