Traffic? That’s No Excuse for Slush

Everyday I wake up, kiss my wife, walk the dog to the coffee shop and then drive to work. I do so by getting on the 101 South, by volume the most heavily trafficked strip of road in the world. I then get to merge onto the 110 South through Downtown Los Angeles. If you’ve never had the pleasure, a toddler could waddle through the interchange faster than the cars go. Moreover, since I’m heading south, I need to merge across seven lanes to get all the way to the left. Traffic sputters along until I’m past the Staples Center and USC and then I can go about 80 mph.

Until I hit the 110/105 interchange. Once there, two lanes of traffic are controlled by two lights that let four cars go at a time in 15-second intervals. It’s a minimum three quarters of a mile back up. Minimum. Once clear of that obstacle, I get to merge onto the 105 West (the freeway Keanu and Sandra bus-jumped in Speed), a sure fire slow crawl. Aside from being one of the main arteries feeding LAX, most of the traffic on the 105 is actually just overflow from the dreaded 405. Before I got this job, I used to judge the quality of my life in L.A. by how many consecutive months I could go without ever setting rubber on that accursed road. And, you guessed it, after the 105 I merge onto the 405. Everyday. I laugh at – no, I spit at – your notion of traffic.

My point? Three days out of four, I do the above dance with a manual transmission and never think twice about it.

There’s a whisper that can be heard if you hang around fast cars and the people that drive them long enough. Listen long and hard enough and it’s something of a perennial whine. It goes like this, “I love performance, but I’m always in traffic. So I got an automatic.” How many times have you heard this? How many times have you said it? I just don’t get it. What’s so bad about rowing-your-own in traffic? Look, if you have a bum knee or are missing a leg then, OK, you’re excused. But if you’re able bodied and still do not want a manual because of traffic? Well… why?

The implication is that if you didn’t have to shift, if you didn’t have to take control of your car’s gears, you’d like owning a manual. If road conditions never changed and you could plow along at a steady state, you’d totally want a manual. But since road conditions force you to change gears, you don’t like to do so. To me that’s like saying, “I would’ve gotten a steering wheel, but the road curves.” I just don’t get it. Neither does my colleague, Mike Febbo, “I used my 911sc with a cable-operated clutch — a sport clutch — as daily driver in Las Vegas for four years. I eventually got another car to drive everyday which was an automatic. I regretted every creeping moment. Just because you’re sitting in a car doesn’t mean your legs become non-functional. Automatic drivers are the people that stand on the moving walkways in airports. They aren’t so you can stand. They’re pedestrian turbochargers. Nature invented legs to walk and operate pedals.” Yeah, Febbo. And another thing, yeah!

OK, maybe the opinion of one Motor Trend editor is a tinge biased. So here’s the opinion of another, Scott Evans, “It’s a rare case when a manual transmission bothers me in traffic. Every car I’ve owned has been a manual and I’ve driven them in all manners of traffic in L.A. and in the San Francisco Bay Area. The only times I ever find myself unhappy with a manual is driving something clearly not meant for the street with a heavy left pedal and grabby racing clutch, such as the Porsche 911 GT3 RS. If my leg starts aching from working the clutch, we have a problem. Otherwise, it doesn’t bother me at all. Unless of course we’re talking about trying to drive a Challenger R/T on the hills of San Francisco in rush hour. Then it gets a little old.”

Obviously, Mr. Evans isn’t as philosophically hard core as either me or Febbo. But he’s still pretty adamant about my larger point: the traffic boogeyman is no reason to forgo a manual transmission. Look, I’m no luddite. I’m also not one of those “manuals or nothing!” crusaders. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, the two best transmissions I’ve ever experienced are found on the Ferrari 458 Italia and the Nissan GT-R. Both of those are dual-clutches with no third pedal. See, all I want is control, control over every aspect of the car. As another Motor Trender — Mike Shaffer — explains, “I’ve never been in traffic and wished for an automatic. However, I have been on an awesome mountain road and prayed for a manual.” Amen. I happen to think that nine times out of ten, the lowest-tech manual makes a significantly better choice than the automatic option. Especially in traffic.

View the original article here