“Manuals are the best!” cries the diehard car enthusiast. “I like autos, and I hate clutch pedals!” says the city driver. That’s all well and good, but I have a different question for you today. I want to know the worst transmission you’ve ever driven.
Transmissions can suck for all kinds of reasons. Maintenance is perhaps one of the foremost. Even the greatest manual transmission is hopeless if the shifter bushings are worn out, the cables are fraying, or the clutch has been burnt to smithereens. Similarly, a once-smooth auto box can end up choking on its own fluid after hundreds of thousands of miles without a filter change.
Those are all valid reasons to hate a specific transmission. But you might also hate a certain transmission in perfectly good condition. That, my friends, is very much the case for me. At least, I think so.
Enter the K13 Nissan Micra. This thing is a hot box of sick. I hate it from morning to dusk. I hate it from dusk to dawn. Pretty much whatever my goddamn watch says, I hate this goddamn automobile. The transmission is at the heart of it.
Snap back to 2015. I was flying interstate to interview with a major automaker. I wanted to be an engineer! I’d passed the first round of phone interviews, but now I had to fly over to do the in-person group interview. They weren’t interested in me quite enough to pay my way over there, so I had to cover flights, a hotel, and a hire car all on my own. I chose the cheapest option— a compact with a manual transmission.
When I got to the Budget desk, they kept pushing me to spend $15 on upgrading to an auto. I refused three times. They eventually relented and handed me the keys to a Nissan Micra. They’d run out of manual cars, and they were trying to make me pay for the upgrade. Charming.
I jumped in the car, put it in drive, and headed out on the highway. Immediately, the horror was apparent to me. My memory says it had a godawful CVT driving the front wheels. The engine ripped up to high RPM and just wailed away like a hair dryer as this thing inched its way toward the 100 km/h (62 mph) speed limit.
My memory may be wrong. Checking old specs pages suggests that the K13 Nissan Micra actually came with a four-speed auto in Australia. Maybe I got a weird rental fleet delivery CVT version, as that’s certainly how the transmission was behaving. Alternatively, it’s possible I just had a really crappy Micra with a slipping automatic transmission that kept getting stuck in gear.
In any case, that car and its transmission sucked. I got the job, though! In any case, that was the worst transmission I’ve ever driven. Now, I want you to tell me yours. Get at it!
Image credits: Nissan
!980 Pontiac Sunbird with a manual. Super heavy clutch. I don’t remember any details beyond that, but it was the worst car I ever owned.
I’ve driven a number of bad transmissions, but they were all in cars that I deemed as appliances, so having a transmission that accomplished the job of changing gears was all it needed.
bad transmission in a car that should have something better? 2015 WRX. I had that car for 4 years, it handled well, it stopped well, it did everything it needed to do as a performance oriented sedan, but that transmission was so uninspired it let to me trade it as soon as possible.
loose, sloppy, nothing at all positive about it. it felt like it was modeled after what I expect the manual from a 2000s era base model corolla that had done 300,000 miles before I drove it would feel like.
Whatever automatic was in my SIL’s 2010 Vibe that she had years back. Easily one of the dumbest automatics I have ever encountered.
the automatic in a 2015 hyundai veloster. what a rubber band delivery that thing gave
Worst Manual: ’83 Plymouth Sapporo
Unlike my ’83 Chevette Scooter, which I hated, and the myriad of Saturn S series, ’89 323 and others, this one would not allow me to shift gears without a clutch. Otherwise, they were all decent at worst.
Worst automatic: Hondamatic!
It was a 2 speed auto, and you actually had to shift from one to the other, without a clutch.