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We moved to So. America for retirement and there are ONLY stick shifts here. Taxis, busses, all of them. I'm wondering why. Easier to fix when maybe parts aren't readily available? Is this true in just certain countries, or typical outside North America?
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I don't know if it would apply to automatic transmissions but I worked at the US HQ of a European manufacturer and had more than 1 phone call from folks who had bare-bones cars in S America and were looking for things like kits to add AC to their vehicles, they said it was prohibitively expensive to buy cars with such luxuries from the factory as they were taxed accordingly. Perhaps ATs are also heavily taxed?
I'd also guess many countries get smaller engines from some makers than are sold in the US which generally perform much better with a manual transmission, especially in mountainous areas.
I don't know if it would apply to automatic transmissions but I worked at the US HQ of a European manufacturer and had more than 1 phone call from folks who had bare-bones cars in S America and were looking for things like kits to add AC to their vehicles, they said it was prohibitively expensive to buy cars with such luxuries from the factory as they were taxed accordingly. Perhaps ATs are also heavily taxed?
I'd also guess many countries get smaller engines from some makers than are sold in the US which generally perform much better with a manual transmission, especially in mountainous areas.
i think you are most likely right. europeans pretty much stayed with manual transmissions, though the rate of automatics is increasing yearly, but other countries have stayed pretty much manual in art because small engines need every bit of power they can lay down to negotiate the roads they drive on.
Yeah smaller engines more efficient cars more prevalent in pretty much every other country benefit greatly from a manual. Automatics are still mostly an American phenomenon with our large inefficient cars on our long stretches of highway.
For your typical 4 cylinder compact an automatic is just a $1000 option that makes it less fuel efficient, less mechanically efficient, more costly to repair, slower, and less fun to drive. The real question is why is the automatic so popular here?
And yes pricier cars just recently started fielding automatics that can outperform manuals. But they cost even more to acquire, maintain, and repair. Not many other cultures are like ours where Joe Six Pack will put themselves in debt for a luxury.
People in US would rather be doing something other than driving which us why self driving cars will become popular before manual transmissions ever do. I am among them.
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