I took the car out today (1 hr drive each way) to Delray Beach. Nice day, great beach , fun drive.

PDK was in all its glory and I had some educational ground to cover.
Up until now most of my driving was city or short highway driving . I used manual most of the time or normal auto in gridlock.

Today I explored PDK further . I got on the highway and I realy did not want to shift the entire drive so I put it in sport auto . Unlike with slow city driving on the highway sport auto was great. It was able to change gears on its own with a direct immediate response to my foot . It could jump two gears in a split second faster than I cold shift with a paddle and much faster than it would take to row a gear.

I tried normal auto mode too . If the highway speed is 55 this actually is a good selection. It can still be overidden from the button but it will opt for fuel economy . The ideal speed limit for sport auto was 65 .
At 55 it would blip into a higher rev . Even if I over ride it it downshifts at 55 on the slightest throttle change .

I wrestled with this --burn more gas and have better response or trod along in 7th gear . In fact normal auto on a city street will ride in 6th gear at 30 MPH --Yikes.

So many choices .. but I found myself reaching for sport auto and even if I opted for normal auto for 10 minutes I was back in sport auto .


Conclusion - What is working for me so far--
1) City street - gridlock traffic - Normal auto
2) City street - ample space - manual sport . The sport auto is too jerky as it downshufts to 1st.
3) Highway -- Sport auto
4) Congested highway with steady slow driving -normal auto .

 

So many options... so little time.

 

I just re read my post and it makes little sense .There was so much emotion trying to jot down the experience after the 1 hr drive home. I considered editing it but changed my mind . I think that it shows some of the confsion associated with learning and the desire to pursue it because I see such potential with this system .

 

it sounds as if you've concluded that while it is different, it's not necessarily minus the DIY experience, just different choices.

 

The choices appear so simple yet can be so complex. It can be driven much like an automatic or like a race car and that diversity really throws a wild card at the driver.

 

I was teasing you. I agree w/ you, PDK is great an multifaceted.

 

I was very happy with the selection of a normal stick shift. But reading your write ups it seems PDK was the way to go. OTOH, knowing me, I would have got frustrated with the buttons if I had purchased it.

My conclusion, without having done more than an hours worth of test drive with a PDK is that for a primarily street Porsche, the PDK is the way to go. When they introduce it to the GT3 cars, my bet is that the manual transmission days will be numbered despite the expected howls from heel/toe die hards (and I am one of those - never owned an automatic car in my life)

 

Actually your post made perfect sense to me, and is consistent w/ my own experience. The flexibility of the tranmission to meet every driving environment is w/o rival. My problem w/ driving in Sport is having to inevitably back off, not just the speed but the aggressive driving that it inspires. I love the feel of the stick shifting and the engine just wants to keep going. I just added the PSE and it really adds to the driving experience. It also masks some of the DFI put-put at idle. By the way, there were a lot of cops out on 95 and the Turnpike this weekend, I drove from the Gardens to Lauderhill (Turnpike down, 95 back).

 

I thought I understood it; re-read, seemed clear to me. Off topic but has a good "tip v. pdk" user exepriences thread been done yet?

 

I would like to say that I had a Tip car for 2 weeks and disliked it so much that I traded it for an 09 PDK and I could not be happier!

IMHO there is absolutely no comparison between the Tip & PDK, it's not even worth discussing. Maybe the Tip in a Turbo is ok, but otherwise forget it.

 

I found that full auto in town is not that bad either. If you are a little aggressive with the go pedal the trans seems to be so smart that it stays in a lower gear longer and somehow it seems to know when you are going into a turn and holds that gear until you exit, amazing! Mine won't go into 7th gear unless you are doing more than approximately 45 mph.

Out of curiosity did you check your fuel economy on the ride?

 

[quote=DaveC;2485917]Actually your post made perfect sense to me, and is consistent w/ my own experience. The flexibility of the tranmission to meet every driving environment is w/o rival. My problem w/ driving in Sport is having to inevitably back off, not just the speed but the aggressive driving that it inspires. I love the feel of the stick shifting and the engine just wants to keep going.quote]

My biggest issues with sport auto are .
1) the city slow down jerky 2nd to 1st .
2) at 55 Mph it will blip back into 6th even if I override it to 7th .


Like yourself though - I like whe way the sport drives and feel its ideal for roards with speed limit of 65 rather than 55 . There are some highways which offer this.

 

I did not check the fuel mileage. Compared to my M3 even my EVT700 Turbo burns gas like an economy car. This PDK car runs forever it seems.

 

Well Larry, you're living the solution—which is to have a standard and now a manumatic—it certainly DOES NOT get any better than that!

 

Thanks for all of the detailed writups of the PDK.

...And I just figured out how to properly heel-toe (now that I got my Rennline pedals installed). Just in time for the clutch to become totally irrelevant.

Agreed with afridi above, that once the PDK is available on the GT3, that will be the very end of the manual for new cars, although they will linger on track cars for a longer time.

If you want a deal on a used 2010 GT3, just wait until they introduce PDK on the 2011 or 2012. It's going to be a while, but the life of the 6spd is coming to an end.