The price of wanting a "stick"
Not debating manual vs automatic plenty of threads on that already, however for me personally I like a manual and considering I'm a dodge fan they still offer one. But as I look at the numbers payload...
Forum Discussion
I have a manual transmission (in fact all 4 of our vehicles currently do). Stop start traffic up hill is a pain (specifically in the left knee). I also resort to trickling along in idle, some times in low ratio. An auto would be nice in a number of other situations where I could very gently apply torque - crawling over obstacles. On the other hand, the ability to lock the truck's manual into low-ratio first for serious mountain descents has probably been a life-saver.
Traditionally in the UK we have had smaller car engines, and my experience of these combined with auto transmissions hasn't been positive (the exception was Sally's Jeep Cherokee, but that was a fairly small SUV with an engine twice the size of a typical British car engine of the time). Though I know the autos are much better these days - microprocessor control, locking up the torque converter when possible to minimize power loss.
My truck has a tiny 2.5 litre turbo diesel mated to its 5-speed manual transmission, but last spring I was very disappointed in the performance and fuel economy of my rental 5.4 gasoline E-series class B. Compared to my truck camper of a similar size it seemed incredibly slow and thirsty and I wonder how much of that was a function of the transmission - I guess it wasn't the most modern transmission though.
I've driven a few interesting automatics recently though - cars, not trucks. A Ford Fiesta 1.6, which was quite good, but the performance seemed similar to a 1.2 manual and the fuel consumption was much worse. A Nissan with a continuously variable gearbox, which was much better than I thought it would be, and a VW with a double-clutch Direct Sequential Gearbox. Very good - All the economy and performance of a manual, but an automatic. On the down-side it pretends to be an auto by slipping those two clutches - I wonder how many miles they will last?
Steve.
Traditionally in the UK we have had smaller car engines, and my experience of these combined with auto transmissions hasn't been positive (the exception was Sally's Jeep Cherokee, but that was a fairly small SUV with an engine twice the size of a typical British car engine of the time). Though I know the autos are much better these days - microprocessor control, locking up the torque converter when possible to minimize power loss.
My truck has a tiny 2.5 litre turbo diesel mated to its 5-speed manual transmission, but last spring I was very disappointed in the performance and fuel economy of my rental 5.4 gasoline E-series class B. Compared to my truck camper of a similar size it seemed incredibly slow and thirsty and I wonder how much of that was a function of the transmission - I guess it wasn't the most modern transmission though.
I've driven a few interesting automatics recently though - cars, not trucks. A Ford Fiesta 1.6, which was quite good, but the performance seemed similar to a 1.2 manual and the fuel consumption was much worse. A Nissan with a continuously variable gearbox, which was much better than I thought it would be, and a VW with a double-clutch Direct Sequential Gearbox. Very good - All the economy and performance of a manual, but an automatic. On the down-side it pretends to be an auto by slipping those two clutches - I wonder how many miles they will last?
Steve.
