Most people know that for old or even somewhat old cars, manual transmissions are more efficient. Recently automatic cars have become almost as efficient or even as efficient as manuals.
I was recently reading an article by Road & Track magazine that was comparing different sports cars, and it mentioned the fuel efficiencies of the manual versions versus the automatic versions, and actually listed the automatics as being more fuel efficient than manuals by about 2 mpg.
Are automatic transmissions now really more efficient than manuals? Is this for all cars or just high-performance cars?
If autos are now more fuel efficient than manuals then how have they managed to make this so?