I came over to this board specifically to post on this very topic, was gratified/disappointed to find I was not the first. In my first full day of Xfire driving I found 2 -> 3, 3->4, 4 -> 5, and 5 ->6, Sweet! Very smooth. But no matter what I did -- high RPM, low RPM, fast engage, slow engage -- couldn't seem to get the 1 -> 2 shift smoothly. Almost always a jolt.
My manny tranny experience is a little odd, I learned to drive a stick on a school bus -- talk about long-throw shifter! I confess it's been a decade since I drove a stick, since that superb racing machine, the '78 Horizon
ops:
But note the following from USA auto writer James Healey in a May, 2000 article
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/...ealey/0014.htm about the then-new 6-speed SLK 320:
"Transmission. Nice of M-B to offer a six-speed stick shift. Too bad it's so sloppy. The gear lever moves like a churn through chunky, warm butter - sloppily, imprecisely and with occasional clunkiness.
If you're driving like Hades and paying attendant attention, the gearbox is OK. You remember to forcefully find each gear and overlook the fact that the box is so vague you can wind up in fifth or neutral instead of third. But most of the time, in the stop-and-go slugfest that's real life, the manual shifter is just an annoyance. Plus, it likes to make a slight grinding noise when you engage first or reverse, a built-in mechanical drawback that gives neighbors the impression you aren't smart enough to push in the clutch all the way.
....
Clutch. Darned hard to engage smoothly between gears unless you're barreling full-bore and slap-shifting like a drag racer, where a little jolt when you let out the clutch is irrelevant."
Any of that sound familiar?