I recently completed a 600-mile road trip with the Long-Term Nissan Versa. The interior is extremely roomy, and the seats are very comfortable, even after 200 miles of driving. I'm 6'3", so interior comfort is something I don't often find in a compact car. One minor irritation is the placement of the cup holders, which are placed in such a way that I had to lean forward and reach down every time I wanted to hae a sip of coffee... The windshield and windows are arranged brilliantly and afford great visibility in all directions.
While I greatly enjoyed the roomy interior, and the amazing visibility, shifting through the six gears requires concentrated effort. The gears are spaced so closely together that it is almost impossible to quickly grab the proper gear as you're trying to accelerate. Similarly, getting from 1st into 2nd is impossible without riding the clutch. Shifting gears in the Versa requires focus and deliberation and if traffic conditions are already tense the additional stress doesn't help matters. The engine is also nothing to write home about.
Too bad such a comfortable ride was burdened with a terrible transmission and a wimpy engine.
Thomas Blood, Executive Director @ 16,821 miles
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At least it has a working transmission
^ true that.
for all the car nuts here though. -
I thought sticks were gods gift to man, and everyone in the world should drive one so that we are all better drivers? (because of the quality of connection to the car, and other intanagables you love to talk about)
With all respect to manual tranny drivers out there....it's not the linkages and clutch that makes the driver, it's the nut behind the wheel.
Yes, opfreak, and your point is...?
Opfreak is, I think, saying that what's the point of a manual transmission that doesn't link one to the road and the engine in a nice harmony? Not much in my opinion, but a well designed manual tranny (aka one Nissan hasn't designed) makes all the difference in the world (at least compared to a conventional automatic).
jr1 is right.
my bigger point is, the manual tranny police likes to scream because the manual is dieing, yet personally, reading tons of blogs/forums, tons of manuals just seem poorly designed. Yet they hold out that the manual is the way to go
nissian seems to be extremly guilty of this.
But even cars like the civic si, which while alot of people praise, read the si forums, and people complain about the 2-3 shift, or 4-3 shift, or the shifter just popping out of 3rd... also noise, some of which is fixed by replacing the fluid with syn.
read the mazdaspeed forums, you hear of spongy shifts, also grinding in 2nd, and 2-3 shifts.
subby owners complaing about dropping gears in some of their 5speeds.
stories like that can be found all over.
The era of the manual is dieing, engineering isn't being put into it, and designs are clearly lagging.
Sad? maybe, but thats the reality of the thing, like carburators .
Haha, god forbid we have to lean forwards to drink something in our cars!
From what I've heard though, the Versa has a noticeably more flexible and powerful engine than most of its competitors, notably the Fit. When I was shopping for my Fit, I considered the Versa but most people told me it was more of a low-strung commuter car than a fun city car that needs to be revved. Which engine do you prefer, the Versa's or the Fit's?
Opfreak
Sure you can find examples of manual failing but they pale in comparision to the stories of automatics failing. (There's another thread going on right now about all the Honda autoboxes that failed on the TL's etc).
My inlaws Volvo S60 has had its auto trans changed twice, frighting to think what will happen when it's out of warrantee.
The latest market craze to putting 6 speed automatics in everything will lead to repair bills that exceed the value of a lot of used cars.
Can't beat a good stick shift, that's just the way it is.
a good stick shift can be beat by a good auto, or semi auto.
humans cannot react as fast as machines can be made to be. To say otherwise is just living with your hand in the sand.
do you have some extra control, yes. But given more and more autos are getting more manual like controls, that atvanged is being limited to just reaction time... Which as time goes forward all autos will be faster then men in being able to shift gears.
they might be able to make the change faster but they can't know in advance what to shift to. As I'm going into a curve, I know what's ahead of me. The car can only know what's happening now (if that).
Actually they already have vehical you can take if you really need everything to be done for you. It's called a bus.
John Henry was a steel drivin' man...
I love manual tranny pushers. They pick up one thing and ignore the rest.
Yes that trany does not know whats coming up ahead.
But I also said that more and more cars are coming with manual controls for the auto tranny.
And those controls in most cases are currently slower then a true stick.
But thats changing, soon you will have the comfort of an auto, with the quck shift of a manual when you want it.
trannys like that of the is-f. or the dsg variants will become more and more common.
and then what will the excuse be?
like the gt-r first drive. 'the feel of the manual is just better'. Thats nice it feels better, does it really perform better? answer soon will be no, in nearly all cases
opfreak, when I'm driving home from work I really couldn't care less if I am getting a 10 ms faster gear change with a DSG. It's not all about the pure numbers, as any true driving enthusiast can attest to. It's about tactility, feedback, response.... many intangibles that can't be captured on paper. Driving a true manual is simply fun - it is being able to balance and directly control another aspect of the drive.
You either agree or you don't, and there's really no point in arguing about it. If you want to drive automatics then fine, I don't know why you need to be so defensive about it. Let the manual drivers have their fun too.
i'm being as defensive as the people that support the manual as being a god-send.
when reality is. Outside of a few cases, the manual transmission is all but dead, and frankly. useless.
And i'm assuming that you drive a bmw. So how do you feel about every other atrificle feel you are starting to have in the car?
drive by wire, ecm that controls everything the engine does. traction control. now you have electric power steering. Every bit of 'feel' you have for the car is already controlled for you. Yet for some reason manual people feel a need to hang on to that knob, that gives them a sense of control and connection, when in reality there is none.
To quote Jeep: It's a manual thing. You wouldn't understand.
;-)
I, for one, am excited about the poliferation of dual clutch assemblies. But I still want that control. If I could get a DC with a rowbox, I'd be pretty darn happy.
I'll just jump in with bimmerjay here a little to say that manuals are fun. I won't go into numbers and all that. From that aspect, technology is going to win out. But if you want to drive for fun and you like a manual, they are...well...fun.
From a purely practical perspective they don't make sense. But if enjoyment is part of what you seek, and if a manual adds to the enjoyment, then having one is just fine I think.
I think everyone agrees that a person should drive what makes them happy though. Forget what's better over all, it just matters what's better for the individual.
estreka, I feel the same way. Remove the clutch pedal, and instead of paddles, give me a regular gear shifter to control the manual mode on a DSG. I think that would be loads of fun as a hybridized alternative to the auto or manual dichotomy.
"Outside of a few cases, the manual transmission is all but dead, and frankly. useless. "
You actually should qualify that with "in the United States".
A quick look around the parking lot at work here in Vancouver showed about 50% of cars available with a stick shift have one. In europe it's higher then that.
The reality is the car makers will build whatever sells. As long as there are people who enjoy driving left, there will be stick shifts.
I think it's sad that in order to provide all the cool feature junk that you don't need, they take so much cost outof something that you do need like a transmission.
Yes I drive a BMW. It has hydraulic steering, not electric. Since I have no control or connection to my car's operation, when I leave work today I'm just going to press on the skinny pedal and let the car drive me home. I'll let you guys know how it works out.
Automatics let you shift without a clutch. I don't care, I've driven both, and I don't think Versa is a bad car because of it's shifting mechanism. I think the reviewer wishes he had an Altima or something. Versas seem to be very European in design, outside of the cupholders, that is. A Euro car wouldn't have those at all. Aren't we spoiled? I've heard some say the "short gears" are more suited to city driving, where you don't get much past third gear, than highway driving.