As the years pass by and technology continues to progress across all industries, we've seen some major paradigm shifts. In the automotive industry, the shift -- no pun intended -- is the move from standard gearboxes to new-age automated manual transmissions.
First it was "F1" transmissions, then it was single-clutch sequential manuals, and now it has come to the dual-clutch 'boxes.
While many folks have embraced the new automated manuals, and automakers are actually ceasing to produce do-it-yourself transmissions, we're left counting down how many vehicles are left with a "stick"
Personally, I love them. To me, there's a time and place for a dual-clutch transmission and that's at the track.
But one of Motor Trend's reviewers seems to think otherwise. While driving the all-new BMW M5 with a "stick," he points out that vehicles of this caliber with standards feel clumsy and all around it doesn't seem to gel. To us it's pretty clear he concludes that it really is fit for the high-tech, dual-clutch transmission.
That being said, we have to ask:
Has BMW's new M5 been dumbed down by the manual transmission, or is that just a cop-out line said by posers that want to pretend they're Michael Schumacher and in a race car? This week on Ignition, Carlos Lago revisits the BMW M5 to test out something that was missing from the first test: a manual transmission. Is the 6-speed stick shift better than the standard automatic twin-clutch version?
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