I agree w many statements above, such as the manual is getting phased out due to not enough sales. NOW. they are not selling enough for a couple of reasons. 1. The dealers are not stocking them. 2 how many of these truck are getting driven by, soccer moms,mexican landscapers, and just business folk instead of people that acually used the truck for its intended purpose. 3. The auto does a very good job , compared to older autos.

I only have stick trucks. And i will never own a truck newer than a 2011 becauses they are auto only.


The manual is a VERY desirable trans. It is just so hard to find them, many people just settle for the auto. I was looking at a used truck at a dealer a year ago. When the sales man said it had an auto, i just started to walk away. He asked what was wrong. I told him, the auto. He said they cant keep sticks on the lot. They are gone the 1st or second day on the lot and they can be firm on their price. That should say something right there, that people want sticks.

But as times change and $$$ means everything The cheaper sticks will be dropped. As well as the xl model. There is more Lariats at the dealers than XLs.These after all are WORK TRUCKS. I see where FORD is going and they are in business to make money but i want a rough riding, 4x4,stick . But too many soccer moms cant handle it, and since they buy more of these trucks than i do......They win

Hell. My lightning came as a auto only truck, but i am in the process of changing that. Who ever thought of sports car/truck w an auto should be shot

 

autos tend to have more drag on the motor in my opinion. if you compared an auto to a stick with the same driver I am willing to bet the stick will ge the better economy every time. you can't really compare two trucks with two different drivers because everyone drives differently.

 

well, that is Ford listening to its customers.. they want a hot car/truck, but don't want the hassle of a stick.. add an auto tranny, and voila!.. sales go up!..

I bought an 06 Mustang GT for my wife, it was bada.. got to discussing repairing our old suburban and turns out she was having trouble shifting.
As we have both gotten older our knees don't take the strain as well..
we sold the stang and the suburban and bought a new suburban..

turns out she was also worried about deer, with the stang being down so low, now that we moved out to the country

Sam

 

Doesn't an automatic have cold, hard gears? Each one I've looked into had cold hard gears. I haven't seen every automatic, but I have seen inside thousands of them.

It's not that they didn't like your money, it's that there isn't enough money to be made selling manual transmissions. If they eliminate the manuals their costs go down and they save a ton of money.

 

Ok there are two issues that I have with this statement.

1. Landscapers(rather they are mexican or any other racial background(which in all honesty is irrelevant what they are for this post)), depending on the size of their operation, can be putting the truck through the wringer with regard to the truck's intended purpose. Some don't, that's for sure, but there are alot that do, so to overgeneralize would be a wrong thing to do in this case.

2. I use my truck for it's intended purpose. ~16k worth of horseflesh, hay, tractors(sometimes even hauling cars), trees and various other agriculture goods. This doesn't even get into the construction type of goods that I haul as well for my place. I wouldn't have a manual at all. I know how to drive one, I have no health issues(that I'm aware of, but I haven't been to a doctor in 5 yrs so I don't know) and I still wouldn't take a manual and it doesn't bother me one bit. So to lump me in with people that do not use the truck for it's intended purpose just because I have an auto is not a good thing either. Oh and I'm not settling for an auto, I flat out don't want a stick(in case you didn't get that by now).


We can have this debate all day long. Each one of us giving examples why their preferred tranny is better. This is like the diesel v. gas thread, it just spins right round(round, round) and goes nowhere.

While I don't disagree with the first part, and I would actually take it even further and say people should learn how to drive our size trucks, so they can better appreciate what people with our trucks have to do to make a turn or to stop.

However, the last part just won't work. I grew up in the big city(Plano(17 miles NE of Dallas for those that don't know)), we had the DART and it's wonderful, still use it on occasion. However, Plano actually was designed around a rail(of some type(Interurban railroad is what started it)) and so it's easier for public transportation(especially rail) for this to work.

Public transportation doesn't work in all big cities, so this isn't a cure all, you're going to have to come up with something else.

 

Freedom of choice I say, I don't want Ford telling me that I have to buy a Red truck for example, so why should I have to be forcefed an automatic?

Why are all the automatic guys even reading this thread??

 

This is my second post here. I am not a Ford guy but I wanted a manual so I bought a 2010 Ford F250. I suspected that Ford was going to discontinue the manual and was willing to switch brands just to get it. Didn't want a diesel to get one but may have to switch brands again and buy a diesel next time.

 

Look to the first quote for your answer.

Although based on TexasRebels responses of either learn to drive a stick or stay in the city, I would gather he doesn't believe in much of freedom of choice. Now that may or may not have been his intent with his posts, but that's exactly how it came out with how he worded it.

I do agree with having the option, even though I would never choose a manual again, but what gets me in a tizzy is people that over generalize about either automatics in trucks or the people that drive automatics in trucks or both.

 

Just an observation here, but this is EXACTLY the kind of thing that went on on in the dirt-bike world a few years ago. When four strokes got competitive, EVERYONE jumped on that bandwagon, and I mean everyone. Since manufacturers apparently like making a profit, little by little they stopped making the 2-stroke MX bikes and the few two strokes guys left started a consiracy theory about how the environmentalists killed the two stroke. No they didn't, "we" as consumers killed the two stroke as well as the manual trans in trucks. Manufacturers will find a way to sell whatever people want, they don't "dictate" what goes into next years trucks, they listen to consumers and try to figure out a way to appeal to the guy writing the check. If 99.9% of the new truck buyers are buying auto trans trucks, or diesels or whatever, does it really makes sense to tool up manufacturing and assembly plants (at a huge expense) to appeal to an insignificant number of buyers? Would you if you ran Ford? Like it not, manufacturing is a numbers game and the number of guys who actually want a stick is very small.

 

Stick is a good theft deterrent.

 

I'm not sure if your bikes count as an ATV, but since they are a [i]vehicle] able to hit all of the same terrain I'll post this anyway...

from the epa regulations in 2002

It explains that they don't require 4-strokes, but that their requirements are easier (read: cheaper) to hit with a 4 than with a 2.


as for the choice of manual or auto... go ahead and make it. Just becuase learning to drive a standard should be required in drivers education, doesn't mean you can't buy one. It's like parallel parking. You are required to know HOW to do it, but may never choose to.


and by City, I meant one with a better public transportation system...sorry if that wasn't clear

 

That isn't exactly how it was worded in the first post, but this does make more sense.

Actually, I never had to do parallel parking when I got my license. That is one thing that I have never done in my life. Rather or not they are supposed to teach that, it's one thing, but I never had to know how to do it. Not in driver's ed. and not at the testing facility.

Might be pathetic that I have never done it(never had ridden a bicycle either, unless stationary counts), but such as it is.

Let me ask you this, do you mean for someone to pull up stakes and go to a city with better public transportation if the one that they are in has crap or are they just SOL if they have a city with crap public transportation? I'm not following your logic here.

I can understand about if they can't pass the exam, that they should use public transportation, but I'm not following your thinking when it comes to if they are in a city with crap public transportation(not well thought out, not efficient), just because it's a city doesn't mean it was well thought out in it's planning.

 

it would actually be more of a moot point if getting a license required at least basic demonstration that you can get a standard down the road without stalling because very few people would say, "dang, I can't drive a stick, guess I don't get to drive with a license"

I'm sure there are a few who probably didn't want a license in the first place.

Think of it more like a difficult subject in school... one of those that you're either good at and will help you in life, or every day you say, "I'll never use this again once this class is over" and learn just enough to get by...only to find that one day down the road something you barely learned "to get by" becomes useful or gives you a slight advantage because you choked it down.

Remember, there are some people in this country that never learn to drive a motor vehicle because everything is close enough that they never need to.

as for the parallel parking, one day you'll come across a parking spot that you can't take

 

I'm not despiting the merits of learning to drive stick. Not at all. Like I said in an early post, I actually should think people need to learn off of trucks of our size that way they can better(hopefully) conduct themselves when driving around people like us.

Your evading the question. I'm talking about ones with crap public transportation, not everyone else. In Dallas and in Plano, if I still lived there full time and I wasn't in the agriculture field I could use public transportation and never have to worry about it.

However, where I live in Mid. TN the rest of time, it has crap public transportation and poor city planning and it's not from a lack of funds either. The recession here was just a very very smooth bump during the past year. How do you handle that is my question. Not when everything runs just peachy. There isn't a close grocery to where I'm at in a 10 mile radius, that's a lot of walking for that area. Back in Plano, I have 15 in that same radius(that would also include my favorite Farmer's Market as well).

Public transportation(in my opinion) will never be a final solution for a lot of "issues" that are being tossed about. It's too little too late.

That certainly is possible, not likely, but certainly possible.

 

first lets see if I'm on the same page with this scenario

1) you lived in a place with decent public transportation and never got a license becaues you didn't need one
2) you relocate (for part of the year) to an area that has poor public transportation and driving becomes necessary

if the above is correct, you'd just take drivers ed and get a license so you could drive when away from home.

but then again, if you weren't able to drive from the start, would you have taken a job in an area that required you to be able to drive?

Take air brakes for example. I have experience on private property with air brakes (yard trucks and such) but have never needed a license with an air brake endorsement. If I was to take a job that required a drive a semi twice a year, I'd simply go take the tests and get my stamp... that doesn't mean I'd stick air brakes on my daily driver