“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
For vehicles I’ve driven, it was the Ford AOD 4 speed automatic in my dad’s old 1982 Mercury Grand Marquis.
It would often ‘bump’ into gear on the 1-to-2 shift if you dared to change how much throttle you gave it while doing one of its typical drawn-out shifts.
It was also designed to short shift unless you absolutely floored it… and would be very slow to kick down when you stepped on it. It was relatively noisy. And it felt very unhelpful in getting the most out of the limited power the asthmatic 302 V8 that car had.
Honestly, I would take a modern CVT over it any day. Hell… even the 3 speed automatic that was in my brother’s 1987 Toyota Tercel was way better.
Of course I know there are objectively worse transmissions than the Ford AOD (such as the Ford PowerShit). But I supposed I’ve never driven vehicles with anything worse was because I’d avoid them in the first place.
5-speed in a 2003 Saturn Vue. Mushy, hard to figure out if you were shifting or merely moving the lever around. Almost impossible to teach someone how to drive a stick in this thing. Add in a horrible clutch, and it was probably GMs worst moment.
I had the same vehicle, same year, and, while it wasn’t as snappy as the Forester that replaced it, I actually liked the manual. Maybe you had one with the questionable cable linkage they replaced with a new one later? I can’t remember any issues with the clutch either. Drove it 135K before selling it. Our first family car. Kind of miss it. Wish I could still get a cheap SUV with a manual these days.
From a technical standpoint, the worst I guess I’ve driven is the 3-speed in the ‘69 C10 I had in college. Huge throws, whiny in 2nd, but damn it was fun.
I think the actual worst (experience) was probably the auto in my wife’s old ‘17 Escape. Stupid thing always confused as to which gear it should be in, and passing on the highway with a fairly light foot still caused it to jump down to 2nd. We both hated that car, trans was only one of the things we didn’t like about it.
Edit: thought of a worse one. ‘81 Ford 26k dump truck with a Cat diesel and 5+2. 2-speed rear didn’t like to engage at times which was exciting while hauling grain. The clutch gave out entirely on the way back from the grain elevator. I knew it had been slipping pretty bad in 2nd and 3rd on the way to the elevator but on the way back I came to an intersection on a major road…and couldn’t go. Took me about 5 minutes to find a gear that it would crawl forward into, then once I got headed downhill I could shift up without much slippage. Barely made it back into my friend’s driveway.
The Chrysler 42RLE in the early Jeep JK is on the top of crap transmissions for me, right there with the lurchy Ford DCT and early Nissan CVTs.
The 42RLE was fine, though hardly great, in the Neon and other cars, but was awful in the Jeep. Speeds between 35-55mph it would go back and forth between third and fourth, especially if there was any kind of wind resistance…which there always was because a Jeep is a brick on wheels.
The Ford DCT needs no explanation, but one stranded me in a parking garage when my rental Focus decided it wouldn’t move after stopping on an incline to pay for the parking. It was fine the rest was of the time, but I got lucky that no one is was behind me so I could roll the car down to a flat area of the parking garage and reset the car (I had to pull the battery cable, as a simple restart didn’t fix it).
The early Nissan CVTs, especially in the larger vehicles, were absolutely unbearable with the rubber band effect. I remember the first time I drove an early Murano with the CVT, as I realized it was going to be a long two weeks with that car. I haven’t been so overjoyed returning a car as I was with that one after 1500 miles of surging and droning.
The Ford PowerShift, which my son had in his ’14 Focus, managed to be an automatic that emulated a 16-year-old learning to drive a stick. And that was on its good days, of which there were few.
80’s era Saab 9000 Turbo 5 speed manual. God that was a shitty transmission. I actually met a guy in the 90’s who had worked in the Saab plant building those transmissions, and even he admitted that they were complete garbage.
The manual or the automatic?
Manual. I edited accordingly.
That’s strange. I had a 2000 Saab 9-3 with the Saab F35 manual (which is likely the same basic transmission you likely would have had) and it was rock solid. Still had the original clutch after 397,000km.
I rented a non-turbo 5M in Sweden in ’88 and I don’t remember it being particularly bad, but I did get a laugh out of the fact that you physically couldn’t change cassettes when you were in 5th gear.
My mom had a Renault Alliance, that trans would blow up if the wind shifted direction. They put 4 transmissions in that thing in two years and finally traded her out into a Buick.
Auto or Manual?
The worst Trans I had had the misfortune to drive was the Ford DCT in my Grandfathers Ford Focus. It was not great when it worked, but the threat of randomly not working on the freeway made it a straight up liability to own.
The 9 Speed FWD Chrysler 200 was a close second. While it never failed and did deliver good economy, it had a tendancy to not know what gear to go into out of the driveway, so you either lurched and buckled out of your neighborhood, or had to really baby the throttle until it figured out what to do.
the 90’s AOD in a 302 F150 was also scary slippy brand new.
I wanted a 2012 Focus so badly, but also wanted it with a manual. As I waited for a SE with a manual to be delivered, the salesweasel at the dealership suggested I take a fully-loaded Titanium out for a test drive to see how I liked the car overall. The DCT felt like it was made of the cheapest rubber bands possible, and absolutely spoiled the entire driving experience. Somehow I ended up grabbing the manual, though, and it was a pile of fun for the time I owned it until I had to sell it off since grad school + car payment is a bad combination.
2010 Nissan Cube CVT.. this could be the same one from that Micra…
The absolute worst transmission I’ve ever driven was a Smart Fortwo dual clutch automatic. It was an automatic transmission that felt like it was a manual being driven by someone who had absolutely no idea about how to drive a manual transmission car.
You beat me to it. 🙁
I guess you are referring to the earlier single-clutch autos, in which case I agree.
The dual clutch in the third gen Smart cars is fine.
I didn’t realize they made different transmissions or what year the car was but it was absolutely an abomination. Please forgive me if I used the wrong terminology.
No problem, the first two generations had single-clutch autos which were completely awful (the second one with Mitsubishi engines).
The third generation (with Renault engines and also available in a four seater version) had a dual clutch gearbox. And as a first for a rear engined Smart also was available with a 5 speed manual.
This last generation automatic gearbox is fine. Even if the rest of the car is a bit useless for anything other than trudling around town.
Two words: Plymouth Reliant
Whatever cursed CVT was dragged from Hell and put into the Dodge Caliber. I got that as a rental one week after a base model Sentra (which I thought I hated, alas I did not yet know the depths of my fury).
The Caliber wasn’t a terrible car. The design was interesting, interior space was decent, the engine was there, and the fit and finish was about normal for domestic cars of the time (kind of shitty). The transmission took into crap country.
Second, non-CVT, answer is the 8-speed in my wife’s 2022 Tiguan SE. At low speed it struggles to find a gear and it stutters like I’m 16 and just learning to drive a manual for the first time. In regular drive mode it’s slow to downshift for passing and doesn’t hold a gear worth a damn.
I owned 3 Dodge Calibers (in series), for all the reasons you mentioned. Cheap for it’s size/space, decent enough interior, etc.
I choose not to remember the CVT.
At the time it was a no shame vehicle. It was significantly less weird than a Cube (which I loved as a rental) and had a distinct lack of hamster marketing unlike the very capable Soul. The Caliber had its place and is a respectable vehicle the more I think about it. Great ideas, but unfortunate execution.
While I feel the right answer is a CVT, the one transmission that annoyed me more than any other was in my mom’s 2009 camry. Once you lift off the throttle seemingly the transmission goes into neutral for 3-25 seconds before it re-engages and starts engine braking.
On a first date, I snapped the clutch cable at the bottom of the mountain she lived on. While we made it to her house for dinner, she was unimpressed at my ability to rev-match, and that was also the last date
Clearly she wasn’t the one.
Later, I dated a girl who could about speed shift an F100 three on the tree. In a frilly sundress & combat boots 😉
I have owned and driven my fair share of vehicles. Most of the Ford work vehicles I drove were tanks. Heck even my ’94 F250 XLT does the job. But my ’99 Explorer was the worst. They didn’t nickname it the Exploder for nothing. I but mine used with a warranty. Had it replaced twice under warranty. Third time was 2 months expired. I only had 98k on it. I literally put it in neutral and rolled it down hill 2 towns to the closest used car lot where I traded it for a 4th Gen 4Runner.
Doing some research showed the culprit was a $.58 plastic spring. Seriously Ford?
I’m old, so it would be my first car, a Corvair with the two-speed Powerglide with no “Park” position, just an up-down slider on the dash. The only “good” thing about it was that I could floor it and stay in first all the way up to 50 mph . . . 😉 (young & stupid).
Honda engineered and built some truly amazing cars in the 80s and 90s. Only one thing could ruin any of them, and that thing was the K4 4-speed automatic transmission. It ruined any car it was installed into.
And have you ever driven a transaxle Alfa Romeo? Oh man. You THINK you’ve driven vague shifters. I mean, the transmission itself is fine. It’s just the process of getting it to shift gears that’s the problem. You can dod little things like replace bushings and add a gate, then Alfa eventually introduced an “isostatic” linkage in later GTV6 and 75/Milano models that rectified some of the slop, but it was still weird.
2015 Subaru Forester CVT.
CVT’s are good at one thing only, highway cruising.
Score one more vote for the Ford PowerShi(f)t: my old workplace had a ’13 Fiesta as a company car that we used as a runabout so we didn’t need to use the big vans. That transmission shifted like an old TH350 with a bad shift kit, banging into each gear with a jolt, and it would shift 1st/2nd/3rd in rapid succession before even reaching 20 MPH – the refused to downshift when you stepped on it.
Runner-up, also from Ford: the 4R55E in our old Explorer. Rebuilt at 140,000 miles, then started flaring again on upshifts at 155,000, 3,000 miles out of the warranty on the rebuild. Fluid change helped a tiny bit, then ithe slipping gradually got worse and worse. Sold the truck at 193,000, but by then, it was struggling to climb our driveway.
Worst manual: the “twin stick” four-speed in my old Dodge Colt. It was probably fine when it was new, but by the time I got it the linkage was so sloppy that the stick would wobble side-to-side two inches in every gear. And the ratios were stupid; it might as well have just been a five-speed. I never used the “Economy” gear except on the highway.
Interesting fact. When Hyundai bought the Colt design to make into the Excel it included the twin stick transmission. Instead of having a second stick they did something funky where putting it in “5th” put it back in 4th and activated a switch. That switch was used to operate a vacuum motor that shifted the trans from power to economy mode. I once had a customer with one of those who decided he would DIY some things. One of those was to replace the PCV valve. Only what he found was not the PVC valve, he removed it, figured out it wasn’t the PCV and put it back in. Unfortunately he didn’t pay attention and installed it backwards. Said part was actually a check valve in the vacuum line to the shifter. Somehow there was a enough vacuum to shift it out of one range, but not into the other. So he was left with a car stuck in neutral. Thankfully I had enough experience working on those POS by that point to know about the vacuum shifter and it was a 30 second fix when he pointed out what he had messed with and I noticed the arrow wasn’t pointing the right direction.
2018 VW Tiguan. The gear ratios were fine, but the programming killed it. I guess for efficiency reasons, this thing would regularly set off from a brief stop (like at a stop sign) in THIRD. Heaven help if you were trying to get through an intersection where cross traffic didn’t stop, with it weighing almost 4000lb with ~180HP at a 1.95:1
It was so bad that I just started using VW’s manual shifting mode everywhere other than the highway, because it was the only way to actually get this thing to move safely. I have told everyone considering one since to avoid the Tiguan. I couldn’t wait to get rid of that car.
Same here but the other way. At speed my Giulietta would to a stupidly (and unnecessary) low gear if you went anywhere near the pedals.
I ended using manual mode a lot of the time.
I’ve currently got a rental Chrysler 300 AWD, and I had to check and make sure the transmission wasn’t a CVT filled with triple thick milkshake. Nope, 8 speed. The problem is the vehicle has zero idea what to do with those 8 gears, particularly when you put your foot down. It may not be the worst, but it’s my current dislike, currently.
I’ve only driven a handful of vehicles, but easily my ’97 Ford Econoline-150. The E40D 4-speed auto transmission never gave me issues in need of repair, but even with cruise control engaged it sure loved gear-hunting when going uphill.
If I end up with another one of those somehow, I might dread it compared to the comparatively blissful experience of my Prius v’s eCVT.
I guess that would be the 6 speed auto in my 2009 Escape. It wasn’t a bad-bad transmission, but it but it did a lot of gear hunting and abrupt or delayed shifts. I think Ford needed to spend a little more time on the programming for that one. It worked adequately though and never failed, so I can’t complain too much about it.
I could be wrong… maybe I had the wrong idea, or maybe the engine was a turd come what may, but: whatever auto was in the base Ford Contour back in the day. My parents had one, and the engine wasn’t exactly powerful but my impression was that it was totally adequate to the car. But somehow the transmission turned gasoline directly in to loudly expressed opinions about motion that only eventually made their way to the wheels
The CD4E! One of the cars in which I learned to drive was a ’97 Mystique with that slushbox hitched to the 2.0 Zetec. My mother had a five-speed ’95 Contour when I was a kid, also Zetec-powered, and I remember my grandfather remarking that it “felt like a six (cylinder)” – fair enough, for a 130-horsepower engine in a smallish, five-speed car in the ’90s. The Mystique, though well-kept and with only 80-odd-thousand miles, absolutely did not.
You didn’t want to upgrade to a V6 if you had to have two pedals, though, because the CD4E’s already-subpar lifespan was even shorter beside a Duratec.
The CVT in the second gen Nissan Rogue was awful. You know how some automatic transmissions work seamlessly and always pick the right gear (or ratio)? This was not one of those transmissions.
Had one of those as a rental once. It stays in memory as an altogether terrible car. Agree on the transmission, which also whined like a spoiled toddler.
Another vote for the Rogue CVT. Company car was a 2017 to 2019 Rogue that I’d drive occasionally to our data center. Truly awful how sluggish it was and how irritating it was to feel it hunting for the right “gear” all the time. Made trying to keep a constant distance from the vehicle directly ahead over varying road grades a painful task.
Nissan must’ve carried that over from the first gen because I once drove my roommate’s 2010 Rogue and its transmission couldn’t settle into any ratio.