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Comment by krnlpnc | Hacker News Reader

I'm hoping for a resurgence of wagons in the US, and ideally manual transmissions.

It's really a shame that the most popular "cars" are trucks and SUVs, it's quite expensive and wasteful.

Me too.

On Sunday I happened to park right behind exactly the car I would try to find and buy used if my occasional-use Volvo XC70 had to be replaced: a red VW Golf Alltrack wagon with tan leather and the big sunroof and 6-speed manual. (2020 was the last model year.)

I fantasized a bit about whether I could buy one and keep it long enough for my 9yo to learn to drive stick, but of course that would be a determinedly quirky and antiquarian skill to learn by then, like writing with a quill pen or using a coal furnace. (https://www.npr.org/2019/03/03/699325560/for-the-few-who-hea...) Also the used prices have gone up since I last checked a year ago!

(What will finally put the nail in the coffin of the manual is the electric car. And--yeah, I guess I obsess about this--electric wagons from Volvo and Volkswagen will be coming to the US in the next few years, though for various marketing reasons they both shy away from the word "wagon": https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a39263104/new-volvo-evs-wa... and https://www.reddit.com/user/HDiess/comments/soje69/hi_reddit...)

I had an Alltrack, only in white. It was totaled in an accident last November, with only 11,000 miles on it.

The first thing I thought after we knew we weren’t injured was, “oh NO I am going to have to buy a new car!”

Used Alltracks with more miles were going for both more than what I paid and more than the insurance payout (also more than I paid).

I have given up ever having a manual again. I managed to get a Honda Accord hybrid, and the only thing I can say about it is the gas mileage is nice right now. But it’s absolutely soulless, I feel unconnected to the road when driving, and it’s just boring and an appliance.

I'm not sure how you could return to manual transmissions. I feel like once the skill of using it is widely gone its not coming back. It would have to have a huge education campaign with it

Now that a CVT gets better mileage than a stick shift, it’s impossible to make the case for a stick. Plus, EVs don’t even have transmissions, at least not ones that need shifting.

> Now that a CVT gets better mileage than a stick shift, it’s impossible to make the case for a stick

A manual transmission is _far_ easier to rebuild than a CVT or other automatic. They also tend to be more durable, though I expect that is an advantage that has diminished or even reversed.

> Plus, EVs don’t even have transmissions, at least not ones that need shifting.

Most don’t, but some do. It depends on the voltage range; more precisely, it depends on the RPM range, which is directly correlated to input voltage.

In addition, almost all of the “classic” EV conversions I’ve seen maintain either the original transmission or an upgraded replacement with similar functionality. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOx5uCufB2Q

Sure you can make the case! Manuals are more fun. But they've been dying a slow death in the US and are already down to ~1% of new car sales here.

Performance can be handled by an automated manual, economy by a CVT, and the future is EVs. And apparently fun and 1% of the market is not enough to convince automakers to commit to the extra $$ needed for the extra tooling, supply chain complexity, and emissions certification required to offer them as an option.

CVTs are one of those things that are great on paper and suck in reality. Their overall ratio spread winds up being laughable and they traverse through it at a snails pace and the fuel economy isn't great enough to warrant putting up with that.

And my 09 Nissan Altima CVT doesn't make that great of fuel economy. Plenty of manuals/automatics that can do just as good.

I mean it takes a couple of hours of practice to learn it, and maybe a week or so to really get comfortable with it. It's not that hard. Millions of people drove manual cars in the past.

Or in the present... I have yet to see an automatic in Europe (granted I haven't been paying that much attention)

I drove an automatic Renault lent to me by an employer around Lyon, France for several weeks in 2005. Manuals are common in Europe, but automatics certainly exist there as well. One of the cars I routinely drive in the US today is a 5 speed manual. I do like manuals. They're a hassle if you need to operate a cell phone while driving, but that's just a bad idea in any case. One wonders if there were more manuals on the road if there would be fewer t-bone wrecks caused by people texting through red lights.

What part of Europe? When I got my license 15 years ago they were a minority, but already not that uncommon in Germany. E.g. a friend from school drove an old Merc with the 4(?) gear automatic. On the other end of the scale [at least to a pupil] the new BMW 645ci owned by another friend's parents also had an automatic (Google says it was a 6 gear automatic, nothing special; I only know it had paddles for manual shifting, but the details are lost on me because for some reason his parents never let us drive the V8). They only became more common since then. These days I mostly associate them with cheaper cars (which isn't a bad thing, just economics) and expect them to vanish into obscurity within the next decade.

Or transmissions at all. The future is electric and electric motors don’t need gear boxes, they have uniform torque over the entire RPM span.

To get real nitpicky here, a number of EVs still have a multi-gear transmission. It's just 2 gears instead of 6+ though. You don't have to worry about staying in an efficient RPM for electric motors, but the torque multiplication factor of gears is still useful & can be necessary.

> To get real nitpicky here, a number of EVs still have a multi-gear transmission.

The number is like 2 or so innit? Audi and Porsche have a low gear for increased torque. Rimac's Concept One had a two-speed gearbox, but Nevera (formerly C2) dropped it. Formula E cars do have 5 or 6 gears.

> they have uniform torque over the entire RPM span

That's not true, electric motors make peak torque at low RPM and then it drops steadily with increasing RPM.

But yes, it's acceptable enough to allow for single speed transmissions for most road cars.

I never understood America's irrational hate against wagons. It actually goes back decades too.

Luckily, hatchback is still somewhat available in the U.S., so that's what I drive, plus manual tranny. But they're now unicorn.

So I'm going to hold onto my baby for a long time.

I'd like a 99-03 VW Jetta wagon...

EVs don't have "manual" transmissions and shouldn't/won't.

I love driving my manual ICE, but I know that my next car, which will be EV, won't have a gearbox. It'll have "forward" and "reverse".

What does "neutral" mean when your engine(s) don't "idle"? Why do you have gears if the torque is flat from zero?

EVs are going to kill off gearboxes and all of the associated mechanical linkages, dramatically reducing maintenance and repair.

I completely agree. I'd buy a luxury wagon in a heartbeat. BMW makes several models, but don't ship them to the US.

Mercedes Benz makes an E-Class wagon that sells in the US (I even saw one the other day with an AMG logo on it if that's your thing), and the Volvo V90 is at least a bit upscale...

Audi makes the A6 Allroad (also A4), and Mercedes has the E-class All Terrain. Others have mentioned Volvo as well. The RS6 Avant would be the supercar version I suppose.

Based on at least the Allroad's numbers shipped since 2020, I think it's uncertain if they last in the US market. Hopefully that improves with time and supply chain issues resolving.

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