Tiptronic for stick drivers?

[Ero Rademer]

Hi!

As an inveterate stick-shift driver (from Germany, you can tell)
I have the pleasure to drive my father's Tiptronic A6 at some
occurences. My impression was, that the car was not able to put
it's full torque to the street (on acceleration) simply by the
fact it *has* a torque converter, for example on up-shifting or
accelerating through a turn. My impressions were:

 - You have to push the stick (far) to the right to get into
   "manual" mode. Then the stick is in a (for me) unpleasant
   position.

 - Up- and downshifting is done by pushing forward or backward,
   but I, instinctly, always used it the wrong way around. Dunno
   why, but I wished to have a "configuration button" for that...
   Ralley drivers do upshifts by pulling, downshifts by pushing
   the knob on sequential gear boxes, don't they? (yes, I *would*
   like to have such a thing in my car...sniff.)

 - In manual mode the Tiptronic "thinks" too much. In "manual"
   *I* want the box to do what *I* want. Not what the box thinks,
   that I want. I.E. it is not possible to start in 2nd (snow,
   ice) or shift from 5th to 3rd before a sharp corner etc.

 - Minor but important: Coming from 15 years of stick shift
   driving, my brain and my foot expect the gear to be "in" in
   the moment the lever has reached its outermost position,
   but the tiptronic will first start to *think* about shifting
   at that time when I do this in my father's car.

 - I don't like the "you have to press brake pedal to engage
   'D'"-circuit. I have driven automatics without that and liked
   them much more. But that's another story.

 - You cannot push-start an automatic (almost). That's my KO
   criteria.

Test drive it (long enough) and make your decission....
So long and a happy new year to the list.
Ero.

P.S. The Tiptronic in question was in an A6 1998 with the 1.8T
engine, YMMV.
Ero.

A80 1979 1.6
A100 1982 1.8
A100 1982 1.8
A100 1987 2.0
A80Q 1993 2.0 (in order of appearance)
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