Carmakers almost had us convinced. They almost did it. They almost made us believe that no one wanted manuals anymore, that DCTs were better, and that rowing your own gears was going to go the way of POGs, The Hustle, and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s acting career. They were wrong! And fake manuals from Ferrari and the aftermarket are just proof that demand is there. The question is: Are these real manuals?
That’s the topic of this week’s Carbage Time podcast, and my carbage take is that carmakers were basically lying to us when they said that demand for manual sports cars was limited. While I don’t imagine every Nissan Sentra buyer wants a manual, people buying a Ferrari sure do.
As proof: The 12Cilindri Manuale. This is a Ferrari with a DCT that’s been retrofitted, by Ferrari, with a manual-like gearbox. Yes, the gorgeous gated shifter is back, and there’s a clutch pedal, but it’s basically shift-by-wire. Is this a bad thing? I don’t necessarily think it is. This is somewhat similar to the Koenigsegg CC850, which I think is cool. If that was it, I wouldn’t call it a trend, but then Rezvani came out with its own fake gearbox for DCTs (including Ferraris and the C8 Corvette), but this one with no clutch pedal. It’s super weird.
Given that Porsche told us the take-rates for 911 GT3s are above 50%, and that GT3 Touring sales are overwhelmingly manual, I think a lot of narratives we were sold by carmakers are just wrong. Are there buyers for manuals? Absolutely. Is the fact that DCTs are faster persuasive to most people? Not if they’re buying expensive sports cars and GTs. Porsche, by offering a mix of drivetrains, has gotten it right and has been rewarded with strong 911 sales this year.
We talk about all this on our latest episode.
You can also just listen to it, too, if you’d prefer that. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to look at my sweet Keith Haring hoodie I got from Costco. Maybe you don’t love art. Click the player below:
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I Think I Have An Issue With The Rezvani Clutchless Thing
This photo is, I think, a Ferrari GTC4 Lusso. And that panel contains a gated shifter that connects to the car’s seven-speed DCT gearbox so that when you shift, it shifts. Think of it as a unique twist on a paddle shifter, I guess (though, is it only six forward gears and a reverse?).
Named Rezvani QuickShift, the system was developed with Italian company Studio Carrozzi, and at a glance it resembles what Ferrari recently revealed for the 12Cilindri Manuale. As in that car, the Rezvani unit works alongside the existing dual-clutch rather than replacing it.
The company hasn’t provided in-depth details on exactly how its shifter works and how it’s mated to the dual-clutch. What it does promise is that it requires no permanent modifications to the transmission and is fully reversible. Rezvani also says the conversion leaves the factory engine management system and existing safety electronics intact. As with the finest manual gearboxes bolted into high-end supercars over the years, it uses a metal gated shifter for that authentic feel
Yes, that Rezvani. For $25,000 this is a strange choice, especially if you buy a version of this for your C8 Corvette. Couldn’t you just … buy a C6 Corvette to go along with your C8 when you want to shift yourself? Again, this market wouldn’t exist if there weren’t customers clamoring for what they can’t have, which is the thing that some automakers said only the hardest-core enthusiasts wanted.
This concept of a fake manual isn’t all bad, and I think Jason may have discovered a way to do this that we’d all probably be ok with at the lower end of the spectrum, though you’ll have to listen to the episode to hear him explain it.
Let me know what you think. Is this the future? Are we ok with clutch-by-wire?
Top photo: Rezvani
Fine by me, realistically probably the only way to see the manual survive the next 10-20 years
This strikes me as the automotive equivalent of a Line 6 modeling guitar amp. Or the drinks dispenser in Hitchhikers that created a substance “almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.” Or, as I’ve said before in less charitable moments, a Fleshlight.
Let’s spend gazillions of dollars creating fake versions of real things instead of just experiencing the real things. It’ll be fun!
I’ve got a Line 6 Helix. You know who I wish had one? The guitarist in my band who uses vintage amps and had his ancient Vox fail during a set. And then went straight to the PA without cutting the treble. You know what was wrong with the Vox? Not a tube. Not an aged capacitor. The damned RCA plug that Vox used to feed the speaker. With a bare pin sticking out the backside of the plug for the live to be soldered onto, and the ground soldered to one of the four leaves of the ground cage because Vox didn’t even pay for a closed plug with two solder points. Aaaaaaaaaugh!
I have a line 6 practice amp, that I deliberately cause to make sampling errors, otherwise I make my effects with a soldering iron.
Also each string has its own signal path.
But awful digital sampling error is an effect in itself.
Removing the gear changes in an EV allows more time for time-speed-distance calculations, which, along with the quiet, is a blessing of electric driving. Simulated transmissions and sex aren’t that far apart.
For the Rezvani, I say just put a fake clutch on the floor that does absolutely nothing. This way you are engaged with the shifting experience, albeit with it all being fake. Making vrroooomm vroooomm sounds while “shifting” is entirely up to the individual driver.
MHO:
Manuals in everyday cars today are not great. I remember older cars responding and comunicating very well. But not in todays cars. Unfortunately, I have no experience with something like a modern 911 or a Ferrari. So I won’t speak about those.
To reach ever stricter emission standards, enineers want to control every aspect of the engine. This not only means automatic gearboxes, but also electronic trottles that may or not fully open at will, and relatively small turbos.
Just about every manual I have ridden in the last ten years feels laggy. Most newer engines even just ignore a quick trottle dip.
The drive by wire throttle is what I hated about a few of the recent cars I have driven. You can’t blip the throttle?! Absolute trash.
While a car from 2011 isn’t what I call modern, it’s what I drive and it has a manual. I can totally blip the throttle and it uses electronic throttle instead of a raggedy old cable. No issues, it is likely dependent upon implementation.
What I did NOT like was that it had some irritating “feature” where under certain (seemingly random) conditions, it forced you to shift from 1st to 4th gear, locking out the others somehow. Drove me nuts, the whole point of a manual is that I get to decide how to drive it. I presume it was some sort of silly fuel economy thing. Makes total sense in a v8 Camaro, yeah? I found that you can buy a wiring harness with a resistor inline that basically defeats whatever physical control that would lock you out of 2nd and 3rd gear. I still see the 1-4 shift displayed in the gauge cluster, but now it doesn’t do anything.
Just let us old bastards enjoy a few of life’s little irrelevant pleasures before our betters decide that we are now obsolete and send us to the home of the useless.
I heard about that feature on C6 Corvettes. My son has a 2005 but I think it’s been defeated, since it’s never been an issue.
Yes, some drive by wire are programmed better than others. But give me a cable to the throttle body any day. That way I can do a nice big burnout in the driveway of the Home of the Useless before I go check in.
It goes back to at least the C5 because mine has it too. A previous owner defeated it at some point because even though I see the light I’ve never been unable to shift to 2nd.
I don’t understand how it’s supposed to work either. It only engages when you’re accelerating slowly at low speed. How on Earth are you supposed to skip shift to 4th at 25 MPH? I have to assume they’re exploiting some loophole in the EPA tests.
That’s 100% what it was.
There was a Top Gear episode where Clarkson started a C6 Z06 in 6th gear and took it to the end of the runway. I suppose you could drive with the lockout, but it would lug and rely on torque.
I have two manual 6-speed cars. One with a cable throttle and “normal” clutch, the other with electronic throttle and a dual mass flywheel clutch.
I’ve had the ETC one for more than a year now and I still don’t really have it down. It has way more power and is otherwise a better car in every way, but it just won’t work as an extension of my body by muscle memory because there are algorithms changing the throttle behavior for the same input.
Yeah, if you can’t stomp the gas hard enough to stall the engine for lack of vacuum, what fun is it?
If you can’t feel the gutteral mechanical sympathy pain of knowing you have stalled the engine (for reals) it is not a real manual transmission. The suffering is the secret ingredient.
I never have and never will buy an automatic transmission car.
I said that, decades ago.
I still haven’t, but I have done a lot of miles in the manual, auto and DCT versions of the Lotus Emira, and I’m not sure which one I’d buy. I can’t even discount the slush box as it comes with the V6, whereas the DCT is i4 only.
Fortunately they paid badly enough that this will never be a decision I’ll have to make.
just move to a big city. I broke
i cant say how much I love that ZF 10 speed. no more cramped leg in traffic, and my lap times haven’t really suffered.
I’ll most likely never buy another car with any sort of multiple-gear-ratio transmission.
I was a gold-star manual transmission car owner from 1989-2019. Never for one second did I own a car with anything but a manual transmission.
After 30 years of stop and go commuter traffic with a manual, the piriformis and sciatic nerve of my left leg said “enough is enough”.
So I bought an EV…. so I REMAIN never in my life owning a car with an automatic transmission.
At this point I’d take an EV over an automatic, once EV tech is good enough to offer a responsive, lightweight EV commuter and once I’ve got the money/space to have separate, dedicated cars for fun and commuting.
Jason needs to put that manual thing in an EV, maybe a Chevy Bolt?
It can’t be gated like a Shifterninja though, it has to have either the vinyl bag or plastic accordion, whichever the last manual Sonics and Sparks had.
I have a Bolt EV, and one of my crazier ideas is to put a manual transmission lever and a clutch pedal in it. Let’s say it has 3 “gears”
* Gear 1 is full torque, but limited to 40mph
* Gear 2 is less torque, but limited to 60mph
* Gear 3 is even less torque, and allows the car to hit its OEM top speed of 93mph
Each gear could have a “torque curve.” My sketchy idea for how to implement this is to put an Arduino between the accelerator pedal and the ECU that ordinarily reads the accelerator pedal’s status. Many times per second, the Arduino would look at the accelerator pedal and the gear stick, then decide how much … uh … electricity juice … to command from the motor. The Arduino could also be hooked up to the speakers and make motor revving noises (like a Taycan, but also with a clutch pedal).
Would it accelerate more slowly than just driving the car normally? Of course.
Traditionally, manual transmissions have been a way to have higher performance but more effort/skill/attention is required to drive, while automatics have been lower performance but easier to drive.
You’ve invented a way to have the worst of both worlds by modifying a car that gave you the best of both worlds…. but if it’s what your heart desires, carry on.
Having learned about the history of Manaul, I’m shocked that I can’t find a plush Manaul toy for sale anywhere on the internet just so I can tell people things like “yeah, it has a Manaul”, “I swapped it in the Manaul myself for under $500″…
Manaul > Manuel
What Kind of transmissions?
Manuel mauls a manaul manually.
Sounds like you’re OK with it. I’m not.
Also, not listening to a podcast when I know how to read.
Seems that some mfr should have manuals as a “special order” item. How much would that affect their assembly lines? Who knows.
It should give them some advantage in the marketplace. Maybe.
It certainly would affect emissions and all those regulations. That (and corporate profit goals which rely on efficient assembly lines) is probably the main reason for cutting out manuals.
In short: they don’t make cars for the customer. The customer has to take from what is offered.
As an example: my wife and I are looking at some EVs. Since my wife will be navigator and audio manager, she will be in the passenger seat. Some models of EVs don’t have electric passenger seat adjustments! The upper models do. So, it’s an additional $3000 for the next model up. Shouldn’t I simply be able to order an electric passenger seat for the lower model? I bet the wires are already there. (And I shouldn’t have to check junkyards forever.)
I sometimes wonder if in the medium term future, there will actuallly be more manuals. By then, people who just want a vehicle that gets them from point A to point B (and point C on the weekends) will have an EV; ICE cars with actual transmissions will be pretty much only for enthusiasts, who will buy for reasons beyond just price.
And by then, modular, on demand manufacturing may make an add-a-stick option easier.
There will be a lot less. In Europe the manual is still fairly common, but it is diminishing rapidly.
I too enjoy reading with my eyes and have heated debates with Mrs Nuts when 100% of her “reading” is accomplished using 100% of her auditory canals.
I’d be delighted to have Carbage as a transcribed option.
Not the first time this thing has appeared…I had a college girlfriend with a 70 something beetle with an autostick.
https://beetlehaus.com/blog/f/whats-an-automatic-stickshift
Spent a fair amount of time keeping it on the road. Fun to work on as everything is right there for you.
I stopped at the misspelled headline.
I think that’s the lie, that they were invented by Thomas Manaul at the turn of the 19th century as a way to cut down on inappropriate behavior by the driver by making sure his limbs were all occupied.
Yeah, like a graham cracker type thing!
The old newspaperman in me thinks you guys might want to check the spelling in your headline. Unless you’re referring to the Philippine and white-bellied sea eagles.
Pedantry aside, manual shifting is an interesting subject. My first car was a 4M stick. Because of “she who must be kept happy,” the next three were automatics. Then a couple of manual pickups. More subsequent automatics. My second wife had a stick-shift ’80 Jetta when we met, dated and subsequently married. At the time, my ’90 Toyota had a particularly unrewarding shifter. With a kid on the way, the ’80 Jetta went away and replaced by another automatic and then another one.
Eventually, I got ’01 Jetta TDI with a 5M. It had the best shifter I ever owned but wasn’t nearly as nice as the best one I ever shifted–a friend’s ’86 Accord 5M. My ’01 Jetta’s clutch and transmission put up with 150K miles in hilly Seattle and Tacoma. And the next 15,000 miles put on it in Texas were easy.
When I got tired of running out of gears in Texas, I bought a ’17 Accord, but a manual was only available on the Accord Sport coupe, and I don’t like coupes. So, now my car has a 6A and, with neuropathy coming on in my feet, I don’t really miss dancing with the pedals and handbrake starting uphill from a stop. And when I broke my right arm a few years ago, it made the difference between driving myself and racking up a bunch of Lyft/Uber fares.
I have never experienced a gated shifter a la Ferrari et al. I’ve never needed it and I don’t know whether it would have felt better. The Miata, Civic Si and Type R seem to be well liked without a slotted, chromed gate.
TL;DR: Is a gated shifter better than one that isn’t?
Gated shifters tend to have longer throws and the gates also slow you down more when moving from side to side. This both slows down your shifts overall and also makes it much harder to money-shift which are crucial in long distance race situations to preserve the life of the transmission to the end. So, to paraphrase, they gimp the driver in the name of preserving the transmission they maybe could have built better but rewards them with a satisfying tactile clink in exchange.
(just my opinion, putting on anti-flame suit now…)
I didn’t pose the question as a setup for an onslaught of flamethrowers. Your observations kind of mirror mine as far as being a hindrance. But I hadn’t put much thought into WHY?
I have only done one potential money shift. Coming off a freeway in an ’82 (?) Datsun pickup, I accidentally caught 2nd gear instead of 4th. The roadway was wet and the rearend slewing sideways and the revs climbing rapidly as I was letting the clutch out were immediate clues I had erred and I nailed the clutch immediately. No harm. No foul. Right?
I suppose a gate might have prevented that.
I’ve read that some of the first Ferrari gated shifters were equipped to mid-engined cars, as a solution to the lack of feeling and tendency to mis-shift caused by the very long linkages that had to go all the way around the engine to the transmission out back. This might only apply to road cars, or it might be a myth entirely.
I do know that the gates make it easier to tell what gear you’re in, and are especially helpful in situations where the shift forks are hard to feel, and might offer a greater advantage in older mid-engined cars than it did in front-engined applications where the stick sprouts straight out of the transmission case.
Modern transaxles use shift cables that have less flex and play than the linkages of yore, and even mid-engined cars can shift with just as much positive feedback as a front-engined equivalent without the need for gates.
That said, I love the gated Thrustmaster shifter on my simulator, the positive feel of the gates is a welcome addition to a system that isn’t connected to a real transmission, and it feels a lot nicer than my former Logitech unit.
Looks like JC Whitney has moved up market.
Lousy H-pattern economy.
I don’t even want multiple discrete gear ratios in my car if I can help it.
I thought Porsche already did this with their MECOSA.
I really like manuals, but wouldn’t buy a fake manual. It seems so dumb. But to each their own!
The Manaul bird is a creature from Philippine mythology mentioned in the Kalantiaw Code. According to this document, killing this bird is punishable by death. However, there are stories that the Manaul was once the king of birds. He eventually turned evil and was transformed into a bird as punishment. He was captured by the wind god, Tabluk Lani, but escaped. Homeless, the Manaul told the sky that the sea would rise to cover him. The Manaul then told the sea that the sky would push him down. They became enraged. The sky began hurling giant rocks into the sea, creating giant waves. The sky and the sea eventually stopped fighting, but the rocks remained in the sea and became the Manaul’s home, which are now the Philippine islands .
So, I guess a fake Manaul would be more benign
Beat me to it. Lol
Fun fact: in the early 1980s, Honda incorporated the clutch functionality into the shift lever on their ATC (All-Terrain Cycle) three-wheelers. When you moved the lever up or down, the clutch would disengage, the lever would move the shift fork(s) to change the actual gear, and then when you released pressure on the lever the clutch would re-engage. This process was generally transparent to the rider: just back off on the thumb-actuated throttle and shift.
However, if you were careful, you could move the lever just enough to slip the clutch and pick up some revs if you were stuck. (This was on a 110cc model; it was not a powerful machine.)
My 2019 Supercub had the same semi auto transmission. Great fun. You must shift, it’s no auto, but there’s no clutch.
I had a trail 90 like that too. I thought it was great. Two brake levers, and a pedal brake.
Where it’s at
I got two brake levers and a pedal brake
Where it’s at
I got two brake levers and a pedal brake
[Instrumental]
That was a good drum brake…
We have a 2022 Rubicon 520 with the same transmission. CVTs have generally taken over this space, (and for good reason) but slamming through the gears on the foot shift is still super satisfying.
I was OK with a clutch by cable, does that count?
Ha! On a motorcycle, I assume? I once owned a GL1800 Gold Wing and didn’t mind pulling a (hydraulically linked) lever and toeing my own gears. I think it would be weird to ride a fully automatic bike. But I never have, other than my current scooter which has a CVT, which is not surprising given their purpose in life.
I think all aircooled VWs and Porsches up until 1987 used clutch cables.
Hunh! I learn something every day. These days, it’s often from this site.
Motorcycle and VW Scirocco. I think cars with cable actuated clutches were not so uncommon back in the day.
A buddy of mine had a mid 70’s Honda CB with a Hondamatic. It was pretty awful, slow and heavy enough that riding it was closer to chore than fun. But that was then, I’m sure bike autos are much better now.
My tr3 and 1962 Mercedes both have hydraulic clutches, which was what doomed them to 25 years as yard art. When they fail, it’s a real mess.
I rebuilt my TR3 clutch hydraulics a couple of times. It’s no different from the brakes.
Now if you want to see a REAL mess do what my buddy did after the fool found his Datsun 510’s hydraulic clutch failed after he and an equally foolish friend tried to hike to the top of Mt Shasta in February. The campground was deserted, it was literally freezing and this was LONG before cellphones or even carphones existed outside of the very few. They replaced the DOT 3 with the only non water fluid they had: Karo corn syrup. By some miracle it worked well enough to get them the 350 miles home but the next day was all a goopy mess. The whole system needed to be replaced.
Of course this was a guy who had a whole garage full of 510 parts so that was done by the end of the day. Much better than losing a few fingers and toes.
I was going to rebuild the clutch and brakes, when they both failed at once, and one thing led to another, and I was looking at having to remove the rear axle, which seemed to require separateing the underslung frame from the body to service the rear axle bearings because a 30 ton hydraulic equivalent of the mythical Churchill tool couldn’t separate the axle. Then my mom had health issues that precluded me working on the car.
Looking to give it away now.
That’s sucks. I hope your mom is better.
I assume this is the Mercedes? That level of PITA sound far more German than English.
Hydraulic hand clutches in traffic are a handful. Your forearm will be screaming.
I dunno why they should be any worse than cables. Hydraulics are just another way to transmit force.
Mechanical levers for cables are designed not to be linear, so holding your clutch lever ends up being very little holding force. A hydraulic one, otoh, is linear so that it’s the same force at any given point – holding the clutch remains just as high force as pulling it and becomes more tiresome.
That doesn’t make sense to me but OK, I guess I’ll have to experience it myself.
My foot however couldn’t discern whether the clutch was cable or hydraulic.
Consider the cable pull being cammed. It has a higher initial pull, but once you get over that, actuating the clutch past the friction zone itself is relatively low-force. So holding it, and feathering the clutch in traffic, will be in a lighter zone.
That’s a design choice though, not a fault of cable technology. Its the same with bows. You can choose a traditional recurve and fight the draw while aiming or go with a compound bow and not.
It’s a feature of cable tech to lower the force needed on the lever.
It isn’t translated into hydraulic, which leads to higher grip fatigue on hydraulic clutch bikes.
So why not do the same with the hydraulic system and have the slave (?), receiving (?), whatever it’s called now cylinder act on an intermediate cam?
Except when they spew brake fluid into the bell housing, and then you are taking apart the whole car.
Not precisely related, but my impression of some cars is that they are assembled around the clutch throw out bearing. I had one car where replacing the throw out bearing either required removing the engine, which involved removing the radiator, moving the engine forward a couple inches, dropping the 15 liter oil pan that unbolts from above, removing the DOHC head, turning the engine about 45 degrees, then wiggling it out. Then removing the clutch etc. simply do the reverse to reassemble. Turns out old Maseratis don’t use gaskets, just string and permeated. Oh , the wildly complicated heater makes an appearance in this drama.
I should mention that the owners manual was written in pencil in Italian, and our genius Mexican mechanic sort of got through with help from some Italians that had a restaurant down the block
Then the damn throw out bearing failed again.
This time we decided to do it the “other way” which meant removing the interior, doing some cutting of the floor, and pulling the transmission and clutch out the interior.
Stupid English clutch.
The systems I saw, including my TR3 had the slave cylinder is bolted to the side of the bell housing and pushing a lever whose shaft went inside. The hydraulics were completely outside the bell housing. There is no reason for hydraulics to enter the bell housing by design except poor engineering in which case I’d think a cable would be poorly designed too.
Besides that TR3 of yours had a windvane rear crankshaft bearing seal that leaked by design. That’s why your bell housing had a hole in the bottom and why British cars leaked so much damn oil.
Yeah, the hydraulic throw out bearings were on American cars.
The TR3 was always a situation where one thing led to another, and the previous owner had welded the body together among other travesties. .
Yeech!
A suicide or rocker clutch pedal fixes that. Of course standing still in gear is what gives it the name.
What I don’t get is that surely, SURELY it’s just cheaper to supply a manual gearbox than spend tens of thousands of hours on programming and testing to make a fake one.
and more satisfying to drive
While I think manuals are more reliable and durable than everything but an e-cvt, I believe they are the hardest to make strong enough to withstand high power engines or heavy vehicles, and dct’s aren’t much better except for not being limited to two shafts running the full length of the housing. Automatics have the advantage of concentric gears transmitting a twisting force into the shaft directly instead of an upward force against the gear teeth and bearings causing the shaft to spin. They have sooo many more things that can wear out or go bad though.
This is what I hear as well, thou I don’t know it’s it true.
Weird then how semi trucks, even 60 ton main battle tanks used manual transmissions without issues.
Compare the size of their casings, gears, shafts, and bearings to even the monster size T56/6061, much less what ZF, Getrag, and Aisin make. Going from 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 speeds also made things worse as the transmission didn’t usually get longer, the gears just got skinnier. I don’t think most people want a center tunnel the same size as an H1 Hummer in their normal sized car.
A planetary gear set is much stronger for the same volume so they can fit even more ratios, they just come with all the drawbacks of, well, being an automatic… On the other hand I don’t know why someone would prefer a DCT on a long term car as it seems to combine the inherent weakness of a manual, the inherent continuous wear and complexity of an automatic, and much more frequent expensive service. They are the cool new thing and are the best performers, but I personally hated the delay between hitting the paddle shifter and something happening every time I drove one, and if I can’t have a manual I think I’d rather have a ZF8 auto.
Tanks and semis are built to take a lot more punishment than a corvette though. In the case of the tank its built to survive moving that 60 tons over rough country, hard stops and reverses, and hopefully survive being shot with armor piercing high explosives. I’m pretty sure that adds to the size.
I think in the end we agree, it’s very hard to make a manual transmission for cars once they start hitting above 300 hp or so within packaging constraints acceptable by the consumer unless you’re getting a muscle car like a Mustang, Camaro, or Charger where the big transmission tunnel is seen more as a bragging right than a negative. I won’t give the C8 a pass though as it’s mid-engine so there should have been enough room for them to have made a beefy enough transmission there. It would probably feel very clunky and “not good” though just due to its beefiness.
Simple. Copy and paste the Ricardo 6sp out of the Ford GT40.
I thought they used ZF boxes after using the Indy car Colotti on the original Lola and the mark I
This is the new one.
Most high performance cars use their tires as the limit on torque.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody has made a transmission that bumps up the input speed of the engine then runs a high axle ratio. If you doubled the speed of the transmission you would double the power handling at the same internal torque limit. I don’t know why it isn’t done, seems obvious to me.
Heat would be the only thing I’d worry about, but that sounds like a great idea. Tires work great to limit stress, but they can be easily overcome by shock loads such as hitting a pot hole, curbing on a track, or bouncing while rock crawling.
Wilson and Cotal gearboxes work like that. Lots of tanks ( with lots of torque ) used Wilson or similar systems.
Cadillac can make it work with a CT5V BW though, and whilst it’s down on power it’s significantly up on torque to the Ferrari. Tremec has their new manual transaxle that can easily do the power and torque, but is currently limited to 8600rpm
I guess if the cost was the same as the standard 12Cilindri, maybe I would be more accepting, but at a EUR190k upcharge with all this Italian fanfare about it…
I just replaced the 6L80 in my 2015 Silverado. It was $3200 for a remanufactured one plus $1000 to install and program. I upgraded my Miata’s transmission from 5spd to 6spd and it was less then $1000 and I did it at home with no lift. It was super easy even for a first timer like myself.
Strong manual transmissions are available.
They’re not in any way comparable. Granted I’m very familiar with the 4L80 instead of the 6L80, but it’s roughly 4 times the size and 2-3 times the weight. It was also the weakest link connecting an 8.1L engine to a 10K Lb trailer via a 7K Lb truck and generally broke every 3 years. The Aisin transmissions used in my Miata’s, RX7’s, RX8’s are tiny and lightweight. No problem lifting it in and out of my trunk and carrying it to the car. If I were to swap this into the truck I doubt I’d even make it to 75% throttle going down hill before it grenades.
Oh I know they are mostly unrelated. My point was that I just swapped 2 transmissions in one year. One was easy and cheap (the manual) and the other was expensive and complicated and required a dealership to program and certify (for the transmission warranty).
I generally dislike automatics, but that was what came with the white whale of a Chevy when we traded vehicles with another person.
I don’t like them , but torque converter+ planetary gear set automatic transmissions can be made very strong and reliable. I suspect cheaper too.
I don’t know why manual shifting planetary gear set transmissions aren’t more popular.
Cotals were interesting, and of course Lenco is the drag racer’s favorite.
No, because there’s a market for people who only want to buy cred/status.
It’s the reason there’s a BMW X1 M35i. The M means you’re cooler. People want to be perceived as something without having to deal with the reality it entails They want the image without having to cash the checks with the whatever (skill, money, inconvenience, less comfort, etc.) they don’t have.
Many many years ago I once dated a gal who had a Ford Fusion, and she made sure I knew it looked just like an Aston Martin. Basically the same thing, right? Ergo she is smarter than the dumb people spending money, and I should continue dating her because she is so smart and fashionable.
“People want to be perceived as something without having to deal with the reality it entails They want the image without having to cash the checks with the whatever (skill, money, inconvenience, less comfort, etc.) they don’t have.”
And that is how you sell giant luxury pickup trucks to office employees.
Honestly I think a traditional manual gearbox can’t handle the power that these cars are putting out. I think the clutch just wouldn’t hold up. Reference BMW not being able to offer a manual on the Competition version of the M3, they say the gearbox isn’t up to snuff. Whereas a DCT can (I’m no engineer so I may be completely off the mark). Programming and testing isn’t as expensive as designing a complete new gearbox from scratch. You are better off using one transmission across the range that you can adapt. From what I understand is that this feels just like a regular manual, but you will get the benefit of it being a DCT, which is just cool. Also shift by wire isn’t new. Bus manufacturers like Volvo and Scania having been doing this for years.
A CT5V Blackwing has +165hp and +180lbft of torque compared to the current model M3C. BMW are just cowards and don’t want to admit that Tremec have a better gearbox in most every way compared to ZF.
But for the purposes of EPA and maybe safety certification, adding a manual is like testing a whole other car. That’s why a manufacturer may have a manual in Europe but not here.
A couple million dollars for an option that might sell a couple hundred units is a lot.
The Ferrari already has a minimum EUR190k upcharge on the standard model for the pleasure of pretending to drive a manual.
I wanna see an electric car maker include a manual. Not because it needs one, but because it doesn’t.
Porsche Taycan has a 2 speed transmission
So far that’s the only ev model I know of that has a transmission with more than 1 gear
I won’t be impressed until they maximize authenticity of these fake manuals and bring back the CAGS 1st-to-4th skip-shift.
I have been saying this for years, poor manual sales are a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, manual sales were down, but they hovered around 10% for years until manufacturers started dropping manuals from their lineups.
“Only 2% of all new US cars sales are manual” is a sentence that gets thrown around ALOT, but sales are that low because again, manufacturers refuse to offer manuals across their lineups, and when they do, their dealers refuse to stock them… or they only offer them in pointless trims that people don’t want with terrible engine options. They seemingly refuse to put in effort to offer a manual car that people actually want to buy while pointing at low sales number as the reason for not offering them in the first place.
Like the new Tacoma. If you want to row-your-own, you have to buy the huge crew-cab. If you want the 2-door model, you’re stuck with an automatic.
If Toyota really understood American drivers, they’d know that it’s the 2-door truck buyers who really prefer a manual transmission.
Next year, they’ll announce that they’re dropping the 2-door and the manual transmission options due to the low take rate on both.
Self-fulfilling prophecy, indeed.
All truck buyers want giant bloated Beluga whale sized trucks, so that’s what we make now.
Right??
I had a 2025 Tacoma TRD crew cab for a rental a while back in Albuquerque and it was huge, had an annoying whistle to it, and induced range anxiety like the new Slate or an old Nissan Leaf.
I had it for one day and I had to put gas in it twice, even though I started out with a full tank. I think the low-fuel light came on after only 250 miles. I only had to go around 300 miles, and it was pitiful that it wouldn’t go that far on a single tank.
After driving that ‘mid-size’ truck, I’d be afraid to drive a new Tundra.
(And I was used to 2020-ish F250 Super-Duty work trucks, but at least those weren’t pretending to be a reasonable size)
Almost all Toyota trucks and body on frame SUVs, including Lexus, have comically small fuel tanks making their range very short.
The same can be said of the hatchback.
A few dealers had trouble moving some Pinto hatchbacks after some news came out. Those dealers insisted americans didn’t want hatchbacks and wouldn’t order them for inventory.
It would be nice if we could order cars the way we want instead of getting stuck with whatever the owner of Limpdick Motors decided to stock.
I remember shopping for the Lexus IS around 2008-ish. The IS250 was available with the manual. It had an anemic 2.5L V6 and was just so hard to get moving. That engine was just awful.
The very excellent 3.5L V6 in the IS350? Not available with a manual.
I think we were all crying foul with these examples and calling BS on this narrative while it was happening. We all knew back then. Nothing new here as far as the narrative goes.
I’m just not sure how I feel about these new auto-manuals. I guess I’d try one. But if we are adding $25K to the price couldn’t they just charge that much and use the proceeds on developing a proper manual? I wouldn’t pay it for my Tacoma or GTi but I’d damn sure pay it for my Ferrari. It would pay dividends back in appreciation/resell value just like Porsches.