Posted on 10/12/2017 1:04:32 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Heated and cooled seats. Backup cameras. Panoramic glass roofs.
Not exactly what springs to mind when you think of a pickup. But that's what American truck buyers increasingly want, spending an average of $46,844 on a pickup, according to Kelley Blue Book. That's more than the starting price of luxury SUVs like the Mercedes GLC or the Lexus RX. In 2016, pickup trucks made up a little more than a third of all vehicles that sold for over $50,000.
At the State Fair of Texas this month, Ford Motor Co. is displaying its most expensive pickup yet: The F-Series Super Duty Limited, a luxury heavy-duty truck with a starting price of $80,835. It has custom two-tone leather seats, a heated steering wheel wrapped in hand-stitched leather and high-tech features like a 360-degree camera system that guides drivers when they're hitching up a trailer.
A fully-loaded F-450 — the biggest version of the Super Duty — will top out at $94,455. It's capable of towing an Air Force F-35 fighter plane, but it also has massaging seats.....
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
My 2008 F-150 has rubber floors, roll up windows, manual locks, manual transmission. But don’t think it spares the luxuries! It has BOTH AM AND FM on the radio, and a cigarette lighter too! Standard!
Manuals do “worse” against auto trans mission in “economy” mode where the shifts happen @ 2000rpm and acceleration sucks.
Those are fleet trucks. They are available to anyone, not just fleets. Fleet truck buyers have stopped buying manuals as well.
Ford offered the Super Duty in manual, even in the fleet configuration through MY2010. Take rate for manuals, including special orders, was at or under 1.5% from MY07 to MY10. They gave up after MY10 for the US. Mexico, the land of the no frills pickup, soon followed suit because they also had similar declining take rates.
Manuals do worse in all fuel economy tests against a modern 6+ speed automatic, especially if the automatic is a DCT system. They have been proven to do worse in performance driving as well. This has been proven by many tests by many entities over the years.
The dealers order the trucks. Not the public. What the dealers want and what the public wants aren’t always the same. If more manuals were offered more would be sold. If they ordered 20% manuals they would have all been sold. They are cramming auto trannys down the public gullet because a take or leave it attitude is easier for them to deal with.
Engaging sport mode basically encourages the car's powertrain to favor acceleration and power over fuel economy and smoothness. For instance, if you are accelerating from a stop in sport mode, the car will hold each gear a bit longer than it would in regular mode. This helps the engine reach its maximum power output, which, for your car, falls roughly between 4000 and 6000 RPMs.
Fuel economy will likely suffer somewhat when using sport mode because the engine will spend more time at higher RPMs than it would in regular mode at the same speeds.
I commuted in stick shifts the whole time I lived in the SF Bay area. I didn’t mind it in traffic at all and manuals are a joy on mountain roads. The amount of work driving a manual transmission is way overplayed. The most important thing is clutch control and after a bit of exercise the leg gets used to it.
Those 20% manuals would mostly have been sold at a loss. The driving populace simply does not want manuals in most trucks at a significant rate to continue to produce them. Again, Ford had manual transmission versions available for order by anyone, not just what the dealer itself wanted. They had an abysmal take rate and many dealers who had manuals had them sitting around for more than a model year - a friend got a Dodge Ram 2500 with a manual transmission that way. Popular configuration vehicle except for the manual. It sat on the lot for 14 months. The dealer took it in the shorts just to get rid of the thing.
So, no, it’s not just because “the dealers didn’t want them” it’s because the public *and* the corporate fleets didn’t want them even though they could have easily ordered them.
On top of which, there’s also the technical problem of mating a manual transmission to today’s very powerful engines. A clutch capable of dealing with 900lb-ft of torque is going to be very heavy; a manual gearbox of similar capability is going to be ‘agricultural’ at best. People don’t want that in their trucks.
Yeah, except again real world tests have shown the 6 and 8 speed DCTs actually result in *better* performance. BMW was ready to kill the manual in the M5 precisely because the DCT automatic they wanted to fit was *faster* in every possible way and it got better fuel economy while doing it.
You're delusional.
Today you are buying a vehicle wrapped around an expansive transmission. After 10 years if the tranny fails you HAVE TO THROW THE WHOLE VEHICLE AWAY even if the rest of the vehicle is still pristine. Conversely, there is no real end of service with a manual. I've had them last forever basically.
I don't believe in throw away vehicles. I've been burned to many many times by blown up auto transmissions. I've given perfectly good cars to charity because the auto trans died. I had maintained the car to perfection but it was to no avail. It's a racket.
Even 20 years ago, sometimes you had to throw the truck away when the transmission failed. The C6 and TH400 weren’t the cheapest transmissions to rebuild.
On the other hand, your assertion that if the ‘expensive transmission fails you have to throw the entire truck away’ doesn’t hold water any more or less than it did 20 years ago. 2006 and 2007 trucks that have their transmissions fail today will have their transmissions repaired. The 6 speed TorqShifts from Ford are getting rebuilt and are definitely not throwaway. The same goes for GM and Dodge. However, the manuals they put in those trucks did need rebuilds, sometimes sooner than the automatics. And the history of truck manuals from the 80s forward wasn’t the best either. Look at what happened with the Ford M5OD and M5OD-HD. If you’re into Jeeps, look at the craptacular manual offerings they had: http://www.fourwheeler.com/how-to/1311-manual-meltdowns-jeep-transmissions-we-love-to-hate/
Manual does *not* mean “will last forever’ and there’s lots of people who can present evidence to the contrary of your assertion.
It's a racket where manufactures are creating a throw away vehicle with planned obsolescence. Hell you cannot even easily check the fluid level THERE IS NO DIPSTICK anymore.
What they want is for you to buy the vehicle with no recommend service on the trans for 100K. They design the trans to last 100K on the factory fluid. After 100K it is a crap shoot. You may get 50K more or maybe not. It is BS if you ask me.
In many areas of the country, the car will rust long before you get to 175k miles. The car/truck market is not composed only of people who want to buy a car and keep it for 20 years until it falls apart. That’s a small segment of the market.
Car manufacturers sell what people want to buy. For most, the benefits of an auto transmission far outweigh considerations of what the transmission will do after 175k miles.
Many manufacturers have put dipsticks back in or have installed electronic level sensors. They have also changed the fluid intervals back to either 30-60K or when a fluid life system determines it needs to be changed.
I have seen many modern automatics in fleet and private service go way more than 250K.
Which means you've seen many that haven't.
Afluenza.
From what I understand, cell phone usage has doomed manual transmissions in even high performance sports cars which have paddle shift automatic. People only have two hands, so one to steer, one to fiddle with the phone and none for the gearshift. Hands free via Bluetooth didn’t reverse the trend.
Reality. People want hassle-free cars that are fun to drive and have creature comforts. A person buying a car to have for 3 or 5 years doesn’t care if the transmission will last 175k miles.
If you want that to change, don’t blame the car makers. Convince the American car-buying public that they should insist on no-frills cars with manual transmissions so the guy that ends up with their car 10 years later has an easier time.
Good luck!
That’s part of it. The fuel economy is not better with a manual nowadays. (Or marginally so.) And many never learn how to drive one, because even the economy cars sold here usually have an auto except on the very bargain-basement trims.
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