How much of an automobile’s cost is in the transmission? I just purchased a diesel Passat with a 6-speed standard transmission. For VW diesel cars, an automatic transmission is $2000 additional. For gasoline VWs, an automatic transmission is $1100 additional. Is that price realistic, or is it just because most Americans don’t know how to drive a standard?
Gears:Why so many … 60 years ago, my grandfather drove three-on-the-column. 50 years ago, my first VW Beetle had four-on-the-floor. My last three VW’s had five-on-the-floor. My new Passat has six-on-the-floor. As for automatic transmissions, I believe some 60’s GM cars had only two gears. Most cars had three gears. I think my 2000 Dodge Caravan had 3 gears, but my 2011 Dodge Caravan has six gears. Chrysler is currently advertising a car with nine forward gears. I consider five gears (at least for a standard) is probably optional. Is there really a lot of benefit for more gears? With six gears, I find myself skipping gears occasionally.
After 50 years of driving a standard, I’m pretty adept at hill starts. I use the emergency brake on steep hills only. Nobody told me, but my new Passat holds the brake for two seconds if starting on a hill. I discovered this feature while waiting at a light. I thought my brakes had locked until the car started rolling two seconds later. When was this feature introduced?
While I’m adept at using a manual transmission, I’m not good as a teacher. I’d love to give my 20 year-old granddaughter my 2002 VW, but won’t until she learns to drive it. While common 50 years ago, I haven’t been able to find a Massachusetts driving school that will teach her. I figure it should take half a day and I’m willing to travel as long as we could do it in one day. Anyone know of a teacher within two hours of Boston?
And as a side note: I think it’s ironic that of my two cars, only the VW is made in the USA. The Dodge is imported.
Some new auto’s come with 8 or 9 gears. Porsche 911’s come with 7 gears in a manual.
The auto industry has gone mad mad mad with gears!
We’ve got a few grease monkeys on the board that will give you the painful details about why more is sometimes better and sometimes worse, depending on application.
I’m like you, a big VW fan and I love to row my own gears so I’ve owned manuals exclusively until a few years ago when I discovered the new auto’s with the paddle shifters. My new auto switches gears (up and down) faster than I ever could. It’s awesome and very smart in blipping the engine when I downshift. But I still commute in my trusty VW with the row your own transmission.
Personal story aside, more gears means better fuel economy and a transmission geared to operate in the optimal range for the engine and torque band so that you’re not stressing either engine or transmission in day to day driving.
I suspect the difference in the cost of the actual parts is probably a bit more, but there’s also the engineering costs which now have to be amortized over an increasingly smaller number of cars as standards have become less standard. Honestly, though, I think half the reason why they still offer the things at all anymore is so they can advertise an MSRP that’s $1000 cheaper than the version most people get.
With the why so many gears, the big issue is gas mileage. You may have noticed all those old 3-on-the-trees and 2 speed slushboxes didn’t get especially good mileage. The gears can really only be so far apart to maintain good driving manners and so with only a few gears, you have to pick between low gearing for quick acceleration and low-end grunt or higher gearing for low cruising RPM. With a whole bucket 'o gears you can have it both ways!
The hill start thing is pretty nifty, huh? It’s basically just a software addition to the ABS system. I think I started noticing them around the time cars started getting stability control and all that stuff.
More gears contributes to fuel efficiency and performance and allows the engine to run closest to its optimum RPM.
The Volkswagen Beetle had a floor-mounted four-speed at a time when most standards were three-speed (and automatics even two-speed) mainly because it had a tiny air-cooled engine and needed that kind of transmission for adequate performance. It also happened to be an exceptionally well-built smooth transmission that was a pleasure to operate, an exemplar of the German auto engineering excellence that produced common components for both the Beetle and the Porsche for decades – for the Beetle, quite a distinction for what was supposed to be a low-priced economy car. It’s one reason the Beetle was so beloved, fondly remembered as the first car of many a baby boomer.
My wife just got a diesel VW as well – a Jetta Sportwagen TDI. She prefers an automatic, although if it were my choice, it would have been a manual.
My 2013 WRX has the “hill start assist” as well…really weird at first, but it’s kinda handy. I do wish there was a button to turn it off, or a way to activate it only when needed. On a steep hill where you’d normally ride the clutch or use the e-brake, it’s nice to have. On a mild incline, it just feels weird and screws up your timing.
Look around online re: how to teach a manual transmission…there are some very interesting schools of thought. I personally taught myself in the driveway before I had a license…Going back and forth a thousand times in the driveway taught me how to take off without stalling, and once you have that down, the rest is really a breeze.
I know at least in the other flavors of Impreza, you can disable the system entirely with some combination of button-holding. It would be nice if there were just a button for it so you could do it on the fly.
That would be hard to do in my truck, since it has a left-foot operated parking brake. What would the tester do if the driver’s car didn’t have a center-mounted hand brake?
It’s a good question. I know a few old Mercedes sold in the UK had foot-operated parking brakes, and they have also started allowing hill assist, apparently. So I guess what they are testing is acceptable control of the car in a hill start, and in cars equipped with a traditional handbrake, which is the vast majority of them still, that means using it.
Your confused about your logic. With fewer-and-fewer stick shifts, the amortization costs of a manual transmission would be higher than an automatic. In the case of the VW, the standard is $2000 (list price) less than an automatic.
While finding a manual transmission was not difficult, the first two dealers that I contacted did not have any in stock. I don’t know if it was because there was no demand for a stick-shifts (so they don’t stock them) or whether the demand had depleted the supply, or whether the profit was higher on automatics (so VW doesn’t make enough).
Passat driver here. 2002, but it’s only got about 50,000 miles on it.
We’re considering a new car in the next year or two. Glad to hear the Passat is still available with a manual transmission, especially in the diesel models.
It seems like a lot of the Japanese brands are going with CVTs now. Manuals are getting hard to find.
Right, that’s what I’m saying. The manufacturing costs of the manual are probably several thousand less than the automatic, but the engineering costs being amortized across an increasingly small proportion of manual cars partly explains why they typically only charge an extra $1-2k or so for the automatic.
The dealers I’d talked to when I was in the market said they usually don’t stock stick shifts because they’re slow movers. It’s not that there’s no demand for them, but the longer a car sits on the lot, the more it costs the dealer and the stick shift buyers just don’t come along frequently enough to create acceptable turnover with the stick shift cars. The place I finally ended up getting my car from was a regional chain and they said they normally tried to keep one or two sticks in their whole network so they can ship one overnight if someone wants one, which is what I ended up doing.
The thing is with **true **manual transmissions, IOW not semi-automatics with shifting paddles etc. but regular old clutch pedal & stick shifts)) the engineering hasn’t really changed that much in decades. So the cost to build them hasn’t either. But true automatic transmissions have been totally re-engineered in the last 25 years or so. They are now all computer controlled, all contain at least one (usually several) overdrive gears, have locking torque converters, and AWD while once a rarity has practically become the standard these days on all but the cheapest cars.
One side note: A while back I saw a documentary that asked 'What is the most expensive individual ‘component’ in the manufacture of a new automobiles today?" The answer? The cost of the health insurance for the autoworkers who build them!
You guys are conflating the concepts of cost and price. Cost is what the manufacturer has to pay to produce the product. Price is what the market will pay for the product. There are countless examples where an item with a higher cost will have a lower price. Particularly in manufacturing, where the sales price often has little to do with the cost of manufacture. It tickles me to see someone say something like “the iPhone 6 costs more because the larger screen costs more to make”. While it may be true that the larger screen does cost more to make, the iPhone 6 costs more because people are willing to pay more, plain and simple.
Cars with automatic transmissions cost more because people will pay more for them.
OK, Hail Ants, I’m not buying your assertion that “AWD while once a rarity has practically become the standard these days on all but the cheapest cars.”
Well compared to you bog standard 3 speed or 4 speed RWD manual trans that had two shafts butted end to end the FWD trans in the Volvo 850 was a totally different animal. Three parallel shafts, overall length about 12", synchromesh reverse, totally new design syncros and had a couple of world wide patents.
It was a whole new animal.
So yes there is still engineering going on with manual boxes.
I think that it would be better to say:
AWD while once a rarity has [del]practically become the standard[/del] become available these days on all but the cheapest cars.