Q: Hello everyone, I was wondering, is it possible to get an 04 clk55 amg in manual, possibly a tranny swap? I was considering getting one a while back (at an auction, and I would fix it up), but I don't think I could stand driving an automatic car... Or could you get the paddle shifters? that's what I was afraid of... What a waste of power, using an automotic gear box...
A: correct they are only automatics, however they do have special transmissions in them with a quicker autoshift than a standard automatic, supposedly they shift faster than a human could on a manual transmission, but I guess that depends on the human. So the only thing you do lose is the joy of actually changing gears. I don't think you really lose any speed. I have an SLK32 AMG and while it is an automatic, it is an absolute rocket, I expect the CLK to be fairly similar in driving feel aside from it being a bigger car. One drawback to the auto AMGs is that they are kind of jumpy at low speeds so they are not the smoothests of automatics, maybe the CLK is different since it is not a roadster. As far as I know though all AMGs do come with the automatic-manual option which does give you some control over the gears, but still not the same as a genuine manual.