This article was a poorly
This article was a poorly written fluff piece. It's true that the Subaru CVT is a good transmission and it does work well, we've owned 3 of them; all the high torque versions from the WRX and 3.6R, but to say that automotive journalists don't understand how it works or have never seen paddles before is ludicrous. Calling manual mode a "feature" is even a stretch. Most automatics, whether they are traditional gears or CVTs allow you to switch to manual mode. It's a basic function of all these transmissions. The takeaway here is: don't hate on the CVT, it's just as good as other automatics. The way it was presented was like there was nothing else to write about today.