I don't feel age affect my decision on getting PDK over manual, I drove around Van with manual car for the first 3 months of living here and the traffic after work, all the uphill slopes and stop and go traffic is annoying and tiring with a manual. Plus it shift faster then I can shift in PDK sport + mode @ the track, so pretty happy with my deicision. I can always pick up a manual 993 or something if I miss manual etc

 

I'm 40. Always driven stick. Love the 7mt in the C4S. My not be as fast as the PDK, but to me it's more entertaining and fun to drive. Ordered a Turbo S, so this will be my last MT. Driving stick will be a lost art.

 

Congrats on your TurboS order! When's it due to arrive and the specs?

 

Why do you say that? Do you think it's hard to do? Is it a special skill, like doing neurosurgery?

It's an art????

If you drive a car with a MT that has a different shift gate pattern, do you have lots of gear clash and come close to blowing up the gearbox?

Don't understand this fascination that driving a MT is so difficult that it separates the driver from the ordinary.

 

OMG, calm down. I didn't get any of that from his comment. Becoming a lost art means that cars of the future probably won't have manually-shifted transmissions and new generations of drivers will think of it as we think of buggy whips.

 

I started riding motocross bikes in the mid-70's @ age five with a 3-speed Honda Z50, moving up to the Yamaha GT/YZ-80's and Enduro 125's etc..spent my teens on a Yamaha FZR400 with its glorious 14,500 rpm redline. It's truly difficult for me to let a car handle the shifting. Pushing a button to make the car 'behave' seemed silly to me..I felt like I was posing with it, and didn't hold onto my '09 C4S PDK very long.

This 7-speed manual just rocks my world, but it's just the second Porsche I've ever owned. I am envious of the guys out there who've driven these cars for the last however-many-years through the air cooled and everything...that's freaking awesome. You guys can drive whatever transmission you want, I don't judge anyone, just fun to share our personal takes on this stuff. I figured I better enjoy the manual Porsche experience while there is still time. I just didn't expect to like it this much It's really, really, really good.

 

My first car was a 1960 Triumph TR3 that I bought as a 16-year-old back in '64. It had a fun, short-throw 4-speed with synchromesh that was as slow as watching paint dry. The very best manual I've ever driven was my R8 V10 Spyder with the old school 6-speed gated shifter. Wow, was that a fun car to drive!

I'm intrigued, however, by the speed of the shifts of a PDK which is both a manual and an automatic transmission. Automatic transmissions use torque converters but manu-matics like the PDK do not so when in the manual mode it is every bit a manual transmission except that it has automated clutches. It is probably the kind of transmission we'll see more and more of as fewer and fewer true manuals are offered on high-end cars.

I love shifting and using the clutch pedal, but I'm really looking forward to doing all the gear changes using my paddles.

 

No doubt, my only concern, and it's a minor one, is how well the PDK holds up over time.

 

What I foresee in the future - perhaps with the Ferrari F1 or possibly with the PDK - is 10-speed transmissions. Six of the gears would be for normal driving but there will probably be an extra couple of gears in the low range for sprints and a couple higher up for economy. Spreading a normal 6-speed gear range across 8 gears would allow for some very quick lower gears which would translate to 0-60 runs improving without any weight-to-power ratio changes. With the amount of electronic control modules in cars today and the speed at which they work, the idea of having an extra gear between first and second and between second and third is within our grasp.

 

There are not enough responses to draw any conclusions from this poll. The sole purpose was to disprove Jalopnik's absurd proposition that the GT3 and the Turbos don't come with the manual transmission because of lazy old guys. Conventional wisdom is that old guys resist change while young people grew up in a fast-changing techno world and would embrace new technology faster than old folks many of whom are set in their ways and who spend entirely too much time talking about how it was back in their day.

Hopefully this thread will stay active long enough to get enough responses to form a minimum sampling so that a consensus can be drawn as to how much a role - if any - age plays in the decision about which transmission to order.

 

I'm around 30 and currently have the 7speed manual in my 991c2s. I love it. However, my wife's S4 is DSG and I can appreciate that too. I'm glad I ordered the manual, but my next car will be PDK. Gotta have some variety in life...

 

I'm 35. Have had PDK and now manual, which I prefer. Not because I'm fantastic with manual, but because it is more fun and engaging day to day.

 

I'm 29. Out of the 15 cars I've own all but a couple have been manuals. The ones that were auto weren't meant to be fun anyway. Manual is my choice more often but I would like to ADD a car with a nice flappy paddle gearbox at some point. If I only had the flappy paddles I would definitely miss the true manual.

 

Never owned an auto (PDK) until this one (991).
On my 4th Porsche. I'm 44.
I still have an manual car in the garage as well.

 

TT, why are you getting your underwear in a twist? Auto manufactures are doing away with the MT. I know plenty of people that can't drive MT. Doesn't make me feel like I am any better than them.