automatics off road

An automatic transmission is most certainly the mutt's dangly bits for the competitive stuff too.
Most of the heavy hitters in the U.K. 'Challenge' scene are gone to automatics at this stage, and they've been pretty much standard equipment for the hillrally/comp safari lads for years too.
They're even making significant inroads into the trials game, traditional stronghold of the die-hard 'old school' manual gearbox aficionado. The fact that 'cheap enough' auto-box donor vehicles have only fairly recently become more available probably has something to do with that too.

My current challenge car (a Tomcat 90, last photo in this post) has an auto-box, as had the heavily modified Land-Rover 90 before it.

The only downside to the automatic is, as already stated, the absence if significant engine braking.
This is easily enough overcome by educating the left foot to operate the brakes with the same sensitivity as the right, a technique I also employ in the Audi in that linked post (and every other automatic I get to drive).
In every other way, the automatic is superior to a manual box; the ability to 'creep' up to and over an obstacle, as opposed to riding a manual clutch to approximate the same effect; the ability to shift up or down the gears while on the move and without lifting off the throttle, unlike in a manual where dipping the clutch to change gear provides instant loss of drive and momentum; much, much easier to match wheel speed to ground speed when winching; the auto-box acts as a sort of 'shock absorber' in the drivetrain, significantly reducing breakages of propshafts, differentials, halfshafts, CV joints, etc.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone I know in the competitive 4x4 off-road scene who has gone back to a manual box after driving an automatic.


As you may have guessed, I'm a big fan of automatic transmissions in off-roaders.