Only one way to settle this.

Somebody with AT race someone with a MT to the nearest Mexican food place.

Winner gets a bean burrito and gas.

 

Haha, Ive got a Taco Bell right down the road..WINNING!

 

I eat in my car daily, drink water/juice/energy drinks and text so I got the AT. MT is fun for a few minutes, then it just gets annoying to me. I don't think I'll ever own a MT car.

 

if you have to ask then NO, there is no difference, they are exactly the same.

 

OP: just hush and enjoy your car. You didn't want a MT, and you didn't get one - that's fine, everyone has their own preferences. So what if there is a difference between MT and AT? Are you going to sell it and get a sample of the opposite transmission? If you're concerned about performance or style, then trade it in. Otherwise, zip it and and enjoy the driving experience. This thread is really pointless.

I really do not understand people who question their decisions after spending $10k+ on a car they'll be keeping for years. Anything with a price tag over $100 should carry careful consideration on the fact its actually something you want/need before you swipe the card. My G35 is an AT, and yes, at times I wish it was MT to get the exhilarating self-shift experience, but I knew I couldn't handle it in the excessive highway traffic I encounter. So I signed the papers for it in AT form and moved on with life. I love it just as much as any other member who loves their MT G35.

 

Unfortunately 90%+ of MT drivers on the road cant shift worth a damn. They almost come to a complete stop in between gears, while everyone else in AT's are several car lengths ahead by then, or yelling profanities if stuck behind them.

MT might be the bomb in the hands of the few right drivers, but out there on the typical everyday roads, at least AT is less of an issue with other drivers.

 

Anyone can drive a AT but to drive a MT you need skills on the correct use of the clutch. If you don't have those skills you'll be buying a new clutch before you go thru your second set of tires. Bottom line, they're both fun to drive and everyone has an opinion....just enjoy!
Gary

 

Lol me too. My g is actually one of my first automatics. A lot of people ask "why buy a nice sports car in automatic?" I usually just say I do too much city driving for one. My 300zx was manual and I fricken hated driving to and from work bc of that.

 

the generally accepted method to get through a corner is as follows
1) get all your braking done as late as possible, in a straight line,
to get to your maximum cornering speed

2) select your gear before the turn-in point
3) get through the corner at 9/10ths of the max speed before it starts
to drift with balancing the car with the throttle and very few if any
steering inputs.

4) just before the exit point start to unwind the steering wheel to aim
up the track and squeeze into the throttle

5)pretend you have an egg between your foot and the throttle or brake
pedal... avoid violent inputs as these upset the balance of the car.

while at 9/10s half way around a corner a MT has a direct mechanical
connection to the wheels and wont declutch or shift...
an AT by its vary nature will declutch or unlock the converter or even
shift if you haven't preselected a gear.

currently the infiniti MT will shift much faster and exactly when you want
while an AT shifts long after you "upshift" or "downshift"... perhaps even
seconds after..

the main thing though is the positive connection to the wheels to balance
the car while cornering... any change IE lifting, braking, declutching or too
many steering inputs will upset the balance and send you off to the weeds

yes F1 cars and Ferrari's, Porsche's and Audi's etc have semi automatics
but they shift very fast and hold the gear and never declutch in a corner
the infiniti will...

 

^^exactly^^ It's mainly for un-educated drivers to feel more in control by giving them a pseudo-manual shifting feel. It can be fun, in some cars, but you're far less connected to the drivetrain then with a manual in ours. I agree, like I said in my first post, buy it for you and you'll be happy you did.

 

That's because most drivers don't slam through the gears at every stop light while auto drivers tend to just press their foot down and not really pay attention to how much gas they waste jack rabbiting every light.

 

taco bell is not real mexican food.

 

Be a man get a manual. You can do all the things you guys were saying you cant in a manual too. You act like your hands and feet are tied up to the pedals and shifter.

 

That's incorrect. The PDK is NOT an automatic. Automatic's are characterized by the presence of a torque converter. There is no torque converter in the SMG, PDK, DCT, DSG gearboxes - they are all clutches just like a 6MT G has. Our M5 feels nothing like an automatic when you drive it - not even close. It might not require you to clutch and in the right mode not require you to tell it when to upshift or downshift, but NEVER does it feel like an automatic.

That said, a lot has changed recently that has affected the classic "MT vs AT" war (and I'm talking in all cars, not just G's).

"Back in the day" (really, up until about 3-4 years ago) most automatic transmissions had less gears than the manual option offered in the same vehicle (5AT vs 6MT, 4-speed automatic in a Honda Accord vs 5-speed manual, etc.). This extra gear allowed for the manual transmissions to not only be faster but usually have a slight edge on gas mileage when driven nicely (mileage increase is amplified especially when you include the effects of a non-locking torque converter, which I'll discuss later).

However, in newer generation automatics, you usually have an extra gear (or two) than your manual transmission option for the same vehicle (at the very least it's typically the same, though some cheaper "econobox" vehicles still give MT an advantage in gear count). But for example, the new G37, it's a 6MT or 7AT now (auto went from being a gear down to now a gear up), for the new BMW 5 Series, 6MT vs 8AT (I'd put my money on the 8 speed auto being faster, at full acceleration the RPM's hardly drop more than 1200RPM when it shifts). The limiting factor here for the manuals is pretty much no one makes a transmission with more than 6 ratios, and no one really wants to, otherwise that's a lot of shifting you have to do as a driver.

Now, you add to the fact that in older cars, torque converters, by design, always bled power, because they are after all a hydraulic device and the input always had to spin faster than the output. So you always had some power loss, whether cruising (resulting in slightly worse mileage) or when driving the car with performance in mind (slower).

On the other hand, new torque converters can lock, which pretty much negates the two downsides I just previously mentioned. I'm unaware of whether the G35's AT transmission possesses a locking torque converter or not.

Then, finally, we come to driver feel. With the torque converter it's hard to get the car to react perfectly every time, but with a manual transmission the driver controls everything so he can precisely manipulate the car to do what he wants it to do (assuming he has the skills to do so).

Of course, there's always the consideration of whether the AT has a "manual" mode (tiptronic, whatever you want to call it), and how "good" it is at being like a manual. Many automatic cars even in "manual" mode still downshift AND upshift for you when they feel like it. The Infiniti auto is one of the few I've ever encountered that NEVER upshifts for you even if you are slamming into the rev-limiter and never downshifts for you unless you are going too slow for that gear (like 5mph in 5th), and I really like that extra control it gives you. Mercedes automatics DO not do this. Even in "manual" mode it will shift - up or down - whenever it damn well wants, and it really sucks. BMW transmissions will downshift to max gear when you floor it (so you can't do a "5th gear pull") and will upshift at redline (so you can get in a bad situation if you have your back-end kicked out mid corner and you hit redline and it throws it into the next gear).

There's probably a couple things I forgot to touch upon, but those are the "big ticket" things. The new automated manual transmissions like the SMG, DCT, PDK, DSG, etc. combine the advantages of both types of gear boxes.

In the end, it's really driver preference. Most guys that are freaking out about a few tenths will be buying the 6MT anyway.

But to really answer the OP's question. If you have two 100% stock G35 coupes, one 5AT, one 6MT, and assuming the 6MT driver knows how to launch and shift the car, the 6MT will be faster, no questions about it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of guys out there that can't launch or shift their 6MT, and then a 5AT races and beats them, and then we get one of those threads with one of those guys claiming the 5AT is faster and we get a sh!tstorm...