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Undoubtedly at some point we’ve all heard die­hard manual transmission
enthusiasts go on and on about the awesomeness of driving with a stick shift.
“Driving stick gets better gas mileage! It’s the mark of a quality sports car!” The
list goes on, but many of these “facts” regarding manual transmissions have
anchored themselves within popular culture, and even though many of them have
proven false, they’re still treated as gospel amongst many drivers. Since Vesas
Automotive isn’t keen on believing false car facts, we thought that we’d bring you
some of the more common myths and debunk them once and for all. Today we’ll
be looking at one of the most infamous claims: does a manual transmission get
better gas mileage than an automatic?

Manual Transmissions Get Better Fuel Economy…sort of
Actually this one is completely true…for all cars built before the year 2000. Back
when many automakers were still using the business model of “don’t build them to
last so they have to buy another one,” automatic transmissions tended to deal
with the legendary “slippage” problem on a massive scale. Slippage occurs when
the torque converter fails to engage properly as the car increases or decreases in
speed, resulting in “late” or “early” shifting. Since many cars of the past 30 years
weren’t built with high quality standards, slippage was all too common and
resulted in wasted fuel spent getting a vehicle to engage the next gear. Since
manual transmissions allow drivers to shift between gears at will, an experienced
driver could gauge when the time was right to shift and do it themselves,
squeaking quite a few more miles per gallon out of their gas tanks. Automatics
also tended to have less gears available, topping out at three with an “overdrive”
function that was essentially a fourth gear in luxury vehicles. Manuals by
comparison boasted at least four gears as a standard, pushing in upwards of six
in sports cars of the day. With more gears to choose from, manuals almost always
had a clear advantage in fuel economy than their automatic counterparts.

Fast­forward to today’s automotive market, and automatic transmissions are on a
completely different level than their clunky, not­too­bright predecessors. For
starters, the modern automatic transmission is packed with at least six gears, with
luxury car companies cramming in seven to nine gears on their latest models. The
argument on whether or not going gear­crazy is a good idea notwithstanding,
more gears means first­gear can have shorter durations for more efficient
acceleration and city driving, and top gears can be longer for better fuel economy
at high speeds. Manual transmissions are seeing an increased number of gears
as well, but that means the human element present in manual transmissions
helps fuel economy less and less. Automatics can flow much more smoothly and
efficiently from one gear to the next, matching manual control better than ever.
The new technology has narrowed the gap so much that the average fuel savings
of a manual transmission over an automatic is roughly $100 dollars spread out
over a year of driving.

So in the end, does the myth of better fuel economy amongst manual
transmissions check out? From a technical standpoint, the answer is still yes;
manual transmissions will continue to see better fuel economy over automatics.
But with the savings so small, whether or not this is enough to make the added
hassle of driving manually worth it remains to be seen. Thanks for reading, and as
always happy driving!