Bronco Reveal

[Big Blue]

There are a lot of excuses but at the end of the day the manufacturers aren't going to lose money selling manuals just because people complain when there isn't a manual option. The numbers have been declining literally for decades, and there is not a little change that any manufacturer can make that would reverse that.

What I find kind of interesting is, if you go to Europe the ratio of automatic versus manual is almost the opposite of in the US. I've been to Italy and Germany and looked into the cars parked on the street and there are many more manuals than autos. Maybe we have gotten lazy and yes the manufacturers will cater to that laziness,for profit. Personally my Ranger is the first automatic vehicle I bought for myself. Because I liked the truck but had no other choice. And no, sport mode is not the same as shifting through the gates. If you have driven a manual all your life you don't even think about what your doing, its second mature and gives your left foot something to do.

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[Deleted member 1634]

as far as manual trannies go...been there done that.

if i was buying a Bronco for a sole purpose offroad truck, i would go manual.
but thats not me in my life at the moment.
i end up in alot of traffic, and i'm not going to enjoy a manual in those conditions...ever. i've been through that.
try and F550 dually with 600 gallon fuel tank on the back working that clutch for hours.

Im am wussing out....it's automatics for me now.

And proving popular, 3 co-workers dropped deposits on Broncos. lets see if they follow through with the purchase down the road.

Same. I'm not sure I would want a manual as my daily driver anymore. The 10spd in this truck is just so nice it allows me to just kind of relax on my drive home after a stressful day at work or focus on fighting my way over to my exit in a packed city rush hour on a weekend trip to The Cities. But for a toy car, something to drive for fun up the shore on a sunny summer day, I would definitely have a manual.

 

[VAMike]

Can you custom order?

Historically yes, for example, you can special order a ranger with any supported combination of options. I'd probably never have found my truck sitting on a dealer lot because dealers don't stock high trim supercabs any more than they want a manual (too hard to sell). I'd assume the bronco will offer the same ordering flexibility but we won't really know until they are available to order.

Note that "any supported combination of options" is important--it seems that at the factory even low-volume options are grouped on the assembly line to simplify things. (Like, "today we're going to be making a bunch of supercabs", and a couple of weeks of the relevant order type are all done on that day.) They don't want to deal with a complete unicorn build, I guess because it's too easy to mess up something if you're doing it the first time and thus more time consuming/expensive to get right.

 

[VAMike]

What I find kind of interesting is, if you go to Europe the ratio of automatic versus manual is almost the opposite of in the US. I've been to Italy and Germany and looked into the cars parked on the street and there are many more manuals than autos. Maybe we have gotten lazy and yes the manufacturers will cater to that laziness,for profit.

I love when people act like the manual transmission is all that stands between human civilization and "lazy". You aren't hand-cranking the motor to start it, you aren't manually setting the choke and spark, you don't have to add water before starting the car, heck, even manual transmissions wimped out and added synchromeshes so you don't get that "classic crunch" on every shift. If you want that "non-lazy" experience find a nice model T so you can fully revel in your retro glory.

As far as Europe goes, the take rate on automatics has about tripled in the past decade. The vast majority of people buy a car to get them from one place to another while signaling their social status. The act of driving isn't particularly "fun", it's just something you need to do. For these people a manual traditionally offered the advantages of better fuel economy and lower cost. Now, those advantages have basically disappeared. So why would a normal person (not one who is driving "for fun") still want a manual? Europe bought manuals because they were the most practical choice, and now that they're not Europe's buying habits are changing.

 

[AzScorpion]

Good video that just came out today from Stage 3 Motorsports.

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