G20 BMW 3-Series Forum - View Single Post - BMW tries to revive lagging 3 Series sales with new 2019 design that's more BMW-like

530iDriver · 01-07-2019, 05:50 PM

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Originally Posted by IK6SPEED

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Originally Posted by captainaudio

Technology progresses and there are both upsides and downsides to the advances that are made. The classic British Roadsters of 60 years ago may have been very involving and enjoyable and fun to but they were also very primitive and as much as I enjoyed owning them I would not want to have one as my daily driver now. In those days things like power steering and brakes. power seats and windows. climate control (all things that we take for granted today) were looked down upon by "purists" who were in it for the driving experience. Automotive technology has advanced for performance cars and also for the mainstream cars that are looked down upon as "appliances" by many self appointed purists. The reality is that by the standards of 60 years ago even relatively generic family sedans such as the Honda Accord will out accelerate, out brake and out corner many of the performance icons of 50 years ago. A number of yeas ago the 50th anniversary issue of Motor Trend had an article entitled "How Far We've Come". In that article they compared a current Honda Odyssey Minivan (the ultimate "Soccer Mom" vehicle) to the performance icons of 50 years previous and the minivan outperformed them in virtually all categories.

Any car that is driven as a daily driver will be a compromise between comfort and practicality and performance. What I want to avoid is a street car that is too much performance to be usable on the street and not enough performance to be competitive on a track. If I have to compromise I will compromise in the direction comfort, convenience and luxury over raw performance. There is no reason that a car can not have both attributes. Cars like this have been around for years and are referred to as "Grand Touring" or "GT" cars. I find that description fits my BMW M4 and my Jaguar and several other cars perfectly. High performance, fun to drive and comfortable as a daily driver or for a long road trip. As much as I enjoy driving dedicated track cars I certainly would not want to use one to commute to work or make a Costco run. The days when you could drive a car to the track, win a race and then drive the car back home are long gone.

I have cars with a variety of transmissions including MT, DCT and ZF. I enjoy driving all of them and would not consider owning a car that I do not enjoy driving. Even my "Winter Beater" (Porsche Cayenne GTS) is an enjoyable car to drive.

As for MT vs AT (DCT) at this point it is a matter of personal preference. I do not buy into the "MT gives you more control" argument. Modern race cars that race on road courses are almost exclusively paddle shifted and if MTs gave these cars an advantage MTs would be what are used. I enjoy driving MTs and there is a great deal of satisfaction to a well executed heel and toe downshift but in reality however well executed and smooth that downshift may be the blip is at best a really good estimate and will never match the drive shaft and engine speeds with the accuracy of a computer. Of course on many modern MTs the rev matches are automated which to me takes away a lot of the fun of shifting and makes for a "semi-manual" transmission. A number of years ago when I was involved with The Skip Barber Racing School I asked one of the lead instructors (who had recently won the 24 Hours of Daytona) what he thought of the DCT transmission in the E92 M3. His answer was "It shifts better than I can". In reality a modern MT shifts better than anyone can and in manual mode with the paddles you have full control over what gear you are in. In many cases even in full automatic mode on a race track the cars have an uncanny ability to be in the correct gear.

If you are serious about learning car control and high performance driving you will quickly learn that there is a lot more involved than shifting gears.

I will quote the response by the editor of Automobile Magazine in response to a letter in the February 2019 issue titled "The Passion Is Dead" in which the writer of the letter expressed similar views to those expressed by many in this thread.

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We will always love manual gearboxes. But in the context of modern hypercars - especially when driving them quickly on tracks or in other suitably controlled environments - you quickly find thoughts of stick shifting vanish when you are trying to catch your breath after accelerating to 60 mph in less than 3 seconds, braking later than you ever imagined possible, and holding on while cornering at more than 1 g. The way these cars achieve performance might be different than in the past, but the rush is the same as always.

All of that being said my MT cars are in storage for the Winter and I can hardly wait for Spring so I can take them out for spirited drives on the great driving roads in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut.

The classic U.K. Roadster of 60 years ago, whether Triumph, Lotus, Jaguar or whatever were all P.O.S. because the Lucas Electronics were all crap.

Yes, there were other issues, but the Electronics were an absolute cluster f.

I am sure you meant to say the "electrics" not "electronics".