Sad News - new V70 not to have manual transmission

That is because they have Shiftronic. I have Shiftronic and love it. I like to leave it in Auto when accelerating and get lightning fast shifts at redline. Then use Manual when decelerating or descending. The bonus is that my wife can use it as an Automatic.

That is a trade off with a FWD or AWD vehicle. Most all have atrocious turning radii. I guess they are for people who know where they are going and don't go around in circles ;) I have learned to manage my V70's turning radius and seldom have any problem making U-turns or tight turns. I just have to think a little more.

IMO you lose any real advantage over a standard automatic transmission and in fact just add still more complexity. I know I'm a snob when it comes to those things but there's no substitute for a simple manual gearbox with a clutch, and once you have the complexity and weight of an automatic there's no point in shifting it manually.

Roger that. Why bother if the car can shift without you?

I've had autos and manuals --- and the V70T5M is one of the sweetest cars I've driven.

Gets 24mpg (combined - commuting) - and hauls when needed. Torque steer in spades though.

The bigger engine would be nice, but the lack of the 6 speed is takes the 'sport' out of the wagon.

V70 T5M

IMHO you loose the advantage of a stick if you don't shift it. If you want to reduce weight and complexity take out the heavy engine, high-pressure turbo, sun roof and leather. Since 80% of the population don't drive sticks anymore, it adds to the complexity to have a stick and reduces the resale value. Also, AWD works much better with an automatic or at least a shiftronic. I like sticks, but I will buy another.

Because automatic transmissions are dumb. They don't know when to down shift. To me the art of knowing when to down shift is the essence of being a good driver. If you don't downshift you are going to kill yourself coming down Pikes Peak and wear out your brakes prematurely.

Not true of all autos. My wife's Citroen C2 auto box (selectomatic type with steering wheel paddles and full throttle red line shifting in manual) will, when in auto, downshift when it detects that the car is accelerating and no throttle is being used.

On the hill near us (about 1 in 10 or 10%, I don't know how you merkins grade slopes), driving in auto mode, if you come over the breast of the hill at 30mph, the car will shift down, as many gears as required, and keep the speed down to 32mph at the foot of the hill.

Don't judge all auto boxes by just your experiences, as it obviously misses out the modern design of gearboxes.

Richard Web pages:

for caravanning, for my personal web site and because I love the email address.

Huh? The advantage of a stick is lower mechanical losses, lower weight, generally improved fuel economy, and it's a whole lot more fun to drive. You can't not shift it so I'm not sure where you're going with that one. Your suggestions are not realistic, granted I'd gladly take cloth over leather but that's hardly a savings of weight or complexity. As for resale value it depends on the car. In general Volvos are harder to find with manuals and command significantly higher prices on the used market than those with automatics. Saab 900 is another example, good luck selling one that has a slushbox as anything more than a parts car or conversion. 5 speed easily doubles the value of those.

How many people come down Pikes Peak? Dunno about you but I'd much rather wear out my brakes than my transmission and engine. Downshifting has it's place and I do it occasionally, but I see no point in doing it regularly. The engine and gearbox are for accelerating, the brakes are for slowing down. Besides, every automatic I've ever seen can be manually downshifted if you really want to.

Well, everyone else seems to be putting in their two cents, so I guess I will too...

Personally, I prefer an automatic, but for those winding roads where a manual would be nice, I'd go with Shiftronic or a similar system, especially in the V70 or XC70 -- something I would drive mostly on highways. On a C70 or even a V70R I could definitely go with a manual, but I wouldn't drive it on the interstate back and forth to work every day, either. Sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-95 around Baltimore just seems to take the fun out of a manual, you know?

Is that on a worldwide basis - or just in the good old US of A?

Heh that kinda takes the fun out of driving in general. If I have to sit on the freeway, I'd rather just take the bus.

I never heard of anyone wearing out their transmission or engine using engine compression braking. I do it constantly on all my cars, even the automatics. Never once have any shown any signs of unusual wear & I seldom ever have to change brake components. If you don't down shift on Pikes Peak they have check points with gift shops where they make your car sit until its brake temperatures come down to normal. They use an infrared thermometer. They had too many people killing themselves before they enforced it.

By the way, Pikes Peak in Colorado has a public highway that goes to the top, 14,110 feet. The 38-mile round trip to the summit of Pikes Peak takes about two hours. The road is a toll road. The record going up is

10 minutes and 4.6 seconds but that is on a 12.42 mile gravel shortcut. Their official advice for descending is "Use your lowest gear to allow your engine to brake your vehicle. Don't ride your brakes; this will cause them to overheat and drastically reduce their effectiveness." Last year a Texas woman died after her brakes failed and she crashed while coming down the Pikes Peak Highway.

The engine is designed to run for thousands of hours with no unusual damage. The brakes are designed for a modest amount of braking before they need replacing. Brakes use friction which is a destructive method that reduces brake pads to dust and produces heat that warps rotors. The engine uses air compression which is not destructive and just produces heat which is vented out the exhaust.

I would rather take the back roads, even if it takes longer. Driving interstate highways is about as much fun as eating poi. However if relaxation and speed are more important than fun, the interstate highways it is.

I thought this was the Volvo group.

Starting in the 1950's, automatic transmissions have been popular in the U.S. In fact, they account for 84% of cars sold in North America. The same is not true for the rest of the world. Japan has shifted to mostly automatic transmissions and South Korea is shifting. This has, however, not been the case in Europe.

Early automatic transmissions reduced fuel efficiency and power. Where fuel is expensive and, thus, engines generally smaller, these penalties were more burdensome. In recent years, automatic transmissions have significantly improved their efficiency and have drastically closed the gap with manual transmissions. Continuously variable transmissions and automated manual transmissions promise to be more efficient and produce lower levels of emissions than manual transmission vehicles. As a result, foreign markets are shifting (no pun intended) to automatics. The number of manual transmissions manufactured in the world is starting to decline and the number of automatic transmissions is increasing rapidly. Many new AT factories are being built.

The key difference between a manual and an automatic transmission is that the manual transmission locks and unlocks different sets of gears to the output shaft to achieve the various gear ratios, while in an automatic transmission, the same set of gears produces all of the different gear ratios. The planetary gearset is the device that makes this possible in an automatic transmission. Hence, a modern AT is very simple and in some cases lighter than a clutch/manual transmission combination.

I vividly recall a day around 1970, descending a long shallow hill around Bonny Doon near Santa Cruz in the San Francisco bay area, driving a Chevy with 4-wheel drum brakes. The brakes faded away to nothing, leaving me with both feet braced hard against the pedal and the car rolling merrily (bonny?) down (doon?) the hill. The car had a two speed "Powerglide" transmission and low gear didn't do the job.

IIRC, the transmission, mated with the 6 cylinder "Turbothrift" engine, did more thrifting and gliding than turboing and powering!

Mike

Well Volvos are very durable cars, but it's undeniable that engine braking will accelerate wear on components, it raises the engine RPM which causes the pistons to travel a greater distance, puts load on the bearings, etc. That stuff will still probably outlast the rest of the car in the case of a Volvo but it does increase wear, just as driving it harder does. I don't think most people ever own their cars long enough to know just how much of an affect this has. Down long hills yes, it's strongly advisable to leave the car in gear to get some engine braking but the fact remains that any reasonably modern automatic car can do this too by moving the selector to 2 or 1, you don't need some fancy electronic pushbutton shifting to do that. I would still argue that a standard manual gearbox is superior for this sort of thing as well but in either case it's no great skill to be able to downshift, anyone who can drive a car in any capacity can do it should they choose to.

When it comes down to it though I personally can't stand that disconnected floaty feeling a torque converter creates. A standard gearbox has a nice solid mechanically connected feel and that's all my original point ever was, I didn't mean to get into a religious war.

Yes, I thought as much! So your "80% of the population don't drive sticks anymore" needs a fair bit of qualification - particularly in Europe, where I live (UK in my particular case).

The key difference with 'traditional' automatic transmissions was the presence of a torque converter (slush pump) which - whilst it eliminated the need for a conventional clutch and enabled the geared part of the transmission to have a narrower ratio range than a manual - was pretty inefficient overall, resulting in poorer fuel economy. It's many years since I was involved in automatic transmission design (1970's) but lock-up clutches were just coming in then, to by-pass the torque converter at higher road speeds.

I'm not sure that planetary gears are intrinsically more efficient than conventional lay-shaft-type gearsets. I suppose that at any point in time there are less unused gears churning round in the oil, but at the same time they need hydraulically-operated friction clutches to engage the appropriate part of the planetary train. There thus needs to be an oil pump to drive the hydraulics - which itself consumes power.

I'm not very familiar with the technology used in the latest automated manual boxes. They presumably use centrifugal clutches rather than torque converters as a starting device?

It is and I have a Volvo ('98 V70 with auto gearbox).

I was just offering you a comparison to a more modern style of Auto box.

Richard Web pages:

for caravanning, for my personal web site and because I love the email address.

I wish I could say the same. We had an automatic gearbox replaced after only 43,000 kms. It just f*****ing let go.

Just recently, my uncle experienced the same kind of a fault. And guess what, he had excatly 43,000 kms on his Ocean Race edition V70. Ours is V70 2,4T, yearmodel 2001. I have been writing about this issue in this forum as well, so I won't go into the details again. I just thought that some of you might find it interesting that Volvo's reputation in building solid automatic gearboxes is definitely questionable.

And we went on buying yet another V70 (ym.2006), and now we have 30,000 kms in it. I wonder if it will pass 45,000 mark without a clitch...