Manual vs Automatic transmission in TV

ricatic wrote:
These transmission threads make me chuckle...I especially enjoy the black helicopter theories about government interventions and manufacturers conspiracies.

Reality is neither of these factors could eliminate the manual transmission from the manufacturers catalog. What eliminated the manual transmission was purely lack of sales. The take rate for manuals in the last 15 years or so is less than 2% of all HD pickups sold...20 trucks or less out of a thousand sold.This ridiculously low take rate came when the manual transmission was the "standard equipment".Buyers paid more for their automatics....much more...

As horsepower and torque increased, the then current crop of manuals needed serious upgrading and re-engineering to handle the power. Who would pay these costs? The manual transmission buyers had been riding for free for years on the backs of the automatic trans buyers. The manual had become the "option" with no cost. Now, there was some big development costs to be incurred in keeping an option that virtually no one was buying.

I once posted a question in one of these threads about "who pays". I simply asked if anyone of the angry manual transmission devotees would pay $2000 additional(above the now standard transmission truck price)for the option to have a manual transmission...IIRC...I had one taker...

Simple economics was the cause of the no manuals from GM and Ford...For the record, I am not anti-manual transmission. I have a million miles behind me shifting gears...I am against asking automatic trans buyers to continue to pay the bill...

Regards

Well said...

Our 05 truck with a manual tranny for our work hand was surprisingly tricky (And a very disappointing)to get heavy fertilizer tanks and heavy cattle trailers moving from a dead stop when on very soft ground.