In the sedan and small SUV world, CVTs seem to be taking over.
A friend of mine wants to buy a "new" car (used car) and has his mind fixed on the VW "Beetle" which went out of production in 2019. Oddly enough, I found several cars for sale within a 300-mile radius with less than 40K miles on the clock, some with far less. They are selling for more than the list price when new!
People ask me about cars. "You know a lot about cars!" they say. I used to. I used to know a lot of things, but time marches on. I try to steer people toward Hondas or Toyotas as they are pretty reliable (with a few notable exceptions) so they don't come back to me later on for advising them to buy a Yugo. Somehow, though, when you give advice, you always get blamed when things go wrong, which is why I think people seek advice. It is why I am loathe to give it.
Anyway, he is fixated on this Beetle like a dog with a bone, as his first car he owned was a brand-new 1970 Beetle that he paid cash for ($1999) which you could do back then. He has nostalgic feelings for the car, and at his age, why not indulge yourself?
But I looked into other small sedans - which can be had brand new for about the same price as a 6-year-old Beetle, and was shocked to see that CVT transmissions have taken over the field. I wrote about them before and how BMW jumped into the game by putting them in certain models of the Mini. A friend of mine had one and it blew out at 70K miles. There was a class-action suit and BMW got out of the belt-drive game.
Nissan, always the Chrysler of Japan (The Number 3 automaker) went all-CVT in their car and SUV lineup with similar results. Particularly in larger, higher-horsepower cars, the continuously variable transmission seems to fail early. Even Toyota and Honda use them in their smaller cars, and from what I hear, only Toyota seems to have figured it out with its "Aisen" CVTs.
When I wrote my earlier piece on CVTs there was choice in the market. Today, it is hard to find a car without a CVT. And the reasons are readily apparent. Ever-stringent mileage and emissions requirements mean that manufacturers have to resort to more and more esoteric technology to meet these goals - for cars at least. Light trucks and big SUVs have their own, more lax rules.
So we saw the move to variable valve timing, multi-port fuel injection, coil-over ignition, turbocharging, aluminum block engines, and so on and so forth. Chrysler (Stellantis - I still can't say it) pissed-off their Charger/Challenger faithful by replacing the V-8 "Hemi" (a bit of a misnomer as it had little in common with that storied engine) with a turbocharged V-6. Heresy! But the smaller motor makes over 500 HP, perhaps not as much as the venerated "Hellcat" but far more than the base V-8.
Ford was already on the turbocharging bandwagon, with its "Ecoboost" line getting 300HP from a four cylinder engine and hundreds more from its V-6. Maybe the rumble of a V-8 sounds better that the turbo-whine of the ecoboost, but the latter delivers more power and greater efficiency than the former. Car companies have no choice in the matter - unless they want to keep buying carbon credits from Elon Musk.
So CVTs are thrust upon us and if you want a "car" chances are, it will have a CVT. The new KIAs are all-CVT except the performance models and larger SUVs. You can't escape the belt drive if you are looking at a new car these days.
I am told they are better and perhaps this is true. People forget that the early days of the automatic transmission were pretty spotty. There were semi-automatic transmissions and something Chrysler called the Presto-matic or Gyrol fluid drive. The Buick "Dynaflow" was basically a one-speed transmission (if you don't count reverse) that relied on the torque converter for speed changes. When mated to the Buick "nailhead" engine it worked, after a fashion, but was no speed demon and certainly wasted gas.
There were further teething changes. Even after the introduction of the TurboHydroMatic (THM) series of transmissions, which became an industry standard, there were mis-steps by GM. In the early 1960s, the "Roto-Hydromatic" or "Slim Jim" automatic was put into Oldsmobile and Pontiac cars, and failed early and often. It wasn't until the late 1960s that the "bulletproof" THM350 and THM400 evolved. They even put them in Rolls-Royces.
Of course, that didn't mean the struggle was over. In an attempt to save money, GM de-contented the THM350 and came up with the THM250, which, in theory, was sufficient for the low-powered V-8's of the late 1970s. A lot were replaced under "hidden warranty" claims as they failed at about 70,000 miles or so.
So, the battle for a reliable transmission never ends, with new technologies and new performance standards always on the horizon. Newer "dual clutch" automatics do away with fluid couplings, but have reliability issues of their own, particularly in early models. But over time, the bugs get worked out. No manufacturer wants to get a bad reputation, as Mini and Nissan have, for exploding belt-drive transmissions.
When you start to make a product in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, well, you figure out how to fix problems. Early adapters always suffer the most as they end up as the Beta-testers for the company. But over time, fixes are developed (or the technology abandoned, as in the Mini) and reliability improves. There is an old joke that GM cars are nearly perfect when the very last one rolls off the assembly line - they finally get it right before pulling the plug. Sadly, the bulk of sales for any model are in the introduction year, not in the twilight.
So maybe the era of the CVT is upon us. They are lightweight, cheaper to make, and give better mileage and lower emissions. And we might not have a choice in any event. That being said, I am glad I am not in the market for a new car right now. Maybe if I ever am, by that time, we will have some reliability data on CVTs.
And maybe my friend has the right idea of buying a 2019 "final edition" Beetle (with 9,000 miles on it!) with the standard 6-speed conventional automatic. Maybe that is why used car prices are spiking, too.
A similar thing is happening in the outboard motor world, by the way. Old Johnson (OMC) V-4 two-stroke outboards can be rebuilt again and again, and parts are cheap. With similar new engines selling for five figures, many a fisherman is finding it cheaper to simply "build your own."
That being said, on the other end of the spectrum are ocean-going center consoles with five (5) engines of 500HP each. Those guys aren't worried about the cost!
