Manual vs Automatic Fuel & Performance Efficiency - what's new in 2009?

motortode
Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:57:09 +0000
General Discussion

I know someone who just bought an expensive new manual shift BMW estate car (a mid-size station wagon - I think it’s a 530i) and claims it is substantially more fuel efficient than an automatic. What I notice is that it rattles, kicks and jars my bones just like a bus, and he kills the engine a couple of times per trip. Tom and Ray wrote a great, balanced response about automatics in 1993 (Columns, Archive, 1993, September 09). But I do not see an update and a lot has happened since 1993. It seems to me that automatics make better shifting decisions at low to medium speeds, and they also come with thrifty versus power shifting selectors. And even if say, you save 1-2 mpg using manual, doesn’t replacing the clutch cancel out the savings? Note, this car does shut down its engine while stopped in traffic. When I search on the internet, I find no decent studies and mostly I see people writing opinions straight out of the sixties. Is there a good study on auto transmission performance that takes into account the facts about current technologies?

15 posts - 7 participants