My last post was about cars that don’t come with a manual transmission. This is the other foot that drops on a shoe; the Peter robbing Paul’s Mary; the left hand spying on the right. This one is about the good cars.
The list is biased toward cars that have both a manual transmission and all-wheel drive (AWD), because that’s that what I want. If there’s a car that I missed, send me a comment and I’ll add it.
I’ve written a rant about manual transmissions, or the lack thereof in new cars today. So here is a listing of cars that do not come with a manual transmission.
This is not a comprehensive list, just a list of some cars I’ve looked into recently. If you have a recommendation to add to this list, please let me know. Thanks.
My last update: February 21, 2014 @ 7:50 pm.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
The Video
SAULT STE MARIE, MI — Bertha Benz, the wife of Karl Benz, was the first person to take a road trip. Without telling her husband (or the authorities), she took a Patent Motorwagen and drove with her children Eugen and Richard (fifteen and thirteen years old respectively) 66 miles, from Mannheim to Pforzheim. She left at dawn on August 5, 1888 and arrived at her mother’s home at dusk. They returned the next day.
Listen to a child (or adult) playing with a toy car. Chances are the child will not only make vrooming engine noises, but also shifting noises, with the engine rpms rising and falling rhythmically. That’s because even a child knows that for optimal acceleration, you should shift when the next higher gear produces more torque than the current gear you’re in. It’s innate in all of us.
So there I was, driving my family home in my wife’s car. We were just a couple of miles from our house when suddenly this demon-spawned monster sprang from the bowels of Hell itself and devoured the tires from our car, gorging itself on vulcanized rubber, its maw stuffed with steel-belted sinews and its razor-sharp teeth shredding our sidewalls.
I wrote back in 2007 that the attendance for the Detroit auto show (North American International Auto Show—NAIAS) was down for the fourth consecutive year. The downward trend continued until 2009. Since then, it’s steadily grown again, hitting 795,416 attendees in 2013. That’s close to the all-time record of 808,833 in 2003[1].
So there I was, just a mile from my house when I felt the vibrations. After a few seconds, I decided to pull over and see if I had a flat tire. I went around the car, but all four tires seemed normal. As a precaution, I walked around again and checked the lug nuts by hand. As far as I could tell, those were okay, too.
One of my driving nightmares is flying off a bridge. Minnesota’s Department of Transportation (MnDOT) posted this traffic video of exactly that nightmare. It occurred on January 7, 2014 on I-694 in St. Paul. According to MnDOT’s post of the video, the driver walked away without serious injuries.
After shoveling snow all day, I don’t want to hear about all the snow in the 1970s and 1980s in Michigan. I came back to Michigan at the end of 2004, and after various snow-pocaly-geddons, four of the winters since then are in the top ten for snowiest winters in Detroit.
AUBURN HILLS — At a late holiday fancy pants party at Fiat’s home, it was announced that Fiat was taking Chrysler in. After some time in a government orphanage and debtor’s prison, Chrysler has finally found a home.
“Blimey! I’m so chuffed ter live in a noice ‘ome with a warm fire, guv’nor. Lots of coal makin’ lots of heat. Isn’t it loverly?”
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