SMG made the cars faster and easier to drive fast no doubt about and therefore superior to manuals for when you're on maxmimum attack.

But SMG was too compromised for daily use.

I personally think it was totally wrong to fit the E60 M5 with SMG due to the nature of an M5 and what it stands for - that being a very fast, comfortable saloon car.

But that was the limit of the technology at the time to allow them to meet thier performance targets.

For the older cars manual wins. But thankfully SMG is long extinct!