(no subject)

[l.leung at juno.com]

Not a technical cop-0ut, financial. The cost of certifying manual
transmission emissions (which, in lift throttle shifting, tend to
put out more HC, hence the throttle closure damper)as the incoming
air column has no place to go and raw unburnt fuel is essentially
waiting in the IM. This was a BIG problem with carb and TBFI cars,
still a problem with CIS port injection, but not a real issue with
EFI (which can be designed to shut off the injectors at drop throttle)
or Direct Injection. Nonetheless, as it was mandated that differing
drivetrains require COMPLETE certification, the (expensive) cost must
be amortized by the company. Since marketing research shows little
interest in 6-sp S8's, and since Audi probably really doesn't have
a 6-sp that can currently handle the torque and meet the life expectancy
expected by VAG, they figure, why bother? (BTW, manuals, not under
computer control (such as SMG, Ferrari F1) experience more potential
shock loads (usually by operator error) than autoboxes, so Audi would
have legitimate concerns on tranny life in an S8.

LL - NY





From: Ti Kan <ti at amb.org>
Subject: Re: Audi A3...  why dont they import to US? (wasRe: Wheel size of
To: brett at cloud9.net (Brett Dikeman)
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 00:51:21 -0800 (PST)
Cc: t44tq at mindspring.com (TM), quattro at audifans.com

Brett Dikeman writes:
> >Same problem with getting the 6-speed manual with the V8 engines-
> >the potential sales are too low, so they decided against it. We'll
> >see if this changes with the introduction of the S4 4.2.
>
> Audi has repeatedly stated the reason the V8 was not coming with a 6
> speed was they didn't have a tranny that could take the torque.  It
> may have been a cop-out, but that's what they said.

It is a cop-out.  Euro S8s have had a 6-speed manual transmission
for many years now.  I think the real reason is that Audi has done
market research and found that most American buyers of high-end
executive class cars don't want to shift their own gears.  Having
a manual trans variant costs the company real money (training/documentation
service/support/parts inventory/crash tests etc, etc) and that cannot
be justified for a very low sales volume.