The past two days, I have been driving an Elantra rental (which is probably the best rental I have ever driven and left me wondering how dumb you would have to be to buy a new Corolla, Civic or Avenger over the Hyundai) with a shiftable automatic. I was wondering if for some reason you had to buy an automatic, would you want it to be a shiftable one or would you rather just have a regular automatic?
A shiftable one of course! That way I have some way to make it drop a gear other than grinding the gas pedal into the floor and yelling "shift down you POS!!!"
Hurst solved this back in the day with the dual gate "his/hers" shifter that GM put in a ton of auto performance cars. I have a 73 Hurst olds with one....pretty cool actually. on one side you have the typical auto pattern where you put it in drive or whatever and go, but on the other side is a racheting style auto shifter like a lot of drag racers use. I guess what I'm trying to say is "both" would get my vote. Sometimes I might want to shift it while other times just leaving it in drive would be appealing.
That is something I like about the trans in my Charger. Long road trip just stick it in drive and forget it. Curving twisty back roads to have fun just start bumping the shifter side to side to manually shift up and down. The new intake and Diablo helped with the slight delay in pressing throttle and actually going as well. So combine that with the auto stick and it is a winner.
Oh and the Cutlass has a Hurst ratchet shifter going in.
GameboyRMH wrote: A shiftable one of course! That way I have some way to make it drop a gear other than grinding the gas pedal into the floor and yelling "shift down you POS!!!"
even more, I want one that will UPSHIFT when I want it to
My wife's TSX has the shiftable automatic. I almost never use it unless I'm really bored. Even in Drive through the fun stuff, that trans is usually right with me.
Shiftable, but I've never driven a vehicle so equipped that I thought worked well enough to use it that way.
I starting calling those paddle shifters, "slush paddles". The lag time drives me nuts.
I'd have to drive a newer one to make a good decision here, but so far I have never been in one that actually worked well. The auto could have been a very good auto, but having it in "3" meant that it could be in either 1, 2, or 3--I still wasn't really shifting, and it is actually more annoying than just leaving it in D. The downshifting is fine (albiet often slow), but the upshifts take forever and have me screaming at the thing that it is wasting my gas.
Probably depends on the execution of the shiftable box.
The current Volvo has a shiftable box. Almost never use it as such. Even with the transmission acting up in regular mode. It's just kinda a pain and not fun to do manually.
The only shiftable auto I ever drove that was worth a crap was in my '71 Formula 400. I put a manual valve body and ratchet shifter in the turbo 400. It did what I wanted when I wanted, no excuses.
As long as it isn't a 'shiftable' CVT. That pissed me off. It like buying new vinyl siding that looks like brick.
I like the shiftable automatic transmissions, as long as they react quickly and like they mean it. I forget what car it was, but I did drive one that had the slush paddles that N. Sperlo mentioned above, it was awful.
Some years ago I rented a Lincoln LS V8 with a manual shift feature. It shifted fast and strong, but had 2 stupid flaws. First, the manual gate was to the right, away from the driver, and second, the pattern seemed backwards to me. It seems to me that if you want to emulate a sequential shifter, you should be pulling the stick back to shift up. Pushing forward to shift up is counterintuitive.
I guess that I should stop complaining and be glad that Lincoln made that car at all.
In reply to HappyAndy:
The V8 LS was fun, though. Felt like a small P71.
I'm thinking about selling both of my Porsches to buy a new one with a PDK.
N Sperlo wrote: I starting calling those paddle shifters, "slush paddles". The lag time drives me nuts.
that's why the "need" for twin clutch "automatics" … no lag time with them … quicker than you can with a foot operated clutch
I've got an Outback with the shiftable 4-speed auto. I leave it in drive 99% of the time unless I'm going downhill and don't want to ride the brakes. If I want to shift, I drive the Miata.
OTOH, my dad used to have an IS-F with the paddles, and the few times I drove that, I used the paddles like they were going out of style.
In reply to wbjones:
Octuplet clutch for that need to get from 1st to 6th in the blink of an eye.
In reply to HappyAndy:
The Lincoln SST also didn't upshift automatically so you could bounce the rev limiter. 
Mom had 2 of them, v8 and then a v6 both with SST.
My magnum has the autostick, which is okay, but slow to react. The new dual clutch transmissions are in a league of their own. My Dad's 135i has the 7 speed dual clutch, makes everything else look super slow and laggy.
If i'm thinking correctly, a dual clutch would be able to go 1-6 as fast as 1-2 because 1-3-5 would be on one shaft and 2-4-6 would be on the other.
I've had shiftable autos a few times and i found them useful. First was my old 97 Intrepid that was converted to autostick. I liked that one especially much because after i put a ~3300 rpm stall converter in it, you could go heavy throttle and upshift at the stall rpm and just be riding a wave of nice torque until you were up to speed without having to listen to higher rpms (i had dual flowmaster 40s on it, too). I think the great thing about manual modes is you can give a lot more throttle without the thing downshifting itself.
Another one i had was the 4spd auto on a mazda3. I liked that one mostly because the shift gate felt right. It was FORWARD to downshift and BACK to upshift. I agree with Motor Trend and the other car mags who constantly harp on auto shift gates that shift in the 'wrong' direction.
My least favorite thing about the old manumatics that is mostly fixed with the news ones is that the old ones didnt blip the throttle so downshifting was lurchy. New ones almost all blip the throttle for you so downshifting is smooth, even into 1st.
depends if it really is an automatic transmission or a manual with automatic shift function
oldtin wrote: depends if it really is an automatic transmission or a manual with automatic shift function
I am talking about a slush box with torque converter.
Cotton wrote: Hurst solved this back in the day with the dual gate "his/hers" shifter that GM put in a ton of auto performance cars. I have a 73 Hurst olds with one....pretty cool actually. on one side you have the typical auto pattern where you put it in drive or whatever and go, but on the other side is a racheting style auto shifter like a lot of drag racers use. I guess what I'm trying to say is "both" would get my vote. Sometimes I might want to shift it while other times just leaving it in drive would be appealing.
The car I drove you could either put it in drive or you could bump it over and shift.
93EXCivic wrote: The past two days, I have been driving an Elantra rental (which is probably the best rental I have ever driven and left me wondering how dumb you would have to be to buy a new Corolla, Civic or Avenger over the Hyundai) with a shiftable automatic. I was wondering if for some reason you had to buy an automatic, would you want it to be a shiftable one or would you rather just have a regular automatic?
I'd rather have a manual shifted automatic than an automatic automatic or a stir-stick.
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