Semi Autos

What does the dual logic come under for insurance purposes. Manual or Auto. I don't want to be in an accident/stolen and then find out that I can't claim due to the insurance being invalid

you would have to ask your insurer though i would say auto as it has some auto functions. plus its standard equipment(or at least manufacurer fitted)so wouldnt see it being a problem

My Sei was a semi auto, be warned that they are not as good as it first seems!

Semi auto is a deadful system, just remember its another thing to go wrong and when it does you are stuck in the middle of the road unable to move holding traffic up.

Now this was fun.It took me 50mins with a most helpful guy from my insurance broker to insure my dualogic. Many phone calls back and forth to the insurance company during this time.

The problem was on the database (god bless computers!) there was no auto option for the Panda listed. So my dualogic is insured as a manual but I had at my request the model on the policy shown as Panda Dynamic (Dualogic option).

It has no clutch pedal so to my mind it is an auto which you can manually override just like a conventional auto which usually has Drive, then 3, 2 an sometimes 1 options.

Like me 3 weeks ago, then

Saying that, I still love the concept, and hasn't put me off one iota.

Have a insurance quotation, it is £10 more to insure the dualogic Panda Eleganza vs the manual variant

I work for Toyota, we've got this transmission called MMT, or Multi mode transmission. similar to Selespeed, a manual gearbox with an electrically controlled clutch and gear selectors. It's practically an automatic, but we were told that we were not allowed to sell it as an automatic, merely a manual gearbox with an automatic function. In order to distinguish one from the other you'd have to know how a conventional auto transmission works with torque convertors and the likes. Even if i understand all this there is little chance they'll still be awake after this 2 hour engineering lecture and therefore capable of reaching for their chequebook to leave a deposit for one. It's just as well then, that the cars are so jerky, and the gearchanges madly unpredictable, that nobody's mad enough to buy one in the first place!

Perhaps Toyoya need to do a bit more research and development.

So far I have found the dualogic changes smoothly and doesn't seem to get itself caught out. If you brake hard from say 50 mph you can hear the box rather than feel it doing the downchanges in sequence to get to 1st by the time you stop.

absolutely. they had a gearbox called freetronic about four years ago. a bit like the seicento's citymatic. where you have a normal shift pattern and no clutch. found this much better.

problem with the MMT transmission is you have to anticipate when the gearbox is about to change gear and ease off the throtte. not easy if youve never driven one before. the Sensodrive system Citroen uses in the C2 is the same too.

Isn't that the Yaris Free-tronic gearbox? Oh so many complaints about that

EDIT: Just read your previous post. Freetronic was aweful, and never worked

yeah it was really troublesome. as was the "Citymatic" and Renault's "Easy" system. nice idea though. and when working, worked quite well.

The MMT system works like a normal auto with a Park, Neutral and drive Gate, as opposed to the Freetronic which was just a clutchless manual

Ahhh...This is what I've been seeking for clarification from U guys.
The Panda test car I've driven was a bit jerky when changing gears esp from 1-->2. I can also feel as if there's a transmission lag or something. Almost as if the the gears are being put into neutral and then when the next gear had caught up, the Panda just suddenly lunge forward. Not very clever.

Is this normal to all Dualogic Pandas?