just wondering if anyone is using these cars and what they think of them.
I'm in the market for a new car and whenever I'm sitting in traffic I wish I had an auto, but when autoxing and RR I'd like to be able to choose my gear and when I want to change it.
I'd like to hear from non owners to
or

 

I drove a 2003 Audi S4 2.7L twin a few times in HPDEs. It has a five speed auto with "sportshift" mode, either slapshift style with the shifter or steering wheel mounted "+" and "-" buttons. Great on the street, impossible on track. On track, it helps to have a clutch pedal, it just felt unnatural to me having to hit a button on the steering wheel to downshift, and the engine braking it created made me drive the car sloppily. Granted, I don't own the car, nor do I drive it every day, but my buddy is sure in love with it.

 

I've driven a 2006 Mercedes C230 where you can up/downshift by moving the shifter left or right. The gear shifts aren't instantaneous. There's a half-second lag or so. In a performance driving situation I'd be better off just keeping it in D instead of trying to shift. And like the previous poster I hate the massive engine braking when shifting down to 2 or 1.

 

What car are you looking at purchasing?

 

I paddle shifted a Fit at the AutoX one time. Does that count?

 

I drove a SMG M3 on track a few times and it def. was tough to gauge braking to downshifting because of the lag in shift times.

I would love to drive the upcoming Evo with the auto tranny sinc eits being to highly touted in magazine reviews.

 

I think it depends on the car. Some of the automatics shift much faster than others when in manumatic mode. When I was purchasing my TL-S I drove the automatic one time and realized it was crap. I opted for the 6 speed manual. Other cars I looked at had a much faster response time (like the IS350).

 

I have never driven anything with a torque converter that I've felt would be reasonably fun for motorsports that involve turning - and that includes the sport-shift and flappy-paddle ones. Torque converter-based automatics are just awful.

DSG/SMG/F1-type clutchless sequential manuals, on the other hand, are great. They shift just as fast as I can, do it immediately when I instruct them to, and feel solid - not slushy.

 

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x2

 

new subaru legacy turbo models (gt, spec b) and maybe 6 cylinders (but im not sure) rev match the downshifts with the tiptronic bullshit. the shifts arent super fast but its not horrible.