DSG or manual? Which one should you choose?

Steve Sutcliffe is a fan of paddle-shift DSG gearboxes, whereas David Vivian prefers a 'proper' manual shift.

So which is better?

You can watch our comparison video below, and read Sutcliffe and Vivian's arguments below.

When you've finished, don't forget you can have your say in our forum section.

Alternatively, watch the VW Golf R - DSG versus manual video here

David Vivian

This is an argument Sutters has already won. With his DSG-equipped Scirocco, he’s backing the future. A future the PlayStation generation will slot right into. A future of seamless, computer-aided upshifts and rev-matched, lurch-free downshifts. A future in which the business of changing gear swiftly and smoothly is idiot-proof.

But what needles me is the blithe assumption that the new generation of electro-mechanical, semi-auto, dual-clutch transmissions (DSG, PDK, M DCT et al) is a valid substitute for doing it yourself and, without equivocation, a Good Thing. All right, against the clock they’re better than you, me, Sutcliffe and Walter Rohrl. Mere flesh, blood and synapses can’t compete with 80-millisecond powershifts.

Eventually, like most Americans, we’ll forget how to change gear with a stick and a clutch pedal. But not today. Just getting from my house to Beachy Head Road in East Sussex has required hundreds of manual gearchanges. Well, maybe not required; some of them were purely gratuitous.

And that’s my point. In the right car – one in which the gearchange and clutch action, and the positioning of the brake and accelerator pedals, have been honed with as much care as the camshaft lobe profiles – slotting the ratios yourself isn’t a chore. It isn’t a distraction, or an onerous chunk of manual labour that detracts from the purity of the driving experience. It’s the one unassisted, truly interactive mechanical operation left to the driver.

Transferring the energy of the engine to the driven wheels via meshing cogs and plates, by means of a lever and a pedal, requires a degree of skill. And if you’re into driving, who wouldn’t want to be physically (rather than merely cerebrally) involved in the process, the human component at the fulcrum of the drivetrain? It’s a prospect to relish, surely?

Steve Sutcliffe

Dual-clutch gearboxes are not the future, as David Vivian suggests: they are the present. And apart from one glaringly obvious issue – they cost a small fortune to engineer and therefore ain’t cheap as an optional extra – there just aren’t many other reasons not to love ’em.