“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
The skip-shift T56 in my buddy’s SRT Challenger requiring me go from first-to-fourth under part throttle always makes me feel like a child getting a scolding. Fixable with an inexpensive kit.
Next is the automatic in our Celebrity Eurosport from years ago. Busy, busy, busy, that thing, always up to something. Until it up and quit, a probably-five-buck part that costs thousands to get to.
Notable: My Vega/Opel 4-speed with the reverse idler on the wrong side of the main and counter shafts so if you let the clutch out too fast (in reverse) it split the bottom-loader case in two.
I know I am aging myself here.
yep just a wire in line with the skip shift solenoid. I always just went up to 3rd until I changed that out. I still think that is partially why 2nd gear under load was a reason for missing the gear as I have not had trouble with that since.
Ford Focus hatchback. 2017 model, I think. A rental car when my 2016 Mazda6 was rear-ended and was in the body shop. This was in 2018, when my son was just over one-and-a-half. His rear-facing car seat barely fit, but I digress. That “PowerShift” automatic was abysmal. I thought the reviews and complaints were exaggerating. Wrong. This thing shuddered and bucked like a stick shift car being driven by someone who doesn’t know anything about a clutch. It was so bad that my wife, who normally doesn’t notice much about cars unless they’re really misbehaving, looked up from her phone in the passenger seat and said “What is the car doing?”
I, too, rented a Focus around that time. We met my daughter and 6 year old grandson in Vegas to visit my mother. Vegas is no the place to drive a car that had a delay from the time you step on the gas until it moved. Very scary and dangerous.
I forgot about this car and i owned one (2016) for four years! That transmission was abysmal. It combined the worst of an automatic and a manual. Plus, it ate clutches like crazy. We went through three (all covered by Ford, thank god) during our ownership.
I once drove a friend’s (former) PowerShift Fiesta the short distance from Porter Square to the far side of Davis Square (Camberville, MA) and remember being more worried about what the transmission was doing than I was about the MBTA bus drivers coming within inches of Not My Car.
Mine was also in a rental, same manufacturer, same era (thanks, Carlos); a 2015-ish Nissan Altima 2.5 S CVT. Lousy engine, way worse transmission calibration. In addition to all of the ‘normal’ CVT complaints (which accentuated all the worst features of the agricultural Nissan 2.5 4 cylinder) , the way this one controlled the lockup torque converter made it *impossible* to drive smoothly. It was especially evident when slowing down for a stop. As you’re slowing down steadily the torque converter clutch would stay locked (with the CVT in whatever ratio) until at some unpredictable vehicle speed when it would abruptly open, and the car would lurch to a halt – despite the driver (yours truly) never having changed the amount of pressure he was exerting on the brake pedal.
This sounds like a nitpick, but I promise you it was truly maddening behavior, and it made my driving seem like something an erratic teenager with a newly minted learner’s permit would do.
2021 Cadillac XT5. The Effing interface is THE WORST. In the Caddy, you push the lever forward to go backward, and pull backward to go forward. And some random button to put it in park. It is not intuitive, is illogical, and it makes me angry, so even if the transmission is perfect in operation, I’ve still got a bad taste in my mouth from the get go…
Don’t even recall the model, just remember it was a rental Nissan. Stuttering, whining, you name it, this car did it. Awful.
Oddly enough also a rental Nissan, but this time a 2009(?) Altima where the CVT held the engine on the point of maximum NVH. This car has no redeeming features whatsoever. Worst manual I drove is a toss up between my father’s Citroen BX and a Yugo 311. Both would involve considerable porridge stirring before finding a gear. The Yugo had no power, the BX as a Turbo Diesel was endowed with torque, but had more rattles than Babies-R-Us.
There was a brief period when every rental car I got was an Altima…I hated those cars. The much advertised zero gravity seats were uncomfortable after an hour, the CVT was hopeless at any kind of speed and the engine was a textbook case of no NVH control.
The manumatic on the first gen Smart Car ForTwo was terrible. Car2Go had Smarts as their entire fleet and I used to rent them fairly regularly. The car would shift like a new driver changing gears – it would engage the clutch ok in first, but the upshifts would take an eternity and leave you coasting when you needed power (usually when you were trying to turn left across a busy intersection or trying to pass).
The second generation wasn’t any better. I loved my fortwo but hated its lurching transmission; my partner at the time had vertigo and it made them wobble like a bobblehead. Its only saving grace was the flappy paddle shifters, which were basically mandatory to drive smoothly.
Probably the Subaru CVT. I test drove a Forester in 2020 when I was helping my one of my sisters shop for a car and that transmission is a goddamn train wreck. Which is unfortunate, because I really liked the packaging of that car. The CVT in my wife’s 2015 CRV is pretty atrocious as well. You can go foot to the floor in that car and it’s not going to let you rev past like 4,000.
CVTs suck ass. I’d still take the clunkiest slusher I’ve ever driven over the best CVT. I know we have some CVT apologists on this very blog but I am a dyed in the wool hater.
Good CVT’s do exist, but they seem to be a very rare exception to the norm. My folks had a 2004 Nissan Murano with a CVT, and it was actually quite excellent with the V6, at least for the short time they had the car. It could have been a reliability nightmare, but they didn’t own it that long (they got rid of it for reasons unrelated to reliability or desirability – frankly I’m still not sure why that one didn’t stick around longer).
Which is why I’m astounded most of the CVT’s in Nissans are *so bad* – I had literally driven proof that they knew how to do it right, at least at one time…
80K miles is generally the Death point for most Nissan CVT transmissions. I think they planned the obsolescence without regard for trade in value or the secondary market impression killing future values of the Brand.
Oh they absolutely planned it. They don’t want or need their cars to last to 100k plus and they literally advertise the Jatco CVT as never needing fluid changes. Their cars are designed to be sold to people with 300 credit scores at ludicrous APRs.
It doesn’t matter if they die when Nissan financial has a customer on the hook for $40,000 on their Rogue that’s worth $14,000 when it shits out its transmission. They have a shiny new one on the lot, the finance guy will do some sort of malicious wizardry to keep their payment the same $599 a month it’s always been, and the cycle repeats.
It’s ruined their reputation as a brand, but as of now they’re still alive and selling tons of cars, which was far from certain a few years ago. I guess someone had to fill the hole in the shitbox market that Hyundai and Kia left behind when they decided they should make good cars. As I always joke, if you’ve got a pulse you’ve got a Nissan if you want one. They will finance literally anyone.
thing is, I recall when Datsun and Toyota were considered the shitboxes and then they figured out how to build cars that lasted longer than 100,000 miles. Strange to see the cycle for sure.
Just bought a G70 3.3T AWD and I feel like it is way more reliable over time than the M340, A4, CT4V and many other sport Sedans still available. I am not sure I would have said the same about any Kia/Hyundai product 15 years ago.
My dad had/my step mom has a 2016(?) Forester with the CVT. I’ve only driven it a couple of times but it seemed fine.
Mid-2000s CVTs. Specifically, the 2007-ish Jeep Compass I had for a rental car. Angers me to even think about.
CVT in 2012 Subaru Outback (and that whole range – 2010-12 I believe).
Nissan NV200 work van with the cvt.
The 2018 Jeep Compass transmission was garbage, always confused what gear to choose and so many gears (9 auto), but for some reason 9th gear never engaged.
My experience with “another car with 9 speeds” (a W206 C-Class) is that 9th is not engaged that often (75km/h @ 1000rpm) and there’s a weird jump between 4th and 5th.
Other than that, the gearbox is fine.
This is easy. Smart Fortwo Diesel. Car was actually kinda cool. The transmission completely wrecked any redeeming qualities of the car.
Petrol powered Smarts were just as bad.
GM “Powerglide”: Only 2 speeds, direct drive and barely geared down with a torque converter that never locked up trying to compensate. Wouldn’t have been so bad on a big block V8 where 60s tires would act like a clutch anyways, but those tended to get 3 speed automatics while the underpowered GM cars that needed all the gears they could get got 2 speed Powerglides.
Thankfully they were extra stout and worthless on the road, they make for decent Drag race transmissions.
Oh, this is an easy one. A 1995 Mercedes-Benz C250 Turbodiesel Elegance estate with a 5-speed manual when it was still almost new.
Rubbery, notchy and vague, it was almost inevitable you’d try to pull out of a junction in 3rd at some point in any journey.
To make matters worse and hill starts even trickier, it had a foot-operated parking brake. In a manual. You needed 3 feet and a 6th sense to drive the thing smoothly.
Mercedes cars are simply not meant to be manual, and that’s that.
Nissan Sentra CVT.
In hindsight… The Saginaw 4-speed I had in my ’68 Olds for a long time. It was originally a powerglide car, and I changed it over to a really well-built TH350 with a shift kit, which was actually really awesome. When I saw the chance to grab a parts car with a 4-speed and do the conversion, I jumped on it.
The Saginaw was a pretty disappointing. 1-3 gears overlapped so much I’m not sure why they bothered. Also part of the problem was my own fault as we had to fabricate shift linkage and it was very sloppy. I drove the car like this for years, oblivious to the fact that the Saginaw was never designed to handle the torque of a big block V8 until one day it broke the case.
Now I have a Muncie. Way better.
My father-in-law somehow still drives a manual 7th-gen Celica and that specific car is the worst. We joke it’s double anti-theft because even if you know how to drive stick you will struggle. Even with numerous warnings and tips on it, I still stalled it twice on the first drive. Microscopic clutch engagement zone, and a shifter that refused to provide any feedback on if you were in a gear or not. He loves that thing.
The worst for me was my 67 MGB, 3 synchro 4 speed. 1st didn’t have one.
Once drove a rented Chevy spark from Denver (5000ft) up into the mountains for skiing (10,000ft).
At that altitude, the CVT in that car doesn’t have a deep enough reduction at the bottom end to get the car moving up an inclined driveway. Pulling into roundabouts was a frankly terrifying experience. The last point is more about the engine than the trans, but climbing into the mountains, I kept my foot on the floor and the engine at 7000 RPM for 40 continuous minutes.
The Ford 5R55S with select shift in an 03 Lincoln LS V8 was fuckin miserable in “manual” mode. But the worst goes to the Ford variant of the 10-Speed in the Ecoboost Mustang.
Why can’t Ford figure out how to tune that damn thing? It’s fantastic in the Camaro. Apparently it’s so fucking bad in the S650 Ecoboost that it completely ruins the car. Like that car is getting PANNED and on paper it’s great. 0-60 in 4.5 seconds, 300+ horsepower, RWD for 30,000 ish? It must be absolutely ghastly to make that package unappealing.
Is it any better in the GT?
I don’t think anyone likes the Ford version in any application. Besides the software tuning for it, there are also physical internal differences between the GM and Ford versions.
I have one of those 10R in a 2018 F150. I won’t say I’m in love with it but I came from an 8spd Ram which made that 2-1 lurching when coming to stop and a high pitched noise in reverse (but never failed and it had over 200K when I sold it), while the Ford likes to skip gears under throttle causing the occasional clunk which I despise. I just switch it to Sport mode and it behaves perfectly fine, though
Hmm, what is so miserable in manual mode? I’ve got the select shift 5R55S in my car and standard mode is what annoys me.
The delay followed by the hardest fuckin shift in the world or the delay followed by a very slurred shift and you never knew which is was going to be.
the PowerSh*t transmission in a rental Fiesta. at 20k miles it was already toast. it’d slip, stutter, then slam into gear. you never knew when or if it would shift. i spent the entire week screaming at it and worried it would kill me.
Excellent choice. Same experience…I was genuinely concerned it was going to blow up on me or just lock up. I’d never experienced anything like that before.
I owned one of these. Put 150k miles on it. Always shit. Went for a rebuild at 30k and finally shit itself at 150k. Sold the car for $500. It could have been such a fun car if it weren’t for the transmission.
Had one as a rental in 2013 or 2014. It was fine on the highway but garbage around town. Couldn’t wait to get back to my Cruze.
The manual in the Chevy Cruze is disgusting. Shifter flopped around like a wet noodle and barely let you know when it was in gear. Gearing made the car sluggish and the clutch was vague. Basically, there was little to no feedback from any part of the system. I shudder to think that someone out there may have formed an opinion of manual transmissions based on that travesty.
Never changing the gear oil from the abysmal factory slop does that. I bet a round of Amsoil Synchromesh would have cleared things up. Mine got the Synchromesh fluid changed every 40-50k miles or so. Flushing the clutch line when flushing the brake lines kept things fine there too.
The issue boils down to this being a German/Korean hybrid where the Germans expected maintenance to be done on time. It’s not a Cavalier or Cobalt that can be neglected and still run, sort of.
On reading your headline, but before reading the article, the first thing that popped into my head was ‘Nissan Micra CVT’ and… as much to my amusement that is what your entire article is about… I rented one in 2000 or so, all they had was the CVT, and it remains to this day one of the most miserable cars I’ve ever driven.
The worse I have owned was the 5-speed auto in a 2006 Jeep Commander, it just sucked and needed work all the time.
The best was my 78 VW Rabbit 4-speed manual. It was a sealed unit that needed no maintenance and I could go from a dead stop to 75 mph in only 3rd gear.