Transmissions

I’m driving a rental Peugeot. They said an automatic transaxle was the same price as a stick shift, so I went with the automatic—negotiating these small roads is bad enough without the hassle of unfamiliar controls.

The car is fairly fancy: the power lock folds the outside mirrors against the car, it has digital radio, etc. Front and rear have different temperature controls for the air system.

But I can’t find a blower, so I have to live with whatever flow rate the system thinks I need—which is quite inadequate for cooling me off when I’m dripping sweat and the car’s been in the sun.

And the transmission is very odd—and unpleasant. It handles first and second gear, albeit in a very rocky way. The last time I drove an American car with such a lousy gear management I traded it in rather than try to fix it.

And third and fourth gears: ah, there’s a curiosity. If you let the engine race long and hard enough it will reluctantly shift into 3’rd, but it really expects you to bump the shift lever forward in the slot to up the gear or back to gear down—manually. It is far easier than manipulating a standard shift, but not quite fully automatic, making it a kind of hybrid, and not a very smooth one. Apparently there are quite a few varieties of hybrid transmissions. I’m not sure why they picked this one.