Jordo!

This will continue until electric motors (with not-terrible batteries and slow charging systems) are built that have high performance CVT's or some other design that makes multiple gearing ratios for torque multiplication unnecessary...

People (who can afford it) can and do, but sometimes it is strongly implied or flatly stated by others that some people's needs and wants are wrong.

That's usually the point when personal preferences tend to be stated more as facts than opinions, like "clear skies are blue" and "water is wet". That can get tiresome...

Drive train loss, durability, responsiveness, shift speed and control -- these are quantifiable variables of considerable relevance to a pure sports car.

That's not even getting into whether FR, MR, or AWD transmissions are "sportier" (and FF's are usually just dismissed as not even open to consideration)...

I'm not even going get into the whole "grip is boring; sliding is fun" idea Toyota worked very hard to convince people so they wouldn't mind that their shiny new FR-S had only very modest torque available...

Anyway, qualia, attitudes, perceptions, and so on, can certainly be quantitatively scaled , but I don't know of any psychometric instrument that assesses this for motorists.

If you or anyone else does, let me know -- it'd be interesting to me to check it out.

I guess one could be adapted (say, from a "work" or "task" engagement scale, or maybe something like "flow" -- perceived Jinba Ittai maybe?), but the broad movement among manufacturers away from clutch-pedal based transmissions points to a diminishing group of consumers, who have very specific demands for their transmission, which deviate from most consumers, including sports car enthusiasts.

So by that measure, "right" or "wrong", "better" or "worse, it seems that the consensus preference is for the "convenient" sports car.

That said, in a way, you might argue that catering to the relatively few consumers who want a MT is also "convenience" based -- it would certainly be ""inconvenient for a driver who wanted a particular car, but demands some form of MT, if one isn't even available for purchase.

But lets not beat around the bush here: "Convenience" is a term usually applied as a euphemism for "lazy" on car forums...

On that note...

This is my point.

These are value judgments, stated (jokingly?) as if they were facts regarding how the nervous system of motorists are (should be?) "wired up" if working properly -- as in "sugar tastes sweet" and "sodium tastes salty", and something is amiss in one's taste buds if the two tastes cannot be differentiated.

Now, if you add the qualifier "...in my view," then you are not implying 7AT drivers have chosen a high performance sports car more for "convenience" than "fun".

Yep. Except for the strongly biased comments that people casually make get lobbed at those of us with the 7AT like rocks at a publicly sanctioned stoning.

And that is why this thread exists and why it attracts a lot of impassioned debate.

I find all of this especially interesting because the central arguments of those who seem to have a strong preference for MT's have moved away from calling attention to performance differences between MT's and AT's to subjective perceptions.

That's fine -- but when I read people saying things like "I don't care if it's slower, its just better" then we've strayed out of what's your "favorite color" or "favorite flavor" territory.

People show these sorts of biases for all sorts of things without even realizing it, and it can hit Israel vs. Palestine levels of disagreement in a flash

Car enthusiasts are, unsurprisingly, very prone to view their preferences as not only "best for oneself" but "best overall for everyone." Contesting this point usually becomes an exercise in working valiantly towards agreeing to disagree.

That's pretty much what happened here (and I will accept some blame for this... )

Yes.

I'm more of an Ambrose Bierce fan, myself

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