The presence of a few of you who still drive stick shifts and enjoy them doesn’t change the fact that the American market has long since moved away from stick shifts.
However, you can still buy some new cars with manual transmissions today, if you are that concerned with unintended acceleration, despite the state of the US car market. A manual transmission may also be a theft deterrent.
katliamom,
The Germans followed the law to the letter. the vehicles passed the exhaust inspection when they were inspected and hooked up to the sensor as the law states. Wouldn’t pass any other time.
@Pizzagirl - Yes, that ship has sailed, but I’d hardly call the diehards “hobbyists”, any more than I’d call people who avoid McDonald’s “foodies”.
Sticks are fun to drive (I used to have one) but they are harder to sell (smaller population of interested buyers) and in this day and age, between phones, drinks and all the other stuff we shouldn’t be fling with when driving, I don’t have enough hands! And where i live, it got so hot I had to put a baby bootie on the stick to be able to touch it in the summer.
We have five cars, four of which have manual transmissions. My H bemoans the fact that so few cars have them available anymore.
There are two regulatory agencies in the US, the EPA and the California Air Resources Board (ARB or CARB, depending on who’s writing). Neither of them seem to put up with much quibbling.
I haven’t done much with either for several years, but in general ARB regs were harder to meet and demanded more documentation than EPA. In general, if you could pass ARB, you could pass any legislated emissions test on the planet.
Euro regs were about on par with EPA, but not implemented evenly, but ranged from Brazil through Europe to China in acceptance. EPA and Euro may have achieved unity by now.
The certification basically consisted of two things. First, demonstration with failed parts whether or not the software would detect the failed part, and second, what the emissions were over a standard “route” (google up LA4 Cycle) simulating temperatures and pressures and loads experienced in a nominal standard route.
There was a third thing, which was the documentation of the overall emissions strategy. You might be allowed to exceed in a fire truck or ambulance, for example, for a period of time.
The emissions were, I understand, evaluated over the entire cycle (LA4 or other), so if there was a 10x spike in a BMW, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything - it could still easily pass when averaged over the whole test. In fact, that’s what I at first thought when the VW thing was reported.
Complicating this is the fact that California (used to at least) buy back some sample cars with 100k miles on them and rerun the test to see if there was a defeat algorithm put in based on milage. VW seems to have exploited the steering wheel position stability instead.
While they may have met some of the letter of the law, the regulatory agencies are tetchy about this and are very happy to say - in a loud and stern voice - "YOU KNOW WHAT I MEANT. KNOCK IT OFF!"
I suspect the regulators in Europe will have to follow suit, and I’d expect some interesting things to come out of China as well. But that’s for another thread.
I heard on the radio that the EPA was now considering testing Mercedes and BMW for the same violations. Hmmm.
They should test everybody and update the test procedures to include random road tests of vehicles.
That’s it, I can see the snowball effect. More layoffs at these car companies to meet strict emission standard. The economy is going to tank. Janet Yellen will feign again while holding off rate hike. Kidding of course.
VW has no manufacturing plants in the US. The closest factories are in Mexico.
Mercedes and BMW, what about the car dealers for VW? I think the whole industry will be affected.
We just got rid of an automatic transmission vehicle for a manual. The drawback is that the manufacturers do not make manual transmission vehicles that meet more needs. There are essentially 3 left. No frills car with hand crank windows, door locks, etc.; Sports cars; a few trucks.
We made sure to get one so our kids can learn to drive one. They are handy when you have battery problems as they can be push-started. Not to mention, they are so much more driver friendly once you learn to drive one.
One of my car batteries died on a trip to Sequoia National Park, I had no problem coasting it down with my automatic transmission and a hand break.
LOL. Good thing you didn’t need to go the other direction.
VW has an impressive plant near Chattanooga. ~3000 workers, a whole bunch more in the supply chain.
I don’t like that the hourly guys are going to pay more for this than the guy who ordered/agreed to it. I don’t like that at all.
“That’s it, I can see the snowball effect. More layoffs at these car companies to meet strict emission standard. The economy is going to tank. Janet Yellen will feign again while holding off rate hike. Kidding of course.”
That was the same tired old claim that the auto industry made in the late 60’s and 70’s, that emissions regs were going to kill the industry, yada yada. What happened was that VW wanted to sell a diesel certified as “clean”, and weren’t able to do it, so they fudged it, but that isn’t the fault of emissions standards, it was VW wanted to game the system. Emissions regs ended up being one of the best things to hit the country and our environment, cars today are a thousand times cleaner than they were back then, and it also has allowed for cars that are better performing, cleaner and longer lasting then “the good old days”. While I love classic cars, am a gearhead at heart, the crappiest econobox on the road today is infinitely superior to anything back then. There are econoboxes today that would smoke the so called "muscle cars’ of the 60’s, that were overweight, underpowered, handle like crap, had bad brakes…and a lot of the things people love about cars today, came from regulation, came from the computer controls and safety regulations (put it this way, drum brakes and carbs were stone knives and bearskin). VW didn’t learn the lesson that cheating is worse than admitting the truth, when you cheat, the penalties just aren’t worth it.
BTW, this is an organization issue, do a google search about VW, and you find one scandal after another, they put themselves out there as these solid, respectable German types, but they were anything but. There was a major scandal 10 years ago when VW was basically involved in corporate blackmail, they were having these parties where booze and drugs flowed, they had escorts, and the big hope was to catch labor leaders and government ministers with their pants down, so they could basically blackmail them into changes they wanted, in Brazil they got caught trying to drug a government minister to do something similar to him, one exec spent like 200k of company money on his mistress, just amazingly bad. They also have had other quality issues they covered up, the corporate culture plainly stinks and has for a while. Part of the problem is VW is always trying to play catch up, they have kind of an inferiority complex, because they are seen more as a niche car than as let’s say like a Camry or Maxima kind of level of car. Audi kind of had that for years, they always kind of felt like they were overshadowed by Benz and other luxury makes, but they pulled themselves up there with decent cars (I am not a fan of Audi’s, for a number of reasons, but that is mostly about personal choice,not the quality of the cars themselves).
As far as the Germans following the letter of the law, no they didn’t. The pollution regs are designed to and clearly state that the pollution levels should reflect real world driving, something the VW hack did not cover. Passing the emissions test by jacking the system bypasses both the intent and meaning of the law, as well as the word of the law, and VW doesn’t have a legal or moral stand to make. It is one of the things I was concerned about when they switched from the old way of emissions testing, to using the OBDII technology in the car to certify itself, the problem is that the system can be gamed, as we just saw. In theory the car is also supposed to report pollution faults in real world driving (ie the dreaded check engine light), and this would be uncovered at inspection time, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they programmed it to avoid those, too.
I hope you are not making things up because you have a history of exaggerating things on CC. Too long of a post so I won’t read the whole thing.
All it would have taken is a simple google search to find this, and from someone’s whose posts remind me of ‘argument clinic’ on Monty Python, spending most of your time negating what others say without offering much commentary, it might be better if you actually cited facts yourself, rather than claim others exaggerate. If I post mistakenly, I will acknowledge that,but at least I try to put out thoughtful comments, not simply trash what others have written.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/business/16bribe.html
As far as your claims of my post being too short, I am sorry, but I don’t trade in sound bites and slogans, I actually try to put thought behind my posts…
In terms of why Volkwagan is doing what it did,
Front page of the NY Times, I realize it isn’t Fox News, but it has been written about in the automotive press for years, that VW executives were dying to take the #1 mantle, and would do anything to try and do it. It is kind of ironic, because that is what got Toyota in trouble, they wanted to take over the #1 car producer in the world, and quality went out the door, and it hurt Toyota big time, they admitted that they basically did what GM did all those years.
“As far as your claims of my post being too short, I am sorry, but I don’t trade in sound bites and slogans, I actually try to put thought behind my posts.”
Doesn’t this violate some kind of universal law of anonymous forum discussions?