My whiny little b**ch thread.

[PlatinumGraph]

Cue the sirens, send the guards, establish a perimeter - there is malcontent!!!

I've driven motorcycles, big diesel trucks, kubota tractors, minivans, sports cars, sedans, domestic, asian, european, airplanes, a 42 ft motorhome towing a sedan, trucks with boats and trailers - hitch, 5th wheel, and a few rather unlucky women in college. Never have I felt the need to be a whiny little bitch more than I do now with my 09 6M.

My first transmission had bad synchros and was replaced. Nice and easy, cool. My car has 14K on it, and I STILL feel like I'm getting behind the wheel for the very first time. Sometimes the gearbox will refuse to go into first at a light, I don't mind 1 to 2, but it's not a consistent feeling, and sometimes 2 is hard to get into - I feel like I have to crunch it in. Sometimes the gearbox seems to like being shifted slowly, and sometimes it needs to be shifted quickly. Sometimes the revs build quickly, other times, they are absolutely glacial. Push in the clutch, and sometimes the damned flywheel thinks it's a perpetual motion machine, and a small parasitic worm in Borneo can evolve intelligence in the time it takes for the damned revs to fall. Other times, the revs fall like Lohan on boxed wine. Today I ground the gears going into 5th on the freeway because the damned stick stopped short of the actual gear. The other day I was nearly creamed by a suv at costco because the driver reversed without warning, and my flaming pink rainbow unicorn gearbox refused to go into reverse. I had to throw it into first, rock it forward, then crunch it into reverse - but still too slow, and I had to watch with helpless horror as the white reverse lights of the expedition grew.

Having some good horsepower is no excuse for having a transmission that is hewn-by-claw-by-blind-squirrels-out-of-shale clunky. There are easy enough things that could have cheaply been designed to make the shifting experience better. Why bother putting a great suspension and a balanced chassis together with what absolutely must be the prototype to Fred Flintstone's rock-o-mobile?!

You can say that I blow as a driver - I just might, but why the heck do I blow the most with a damned sports car that's engineered to accelerate, turn-in, brake, and corner smoothly? It should be easier to drive than the others - this isn't a Gumpert Apollo, after all.

Am I knocking the car? Heck no, I love my baby! But this is a plea to Nissan to knock it off with the clunky manuals. I know it's kind of a tradition, but so is feet binding, ritual cannibalism, and head cheese. The manual is a primary way the driver interacts with the car - don't make it unpleasant.

And no, I'm not a whimp; I'm not afraid of pain, learning curves, failure, embarrassment, or large hairy spiders wearing tutus. I'm just wondering why we have to keep settling and pretending all is okay with these cement mixer manuals. We COULD have better, but over and over, it is decided that we shall not. Don't get me started on 7 speed autos and gear ratios.

This brings us to the end of my whiny little b**ch thread.

TOO LONG, DIDN'T READ: why do we have to keep settling for manual transmissions made by three year old elephants out of clay pots?