Let me preface this by saying that my current '07 335i is a manual, and I have owned about 8 cars with manual transmissions, I have always been a huge automatic transmission hater.
I just got back from the dealership. I had it all set up to drive a 370Z MT and an AT back to back, so I could see which one I wanted. As opposed to my previous 15 cars, this one is going to be a "buy and hold", i.e. I plan to keep it as a 3rd car for a long time.
I drove the AT first, and I absolutely loved it so much when we got back to the dealer, I told the sales guy to not worry about getting the MT to drive. It wasn't worth his or my time.
Two weeks ago, I drove an Audi TTS with the DSG, and in my opinion, this AT was every bit as good. The throttle blips on the downshifts were great, and the time to shift was much quicker than I was expecting.
Here's a highlight of my test drive. Keep in mind I was redlining before every shift, and yes, I asked if he minded me being a little hard on it, and he said, "go for it". I took the car up an access road of the highway up to a turnaround (we have a lot of these in Texas) downshifted through the gears from 6th to 2nd while I was braking, went through the turnaround in 2nd, and went back up through the gears to about 6th on the opposite access road. Came up to a stoplight, downshifted to about 3rd, the light changed accelerated back up through the gears to 5th, downshifted back down to 2nd, made a left turn onto another access road, went through some curves in 3rd, then 4th, hit the entrance ramp to another highway, went back down to 3rd, and then accelerated all the way up to 7th and then cruised back to the dealership. All this to say that I gave the transmission a hefty workout. The sales guy (nice guy - not your typical douche bag), said, "wow, that was cool, I've been dying to do that, I'm glad someone finally did it".
I have no doubt in my mind that the AT is the way to go - at least for me. There's not an ounce of doubt as far as I'm concerned.
Now I just have to decide what color interior to go with white!!! Then find a loud & nice exhaust, get some 20" wheels and some coilovers, and I'll be good to go!
I'm thinking this look right now:
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