Manual Shifting, A Dying Technology

[Yaris Hilton]

There have been automatics blowing doors off of manual cars for 40+ years. I enjoy shifting, too, but as for "separating drivers from operators," there's no more truth to that than there was for knowing how to use a manual choke or hand crank start. Properly designed and programmed automatics will always outperform manuals as the human operator isn't up to snuff on determining the best operating conditions and can't manually perform the shift as quickly. Automatics that don't outperform manuals have design and programming deficiencies.