Its not very' involving' when crawling in traffic jams in a manual gearbox car , continuously balancing the clutch on a hot summers day...its actually a ' pain in the butt' especially if you are tall and your lega and feet struggle for any room .
It's a simple choice when it comes to a modern auto you can choose to use or leave the flappy paddles alone or not as the case maybe or just leave it in auto, but you have a choice. However, when it comes to a manual gearbox there is no choice whatsoever, it will always be a manual gearbox and all of its foibles. I've driven flappy paddle Ferrari's and a good old fashioned 330GT2+2 with its heavy clutch that needed thighs built like tree trunks and slow balky change especially when cold manual gearbox........I know which one I prefer every time and its not the 330.
I tend to agree.
I have owned high performance manuals and high performance paddle shift autos. I can't really say a manual is genuinely 'more involving'. In a low powered car a manual is good for wringing out the last drop of performance, but in a high powered car, it's less relevant. Paddle shift boxes have also moved on a lot in the last few years and it's actually quite hard to find high performance cars with a manual shift.
No car is "involving" when driving along in traffic jams or indeed on motorways and in cities. Thats not what a sports car is for and is to be avoided.Preferably by letting SWMBO drive whilst you nod off!
Sports cars are for those days when you go somewhere for the pleasure of driving open roads, maybe with the top down, maybe in the early hours before traffic builds and the scamera vans are deployed. Driving without a destination even, which is why in my experience the sports cars, the toy cars, do small annual mileages. And personally having the option of either flappy paddles or manual, I get more enjoyment out of rowing a manual along than the paddles. The latter I always find simply end up not being used - where is the point in using the paddles when the software will make the change for you?
Surely the electric car with no need for a gearbox is simply a further step down that road
