Automatic cars do still drink more fuel than manuals and you will pay a
performance penalty on all but large and powerful engines.

However, auto boxes are vastly better than they used to be and modern
engines are generally much more efficient and powerful.  Accordingly, auto
economy is not as bad as it once was and if most of your driving is around
town you'll seldom notice a drop in performance.

It's a trade off really, if you want effortless town driving you have to pay
a price - but it won't be massive and in my opinion it's well worth it.
Given that most people spend 80% of their time driving in stop/start urban
traffic I don't understand why everyone hasn't got an auto.

Insurance costs will be the same as the equivalent manual model.

The figures in most magazines give figures for autos as well as manuals.
However it's a complete red herring. You as Mr Average car driver will
never achieve the 0-60 times given for a manual car. OTOH you will
achieve the 0-60 time for an auto over and over again without missing a
single change.

One of my autos does 0-60 in 5.2s, the other does it in 9.0. Is that
slow?

Than what?

Probably, but not me. I drive manuals and autos. Both are fun. Driving
an auto is different, not inferior.

No reason an older design of auto should clunk into gear unless it's
faulty. The first auto I actually drove was a pre'60 Jag MK IX, and it was
smooth as silk.

But anyway, modern autos have generally more ratios than of old including
usually an overdrive which also locks out the torque convertor. This and
the gearbox ECU talking to the engine one means that the fuel consumption
difference is less.

Autocar certainly test both types, although obviously not of every car.
It's sometimes difficult to sort out what is an auto in their summaries,
though.

In give and take motoring, an auto is usually faster than a manual in
acceleration as it needs no skill to give of its best.

They're great for this sort of driving.  Actually, well read on, but I like
automatics.

Or diesel, of course.

A few pointers, as other people have made.  First off, 0 - 60 isn't
especially relevant or important.  In a city, I'd suppose that 0 - 30 is
more important, but then whilst people can pull off smartly from rest,
surely they don't use the rev limiter each and every time?

Of more importance is what happens when you boot it at, say, 30 or 40, to
overtake that HGV / old couple / whatever.

In these occasions, automatic transmission performance can vary - but these
days, most engine ECUs communicate with the transmission to make things
better.  Okay, so the driver may have to put the transmission into the right
mode (see below), but otherwise, they're point and squirt cars to drive.
You don't have to think about what gear to use, you just accelerate and it
does it all for you.

Sure, in some cars, you may need to "accelerate" sooner, so that the
transmission selects the right gear it needs for a burst of power, but
ultimately they're easier to drive in these circumstances.

Slower?  Not materially.  I suppose you could argue that the very best
drivers could extract more performance from a manual, but to be fair we're
only talking a few percent, and not really relevant to the road.

They should cost the same to insure, but when I worked rather more closely
with the motoro insurance world, we found that insuring a Austin Metro 1.3
automatic, it was significantly less than the manual equivalent!  I'd
suppose too many old people bought 'em? :)

My Dad had a mid-1980s Mercedes Benz 190E 2.0 automatic, with two modes.
Lovely transmission, in economy mode, it would change up very early on.
However, if you wanted to overtake something and it was in economy mode, you
had to floor it, and it would then select the lowest possible gear to
overtake.  So at 45 it'd drop you into second gear and you'd get rather more
acceleration than you needed.  Now of course, my Dad didn't read the
handbook when he bought the car, so was a bit disappointed with this, and
had gotten into the habit of manually changing down to third for the above
circumstance.

Then along comes his nerdy son, who read the handbook, and gets him to use
"Normal" mode.  Why?  Well, because in "Normal" mode, however, it'd drop you
into third gear with significantly less pressure, making for a much smoother
overtake.

I also learnt that under most circumstances, the car moved off in second
gear, it only used first if you were in normal mode and you gave the
accelerator quite a prod.

Many modern automatics have five ratios these days.  Some automatics have
quicker quoted acceleration times than their manual brethren - the Mercedes
Benz C-Class being one example.

Have you got a specific model in mind??

Not many people regret moving to an automatic. There are the "diehards", but
they would never even vaguely consider the idea in the first place.

There are good and bad examples of just about anything, but make the right
choice and neither performance nor fuel consumption should be a real issue -
nor for that matter should driving enjoyment - far more advantages than
disadvantages for most people most of the time.

Many would advise avoiding the CVT type though (not least because of
question marks over long term reliability).

The main drawback with an auto' transmission is the clutch. This has
traditionally been hydraulic, whereby the engine shaft connects to a series
of blades in one side, and another set of blades that sits opposite it is
connected to the gearbox, all of which is in a fluid.

As the engine spins up, the blades cause the fluid in the clutch to rotate,
which "encourages" the blades on the transmission side to spin up.

It doesn't take a genious to see that this is not very efficient, as there
is no direct connection between the engine and transmission. But therein
lies the problem - a normal clutch requires quite a delicate action that is
fine for humans but difficult for machines (although this is changing
slightly with semi-autos).

However, hydraulic clutches have become a lot more sophisitcated in the last
few years. In the past they have been really appalling, sapping power and
producing poor economy - one of the reasons for being frequently reffered to
as "slush" boxes.

However, modern ones have all sorts of cunning, such as the the abilitiy of
the blades in the clutch to change pitch and angle, and some even "lock-up"
once engine and transmission speeds are matched meaning you have no
performance or economy penalties over a regular manual. I think our Merc has
something like this as the transmission feels very tight, there seems to be
no play between engine speed and road speed.

As for performance- bear in mind 0-60 times for auto's and manuals are not
directly comparable. Manual cars have to be expertly driven to achieve the
best times, including tricks like dumping the clutch. With auto's what you
see is what you get.

As for economy, I would reckon that in reality modern auto's can be better
than in a manual, they seem to shift up as soon as possible, and generally
shift more often, while often people driving a manual tend to be lazy about
gear selection, leaving it in 3rd around town when really 5th would do.

But really my advice is just to go and try one. In the old days I would
never have considered an auto, they were far too slushy, and really reserved
for geriactrics. I especially didn't like the delay you get when pulling
away, making emerging at busy junctions and roundabouts tricky.

But have a try of a few auto's. Some are definately better than others,
Mercs generally reputed to be the best.