All I can say is, wait till it's done, and I'll invite you to drive it!

I know, I'm a stickshift guy myself and I taught my wife to drive from day one (well, day two, OK?) on my stick VW Bug. I traded my old 86 AW70 for the 87 M47 I drive all the time, about 5 seconds after the guy agreed to it.

But we ran our 82 245T w/ M46 all last year, and I think I can say, with the Turbo engine, the automatic is better suited. The engine is SO strong when it's on boost, that it's just a shame to lose it and start over when shifting.

Interestingly I jsut came across an old Road & Track article, from 1982, where the Datsun 280ZX was tested. The car came out as auto-only in this country for a year before the 5-speed was introduced. R& T is a sports-car magazine and always promoted enthusiast driving, bemoaning the fact that automatics were becoming the "standard" for US automobiles... but in this case, as with many other turbocharged cars, they agreed: the turbo engine is best suited to spinning an automatic trans for anything but race driving.

Then again, we are building a repro-racer here... who knows what we'll actually come up with. MAybe the M46 can come out of the old wagon, and the AW71 can go into that... it's only time, right?
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Rob Bareiss, New London CT ::: 87 244DL- 249K, 88 245DL- 181K, 84 242DL, 89 244DL parts, SOLD: 86 244, 88 244GL, 87 244, 91 244, 82 245T, 88 744GLE, 86 244