What's the most SE-R-like manumatic?
Andrew
andrew90s02@yahoo.com
Thu, 11 Jul 2002 14:19:34 -0500
Brian, Ben, Jaret,
Thank you all for your suggestions. Certainly there will be a trade-off.
There's no reasonably priced manumatic which is as good as a good driver with a
5-sp manual. However, the MR2 is one of the first true SMT transmissions,
similar in concept to the F1 trannys with the paddle shift (an option on the
2003 M3, and on a Ferrari). In the MR2, the manumatic uses the exact same base
gearbox as the fully manual MR2 with the 5 speed. The difference is that
there's a hydraulic clutch and shift mechanism which is activated with a +/-
gear lever. You can accellerate right up to the rev limiter. When you
downshift, it "blips" the throttle to match revs. The biggest disadvantage
(and it is a big one) is that the upshifts are very slow (2/3rds of a second),
but I hear that this can be ameliorated by letting off of the throttle during
shifting. So it wouldn't be good for autoxing or racing, but for a
performance-oriented car that also has to serve as a commuter car, it might be
OK.
-Andrew