OT: Manual or automatic gearbox? and XC60 opinion...

Even with three speed autos, this affect also depended on the torque characteristics of the engine. As well as how well the box was designed and 'programmed'. Some makers seemed to spend very little time optimising things. For example, a nice revvy sporty engine that is great with a well driven manual is not going to work well with only a 3 or four speed auto. It also depends on how easily the auto does a part throttle change down.

The 7 speed PDK box on my car will drop as many gears as needed, depending on how much acceleration you want. In practice, dropping one gear gives plenty acceleration. Or even the gear it's already in.

No TC transmission I've ever driven jerks away from rest, unless faulty.

Several of my last cars have had a manual option. This one via steering wheel buttons, or the gearchange. They tend to be a 5 minute wonder, as the programming is so good.

See one maker has said they can improve it by adding a gearbox. ;-)

So you're happy having the brake lights on when stopped in a traffic queue? I'm not. As it annoys me others doing it.

I've left foot braked for about 50 years on autos. And not had a problem reverting to a manual. It might be more difficult if you had two identical cars, but one manual one auto.

My previous car I ordered without the "hold assist" so after a few months I retrofitted it (replace single switch with double switch, add fuse and couple of wires onto spare pins of ABS unit, re-program with VCDS lead)

This meant when you came to a stop, the parking brake light would come on as green rather than red by applying the "hand" brake button, you could then take your foot off the brake and the rear brake lights would go out.

Current car, now comes as standard with "hold assist" except when the green parking brake light comes on, and you take your foot off, the rear brake lights stay on, until you touch the accelerator to set off again, so the manufacturer *makes* the brake lights stay on when the car is stopped ... I don't think moving into neutral is enough for them to go off, I think the "hand" brake has to be applied, or gearbox selected to "P" to make them go out.

All of the automatic cars that I have driven in the 1980s to early 2000s (my dad's Citroen GS with C-Matic manual-torque-converter transmission, his Ford Sierra and Honda Accords, and various Fords and Vauxhalls that I've been loaned) have exhibited the same behaviour. With the car stationary on level ground and no brake on (eg just released footbrake) you apply power gradually and suddenly there is a bit of a lurch as the car starts to move, akin to letting a manual clutch in a bit too smartly. Most of these were at least 15 years ago, but the most recent auto that I drove was a Japanese car (I forget what, not not a Honda) which was probably a few years old when I drove it a couple of years ago.

It's not normally a problem, except if you are manoeuvring very slowly and precisely (eg to line up with a towing hitch), which required me to get the engine going just fast enough to start the car moving and then hit the brake to control the movement. With a manual clutch it is much easier.

But a modern automatic may well behave very differently. I doubt whether any automatic that I have driven has had more than the standard 3 gears.

I wasn't particularly a fan of automatics, and then I had to endure the journey from hell in a Focus that had a duff gearbox which kept changing down further and further the more I pressed the power: on a motorway I could have 50 mph in any of the gears, but it took a long time of very gentle acceleration to get any faster than 50. And once I did, some pillock would pull out ahead of me, causing me to brake, and then the process would have to begin again. If I had not just begun a long journey home and wanted to get back ASAP rather than have to wait for a replacement car to be found and delivered, I would have run the breakdown number and got them to replace it.

Sadly that experience has rather unfairly coloured my impression of autos.

As I said, try a decent modern auto. Those with plenty ratios tend to lock up the TC after moving off. Better for emissions and MPG.

A decent modern auto will usually select the same gear as a skilled diver would too. And better than many.

Certainly the sun/planet transmission in my Auris hybrid doesn't do this (neither did the rubber band gearbox (son of DAF) in the Rover 45 I had). It has nothing other than Drive, Park, Neutral, and B (for engine braking). No gears, as such, at all - as far as the user is concerned, anyway.

The lurch you experienced was, I'm sure, due to the Borg-Warner and related slush-boxes that were the only available autos in the old days.

I wonder if this is to appease the US market where your brake lights going out when in a queue is often taken to imply to the car behind that you are setting off. My sister was rear-ended as she was waiting in the middle of the road to turn left when they lived in Boston. She braked to a halt, indicating left, and then applied the handbrake and came off the footbrake, waiting for a gap in the oncoming traffic. A few seconds later her car was hit from behind by a driver who had interpreted her brake lights going out as signifying that she was starting to set off - he volunteered that reason in his police statement.

If you were stationary, wouldn't you always have either the footbrake or handbrake on? Or do you tend to come off the brake and just rely on being on level ground to stop you rolling forwards or backwards? When I stop (manual or automatic) I put the handbrake on - and release it in conjunction with letting the clutch up (in a manual car) and applying power.

To guard against being rear-ended, if I am stopped in the middle of the road waiting to turn, I tend to keep my brake lights on (as an exceptional case) until I can see the car behind me has stopped, and then come off because they have done their job of making sure he knows I'm stationary, and I don't want to dazzle him any more than I want to be dazzled by someone else. There was one junction near where I used to live, where I on several occasions I had cars hoot madly and swerve around me - apparently because they had interpreted my initial right-indicator as meaning "I am going to accelerate and overtake" rather than "I am going to pull into the marked central turn-right lane and come to a halt" and were then nonplussed when my brake lights came on when they were expecting me to speed up. I suppose people saw the "Start of dual carriageway 300 yards" sign and didn't see the cross-roads and destination signs that preceded or followed it.

Not when the car has "hold" that keeps the brakes applied for you, without you having to do anything, no.

What it actually does is use the ABS servo to apply pressure to all four wheels, but after several minutes (e.g. waiting a busy level crossing) the ABS can tend to overheat, so then it applies the "wind on" electric handbrake to the rear wheels only.

Very odd. Most autos will move off on a level road with no throttle applied. Called creep.

At one time some would lurch when you engaged drive or reverse, if the brakes weren't on. Most these days require the brakes on before you can move from neutral or park, where the engine was started. On a poorly maintained car with a too high idle speed this lurch could be dangerous to the unwary.

And often badly adjusted.

The basic B-W of the 60s had a bowden cable between the throttle and box which controlled when it changed gear. It also controlled the kick down function. Get some wear in the throttle mechanism, and you lost kickdown. Rather than fix/adjust the throttle linkage, most simply adjusted the gearbox cable. Until it kicked down again. Messing up the relationship. Ending up with incorrect gear change speeds, rough changes, and a bad thump engaging drive, etc. And then blamed the gearbox. ;-)

Presumably it has to detect that the car really has come to a complete halt before it locks the brake on (without pedal pressure or handbrake), otherwise you could be braking to very slow speed, but expect that as soon as you release the footbrake, the car will roll the last few feet until you apply it again "for keeps", and find that when it gets below the threshold it irretrievable brakes and you have to countermand that with a bit of power.

There are a number of "helpful" features that could very quickly become a PITA because they override something that you would do yourself. Hill-start assist *could* be a help, though having unexpectedly had to do on on a 1:3 hill (without psyching myself up for it) and found that it was dead easy, I can't quite understand why anyone would have problems. But cars which forcibly apply the brakes until you press the accelerator, or which (for an EV) apply some regeneration retardation when you come off the power even without the footbrake being pressed, well those would take a lot of getting used to and having to work around.

As usual, the moral is "all automatic helpful gadgets should be capable of being turned off according to personal preference".

Hells bells.

Sounds a bit like the first time I had a do on a motorbike!

Hmm. I'd forgotten about creep. I wonder if it was that the transition from creep to normal running was jerky, rather than the transition from stationary to creep. There was certainly something about all of them which made it difficult to accelerate smoothly from rest to (for example) 30 mph, without a jump, either from when the car was stationary or else from when it was creeping very slowly. I presume a dodgy transition from 1st to 2nd would cause the symptom, though you'd expect it to be at a fairly high speed (eg faster than walking pace) whereas my vague memory of it was that it happened at a lower speed.

I would have been used to driving a manual car by the time I first drove one of my dad's automatics (probably the C-Matic Citroen): being a company car (*), they wouldn't let me drive the car till I'd passed the test. So anything which had to be driven differently from a manual in terms of how you applied power (apart, obviously, from having no clutch and not needing to change gear) would have been very noticeable. But that doesn't explain the problem with later cars: by then I'd have been used to driving a variety of manuals (as opposed just to the car I'd learned on) and the technology would be more recent.

That C-Matic was a really nasty transmission. It had a gear layout like a

(*) When my sister was learning to drive a few years after me, Dad told her that it was a company rule that before sons or daughters of employees were allowed to drive a company car, they had to have an interview and demonstration drive with the very taciturn, humourless and irascible CEO of the company to make sure they were trustworthy and responsible. I backed up Dad's story and made up a scare story about what an ordeal my "interview" had been. She believed us - until several weeks later when Dad couldn't keep a straight face any longer. She called us both bastards - and rightly so ;-)

I believe so. I'll be buying pads and discs more regularly then. I have a (annoying apparently to my passengers, but that's their problem :) ) habit when in traffic in my manual of using the gearbox to slow down and applying the handbrake to come to a standstill. Saves constantly shifting feet.

I don't like the sort of loose rock you seem to get in park but as you say with the handbrake on in drive there's a bit of lurch.

So i've been knocking it into neutral and putting the handbrake on.

This has a stupid push-button 'hand'brake though and it turns into a faff setting off again, you've to use the button and the brake pedal and shift the stick and it's really fussy about the order of things.

That is true of cars with torque converters IME - they free run more easily, however if you force it to change down, you still get engine braking.

Might depend a bit on which "mode" the box is in. On mine it changes down at higher revs when in sport mode.

Probably a bit more than a manual.

Much the same, handbrake and neutral or just handbrake.

Or just lazy sods who never thing of the person behind them!

Remember the US court cases where poor car design was blamed for them 'running away'? They were autos.

It can roll a few inches before the pawl engages. On a hill where that would jerk, I control the roll back or forward speed with the footbrake.

I never use the handbrake. Footbrake on with the left foot when I engage drive.

Those who insist on only using one foot with an auto are just making work for themselves. Although left foot braking does take a bit of practice.