"Adrian" wrote in message
. 244.170...
Martin Underwood ) gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying :

I'd be interested to try one of these sequential Tiptronic gearboxes
such as the ones on the Citroen C3 and some VWs.

Don't think our C3 has one of those.

Not all do. If it has a clutch pedal, and no steering wheel flippers,
it doesn't. If it doesn't, be thankful.

Have you found the C3's Tiptronic transmission to be more of a
blessing than a curse? In theory (and I've never driven a car with it)
it sounds to be the best of both worlds.

I've not driven one, but SensoDrive initially had an AWFUL rep to go with
the abysmal name. Very slow change, confused, umpteen buggy software
releases to try and solve the probs without introducing new ones.

I believe it's about right now, but early ones were a bit "gearbox by
Microsoft"...

They must have fixed it by the end of last year because my colleague was
very pleased with it. He demonstrated that it would change under fairly hard
acceleration and with his foot off the accelerator - the two situations that
place greatest demands on the clutches and the autothrottle which adjusts
the engine speed so it matches the road speed in the new gear.

When the Top Gear or one of those programmes was doing a piece about the new
VW Golf a few months ago, the presenter raved about it and said that if the
price could be reduced, he foresaw it rendering the totally manual gearbox
almost obsolete, in the same way that synchromesh is standard at present.
However he found it difficult to set off smoothly from rest or to crawl
along very slowly in traffic: the take-up was a bit fierce and he'd have
liked a clutch pedal purely for setting off from rest.

I really will have to book myself a test-drive in either the C3 or the Golf
and see what it's like - even if there's no chance on my present income of
changing my car in the next few years.