Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 10:35:55 +0100 From: Martin Rich <M.G.Richnopsam.ac.uk> Subject: Re: GM to increase SAAB lineup
On Tue, 15 Apr 2003 20:11:56 -0700, B&D <NO_SPAMnopsamCOM> wrote: <About continuously variable transmissions> > >Yes! It is an amazing invention - and what I feel the manual transmission >will go to - and probably most manual transmissions as well. > >I had no idea it was Dutch - thanks for the info! This is getting way off-topic for Saabs but relevant if you're interested in CVTs. The first cars made by CVT were made by the Dutch company DAF in the 1960s (or possibly very late 1950s). DAF was, and is, primarily a maker of big commercial trucks and city buses but they started an offshoot making very small and quirky cars. These cars all had the CVT transmission (and rear wheel drive). The ordinary DAFs that you could go out and buy at a dealer weren't very powerful. Also the combination of a simple automatic and a tiny car didn't usually appeal to enthusiastic drivers, so DAFs had a (rather unjustified) reputation for being slow and unexciting. However they also performed very respectably in rallies. DAF sold their car operation to Volvo around 1976 Volvo didn't develop the CVT, though they fitted it as an option in their 340 series for years after, and the positioning of the gearbox at the back of manual Volvo 340s was a legacy of the car being designed to accommodate the original DAF transmission. Of the modern CVTs, the one I'm most familiar with is Nissan's. It's a very effective way of producing an automatic which works well and economically with a small engine. I don't see it tempting anybody who wants an 'involving' driving experience away from their manual gearbox though. If you learn to drive on a manual you tend to feel most in control if the engine and the driven wheels are connected at a fixed ratio, much as this isn't a particularly efficient way to operate an internal combustion engine. With the Nissan CVT you are very conscious of the gear ratio changing; also it feels, if anything, a bit slower to respond than most conventional automatics. Audi and Rover have CVTs which you can hold manually in a fixed ratio. These should reproduce a bit more of the manual driving experience but I still don't see these appealing to dedicated manual drivers. Alfa Romeo's 'Selespeed', which is more like a synchromesh gearbox with automatic controls, is perhaps more one for really keen drivers who might be tempted by an automatic Martin
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