BBC Panorama

[TheInsanity1234]

The 1.2 tsi in my Audi is the engine I have thoroughly enjoyed in all the cars I have had. For it's size it's a menace, changing gear is also a pleasure. Practice gear changing with rev matching, it makes gear changing a fun game. I don't do automatics I had an auto Pug not for me.

I do try rev-matching, and it's almost a subconscious thing now, which can only be good.

But every 3 days or so, I wistfully look at DSG Yetis on Autotrader with the 1.2 petrol and just wonder how nice it'd be to have 2 Yetis. One manual for when I'm going to enjoy the drive, and one DSG for a daily use car.

I've encountered the 1.2 TSI in a '10 VW Touran I passengered in while I was in Wales and it really was a phenomenal engine. It made me laugh as it showed absolutely no sign of being strained, despite the driver being one of those chaps who has never heard of gentle acceleration, and basically drove everywhere as if he was in the BTCC. Although, I never once felt unsafe, or annoyed, as a passenger. But yeah, all those hills and a surprisingly reserved lunatic behind the wheel, and it still managed a very acceptable 35ish mpg.

It did make me wonder how much better the consumption would be if the driver had some semblance of being 'economical'.

I'll be 18 next Thursday, and I am sorely tempted to just sneak off to a Skoda dealership and blag a 1.2 Yeti for a test drive...

[fengpo]

I would say a dsg version of the engine would be a push. I think it would be a bit gutless but I may be wrong.

[Strangely Brown]

I would say a dsg version of the engine would be a push. I think it would be a bit gutless but I may be wrong.

How does the method of gear selection make the engine any more or less gutless? DSG is a type of gearbox, not engine.

[waremark]

I would say a dsg version of the engine would be a push. I think it would be a bit gutless but I may be wrong.

How does the method of gear selection make the engine any more or less gutless? DSG is a type of gearbox, not engine.

And having a responsive seven speed dual clutch gearbox would probably do a great job of obtaining the best performance from the engine. One of my children has a 1.4 petrol Audi with an S Tronic gearbox (probably the same box as the one available in the Yeti) and it is great.

[waremark]

The 1.2 tsi in my Audi is the engine I have thoroughly enjoyed in all the cars I have had. For it's size it's a menace, changing gear is also a pleasure. Practice gear changing with rev matching, it makes gear changing a fun game. I don't do automatics I had an auto Pug not for me.

I do try rev-matching, and it's almost a subconscious thing now, which can only be good.

I think you may have answered this before, but how do you manage to rev match? I find it much more difficult if the noise level is high enough for me not to hear the engine.

[chriskay]

I don't speak Welsh: could fengpo please translate:
"I would say a dsg version of the engine would be a push."
"For it's size it's a menace"

Oh, and please lose the apostrophe in that first "its".

[fengpo]

I think the auto box (dsg) would want to be selecting gears for economy etc. My point was I personally would take the manual over the dsg in a 1.2 tsi.

Nothing wrong with buying a dsg if that's what floats someone's fancy.

[StressedDave]

You are aware that the DSG gearbox can be operated solely in a manual form with the paddles behind the steering wheel. Automatic gearbox mapping is another issue. I'm not sure whether the control software has a fuzzy logic mode or not. If it does then you can train it to select gears properly...

I had a client a while back who had trained his so that every time he touched the throttle it dropped to the lowest available gear. Didn't take long to fix that - he was a real clog and anchor merchant.

[TheInsanity1234]

I do try rev-matching, and it's almost a subconscious thing now, which can only be good.

I think you may have answered this before, but how do you manage to rev match? I find it much more difficult if the noise level is high enough for me not to hear the engine.

A rev-counter. I mentally work out the approximate number of revs in any gear at a given speed, and try to get the revs in that approximate region.

The other thing I do is when I have a lazy gear-change, I just push the gear-selector up to the entry-point of the chosen gear, and just lightly push it while revving the engine, and when the revs are matched, the gear stick will slide in with no resistance. This is because there is a tiny amount of resistance when pushing the gear-stick in when the revs aren't matched, due to the syncro-mesh having to match up the speed of the clutch and the wheels.

But most of my gear-changes are done with a rev-counter, although I can still get probably 7/10 gear changes acceptably smooth in a car without a rev-counter just by timing the gear changes.

[waremark]

But most of my gear-changes are done with a rev-counter, although I can still get probably 7/10 gear changes acceptably smooth in a car without a rev-counter just by timing the gear changes.

Well done. Can you manage that using peripheral vision to see the movement of the rev counter, without taking your eyes off the road? (I often do that).