Review Your Cars

Talking Transmissions Part Two covers the Continuously Variable and Manual Transmissions, one increasing in popularity, the other sadly disappearing. No longer an SRT, the new Viper remains one of the quicket production cars despite having an "old school" manual transmission. Manual The “stick shift” is the traditional purists transmission that every driver should be required to learn. It educates a driver on the interaction of the vehicle and gear selection. It is the lightest and most reliable type of transmission. Now cars like the new Corvette Stingray and Porsche 911 offer a 7-speed manual. Interestingly the Corvette has 4 “acceleration gears” ending at 147mph and 5th starts the overdrive ratio “fuel economy gears. The Carrera S has 5 “acceleration gears” ending at 158mph. Besides weight and reliability, it is the most direct connection to the driver and the performance of the vehicle. For classic cars, it is almost always the most desired transmission and many weren’t e...

There are now essentially four different types of transmissions available in various cars and SUVs and the media isn’t helping with the mixing of terms. This is a summary of their method of transmitting power and the advantages and disadvantages. Whether you want a sports car or the most fuel efficient economy car, this applies to you for a satisfying driving experience. Part one will discuss the Automatic and the Automated Manual. First, a brief discussion of gears or “speeds” a transmission may have. There are an increasing number of speeds offered in a transmission. The highest in production is now nine in an automatic for the 2014 Jeep Cherokee and Chrysler 200 (Update: A new 10 speed is shared with Ford and GM). There are a lot of models with eight speed automatics as well as several manual transmission or “stick shift” cars with 7 speed transmissions. The advantage of more gears is twofold. For the enthusiast it enables optimal acceleration keeping the engine rpm closer to its pe...