Ordering a 2020 GT - Should I buy auto or manual?

[ORRadtech]

I drove for the first time in 1968 in a Ford PU with a 3 speed on the column. I've driven work trucks daily with MTs, I've even driven sticks as DDs in downtown Atlanta rush hour. That's nothing but tedious there! When I started looking for a mustang my intent was to get a 40th Anniversary MT GT convertible. Then I sat in a '15 convertible. After that I decided I wanted one but to afford it I would have to use it as a DD and that made an automatic essential for me. Ended up with an '18 EcoBoost convertible with the A10 and could not be more pleased!
Take others advice and test drive the stick in daily traffic and see if you can put up with those conditions for 70% of your driving.
I could not and find the A10 a nice compromise.

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[Kong76]

No more MT82s for me as well. Want the A10 but this 16' is paid off so I'll just keep it a while. Maybe I will do a 6R80 swap idk.

 

[Qcman17]

Its a pretty impossible question to give a good answer to considering everyone buys what they do due to their own likes and dislikes. Test drive both in the environment it will be daily driven and see what works best. I suspect the A10 may be more realistic judging by the traffic levels.

 

[Pero]

OP, If you want pristine control of your car, take MT82.

 

[Fly2High]

For me driving to work is a necessity and never a pleasurable experience so I do not care what I am driving since it just sucks. I do have a ‘19 GT PP2 which ONLY comes in a manual and love every minute with it.

When Long Island traffic gets bad, I park myself behind a stick shift master, a semi truck, and just take it easy and listen to some tunes. No one is going to go anywhere fast so why care? Leave lots of room and copy what the cars that are 6-10 cars farther up or more. Sometimes you can smooth out the traffic so you won’t shift so much.

I only enjoy driving when I am not in traffic on fun excursions and such. Those times really call for the connected feeling of a manual.

To me, paddles are for ping pong or video games. I had EcoBoost twice as a rental for a month and on vacation and when I was driving not hard but spirited, the A10 would hunt and hang driving me nuts. Maybe my kind of driving doesn’t match with its programming. I had better experiences with a Maxima and an Accord . Only slow granny driving or under hard foot to the floor did it shift well. I also got bored of the paddles after a couple days and just left it to the computer. I always felt like a passenger in my own car

But this is me. You need to be you and pick what fits you best

 

[SAL-E]

Lovin my MT-82, but I don't have to deal with stop and go traffic often. In the past I did with other manual cars and I didn't think it was a big deal. For me, it's manual.

 

[Bikeman315]

When Long Island traffic gets bad, I park myself behind a stick shift master, a semi truck, and just take it easy and listen to some tunes. No one is going to go anywhere fast so why care? Leave lots of room and copy what the cars that are 6-10 cars farther up or more. Sometimes you can smooth out the traffic so you won’t shift so much.

Do not know if you have ever driven the highways in and around LA but trust me the LIE, Northern & Southern State Parkways are a joy in comparison. Leaving more than an inch or two between cars is looking for an accident. Even at 70/30% my answer for LI would be different for what I said about SoCal. It's that bad.

 

[Vlad Soare]

One question for those who own the A10: don't you find ten gears to be too many? The engine has enough torque to pull the moon off its orbit; I think even six gears would be overkill, let alone ten. When you drive it in fully automatic mode, don't you find it annoying that it shifts up and down continuously, like a CVT? My wife's car has an A6 gearbox, and it still seems not to be able to make up its mind from time to time. I would expect this behaviour to be even worse with an A10.
The paddle shifters are a neat invention, and generally speaking I think they do a great job. When you need power, you just press the left paddle and step on the gas. Marvellous. But how do they work with so many gears? If you're in automatic mode, the gearbox might already be in the seventh gear, but you want to overtake something and you know you should be in third. So you'll have to press the left paddle four times, not just once.
When you drive it in fully manual mode, don't you find it tiring to push those paddles every few seconds, like Flipper buttons, because the gears are so many and so close to each other?

Please forgive me if that sounds silly. Unfortunately I can't test drive an A10; none of our local dealers have demo cars equipped with it. I'm not trying to be a smart ass or to bash the A10. My question is genuine - I really am curious whether the way I'm imagining it is accurate or not.

 

[GOTdaBLACK1]

In the past, I have driven to work in a manual through the infamous 405 LA rush hour. A minimal 2 hour run, to and fro, which was brutal to say the least. I then concluded that a auto would be more practical as well as most comfortable. A no brainer. Sort of like " a black car; never again" theory. So off I go to replace my horsey with an updated version known as the S550. When asked which options I most desired? I responded: A six speed manual, and it has to be black. It's frigging muscle car. So much for practicality and comfort.

 

[alpha_s550]

I completely understand where everyone is coming from on the side of the A10 being annoying or boring. Yes, it did drive me nuts when I had mine when I wanted to downshift and gun it and realized I had to hit the downshift paddle like 6 times and wait 5 seconds. I could easily say I drove my A10 with the paddles 98% of the time I owned the car. Especially since I had it tuned by Palm Beach Dyno and was one of the first to have their burble tune, paired to my Corsa catback, my car was a driving attention machine, no lies there. I have videos on my Instagram on my story highlights (@alpha_s550).

Now, here is my main worry.. I'm going insane trying decide which transmission to go with because I know that if I get a manual, 50% of the time I'm gonna enjoy the hell out of it and 50% of the time I'm gonna hate myself.

I will not lie, when I had my 2018 with the A10, Palm Beach Dyno tune/burble tune, and my Corsa catback, I enjoyed every single second of that car. It was literally like driving a supercar, like a Huracan, except my car was 2x as loud and burbled and popped like an AK47.

I don't know if I should be the adult and just get the A10 so I don't have to worry or if I should just go with the MT82.

I wanted to ask those of you who choose manual.. How many % of the time do you guys wish that you don't have to worry about constantly clutching in and out?

 

[GOTdaBLACK1]

......I don't know if I should be the adult and just get the A10 so I don't have to worry or if I should just go with the MT82.

I wanted to ask those of you who choose manual.. How many % of the time do you guys wish that you don't have to worry about constantly clutching in and out?

I am an adult, and an old fart at that. And, honestly, shifting in heavy traffic can be a PITA , and in my case, a pain in the knee. However, what % of the time do I wish I purchased an auto? 0% You won't regret it.

 

[W.O.T. Stang]

I'll add my opinion here:

I have a '19 A10 performance pack 1. Every Mustang and car i have ever owned has been a manual. That is 22 years of driving. I was the last person i had ever imagined would make the switch, and when i was looking at the 19's, i had every intention of going with the MT82. My issue was that i had a terrible time trying to find a manual with the options and color i wanted. It was almost an 80/20 split favoring the automatics.

The job i do, i get to test drive newer cars. One of those happened to be a 2018 California special, with the A10. It was the first 2018+ Mustang i had driven and the first 10R80 as well. Up until that day, every time i looked into a car and saw an automatic, i frowned and sighed. That changed the day after I drove the new automatics!

I don't want to make this a long drawn out post, but as hard as it is for me to admit, the only thing the MT82 has over the A10 is the driver experience. That motion of clutch, shift, gas that we all love, controlling your gears and being able to make the car react just like you wanted too. The pure driving experience! Do i miss that.. i won't lie, sometimes, yes.

However, the 10 speeds of the automatic make it a far better performer and no one can deny that - if you are into straight line performance. The ferocity of drag mode in the A10 pretty much made me forget about everything but the feeling of shifting your own gears. It shifts harder and faster than anyone i know with a manual, myself included.

This is not the typical slushbox automatic you are used to in an econobox daily driver. It responds to braking by rev-match downshifting in sport/track mode.. want to hold gears like a manual, you can do that. Want to sloth about town or stop/go traffic and save gas? Stick it in drive and it'll do that. You can manipulate your throttle inputs to make it auto downshift and hold gears as well. It is an amazing piece of technology, and extremely reliable. It is so far from 'boring' its not even funny, especially in paddle shift mode. Everyone i have let drive my car that were die-hard manual enthusiasts have complemented it, and most said they would consider it, it's that good.

Yes, the A10 is faster due to the small spread between gears keeping you in the power band all the time.. but if you don't care about that, by all means go with the manual. In the end, its what you enjoy and what you are paying for. Drive both extensively, you really cannot go wrong with either. The new MT82 has a twin disc clutch so the action on the clutch is butter smooth and as easy as a Kia, As far as any issues, I never personally had an MT82 fail, and i know the early ones had shift-fork issues, but those were far and few between and resolved as of now. I just want you to be happy with what you decide in the end.

 

[CompOrangeFanatic]

Having daily driven my 15 MT-82 GT for 4 1/2 years now as a daily driver, I'd say I love the manual and having complete control of the gearing....but, I hate driving it in stop n go traffic for any length of time, especially with an aftermarket clutch. I say this because its hard to start the car out smoothly every single time you have to move the car 10' and stop. Gets to your calves as well after awhile. Thankfully I didn't encounter much of that kind of driving going to work and I now have a daily driver as of yesterday.LOL Get what you want and enjoy! I personally haven't had problems with the MT-82 itself, just the stock clutch and shifter which I've already taken care of. We'll see how driving an MT-82 with forced induction goes after I build it this summer.

 

[Avispa]

An opinion from someone who will drive either kind of trans, frankly, the shift control on these things needs a lot of work. Not just for lead foot driving but for around town was going as well. Last auto car I had was an 01 GT with AOD-E,. The A6 is a big step backward from that, and the 01 was sorta OK. The car holds lower gears too long at light part throttle, and way too long about halfway into the pedal. I've even had its little mind get warped and leave me in neutral for a second or so trying to cross traffic at an intersection. To be fair, it has a VMP tune, so we will see after its retuned. If I had to do it over, I'd get the stick just to leave out the shifting issues. No idea whether this is a modded Mustang issue, the wife's 14 Jag and 18 Audi seem to shift OK, but I'm about ready to put in a built AOD.

 

[Bikeman315]

I enjoyed every single second of that car.

I know that if I get a manual, 50% of the time I'm gonna enjoy the hell out of it and 50% of the time I'm gonna hate myself.

OK, you are way overthinking this. Our responses are only going to make things worse. Read these two quotes and you’ll get what I’m saying.

I don't know if I should be the adult and just get the A10 so I don't have to worry or if I should just go with the MT82.

I understand where you’re coming from but this nothing to do with being an adult or not.

Why don’t you make this easy on yourself. Get your hands on a MT82 and jump onto 405 rush hour traffic. Now think about doing this everyday.

By the way I drive an A10 and I love it. I really wanted a Bullitt but my knee couldn’t handle the clutch.

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