Intrepid175

Well, let's see. The driver does have something to do with how a clutch performs in how smoothly they release it. If you come off the clutch too slowly, you'll generally get a smooth engagement but you'll also be slipping the @#$% out of it and that's bad for longevity If you come off too quickly, the car lurches and jumps which is uncomfortable for passengers and adds stress to the drive train but that's not normally a big deal unless you're really getting on it hard. Finding the happy medium between these two extremes is a matter of practice and experience.

I have driven a few vehicles, cars and motorcycles, where it didn't seem to matter how smoothly and consistantly I got off the clutch while starting from a stop. At some point, the clutch would grab, the car would lurch forward. It was very frustrating. The first parts of this conversation, the comments about harshness and such, reminded me of those experiences and that's what I was thinking about when I responded the first time.

One thing I try to do when driving a manual transmission , once I start feeling the clutch engage, at the initial friction point, is try to continue the release of the clutch in a constant fluid motion until my foot is off the peddle. The other side of that is learning to modulate the throttle so the motion of the car is smooth and consistant. That part is a little different from one car to the next and takes a little practice. Once all of this comes together, the start is smooth and predictable. If the clutch is grabby, there's almost no way to do this.

Hope this makes sense!

Drive Safe,
Steve R.