Automotive technology is constantly changing. Progress is comingand stuff that was cutting edge quickly approaches the rearview mirror. That’s the way Five-speed gearbox. There are currently only two cars in the US that offer this offer Five-speed Transmission. One is an automatic and one is a manual; Neither is very long for this world, but we already know when someone dies.
I say this because it is the last vehicle with a five-speed automatic the fifth generation Toyota 4Runnerand his replacement, the 4Runner 2025, was revealed to us earlier this week. While some crazy 4Runner purists probably wish it continued with five forward gears, Toyota felt eight would be better suited to the modern age. I have to agree with this decision. Then let’s look at the situation with five-speed manual transmissions. Luckily it’s a little less bad, but it still doesn’t look good. If you need If you want to row yourself and don’t need more than five gears, you have one option: a Base model Nissan Versa.
That’s right, no other car for sale in the US has this handful of gears more. It makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, automakers are constantly trying to increase the lifespan and efficiency of internal combustion engines, and a good way to do that is to add more gears. Eight, nine, or ten forward gears are pretty commonplace these days. Something else that hurts five-speed cars, especially in cheaper cars, is this Emergence of CVTs. On the whole, they offer better fuel economy than five-speed transmissions, and while they’re underwhelming to use, most people don’t give a shit.
This all got me thinking about when the first five-speed automatic transmission came out, so I wanted to do a little research on the history. Turns out it was a lot younger than you might have thought. Annoying (not really, they’re cool), The Drive seemed to have had a similar thought about the dying transmission. According to their research, the first five-speed automatic transmission was created Built by ZF for the E32 1991 BMW 7 Series. At the time, almost everything had a three or four speed transmission, so these extra gears were probably a very welcome addition. But isn’t that wild? This transmission that we all took for granted for so long (at least in automatic form) has only been around for 33 years. It’s still a child!
However, with the impending death of the Fifth generation 4RunnerThe Nissan Versa is now the sole survivor in the effort to keep the five-speed gearbox alive. Don’t go into the light, little friend. We need you as a connection to our past and a way to see how far we have come.