[V8] Gearboxes

[Roger M. Woodbury]

When I went hunting for my first Porsche 928, I really, really thought I simply had to have a stick. Most of all I really wanted a ‘91 928 GT which had (among other things) the short shifter instead of the lifeboat oar that regular 928 sticks came with.  Well, ANY decent GT was simply out of my price range and in the end, I bought a lovely granite green, low mileage ‘87 with the “dreaded” automatic.  What I found after having it for a while was that the car with all that V8 torque didn’t need me to fiddle around with my left foot, and I got so I really preferred not to have to shift the thing at all.

Then when it came time for my first V8, I never gave it a second thought.  Right up until the car started to balk at going backwards unless I pushed the car while it was in neutral.  Zixty eight hundred dollars later the car was well again, and I was totally gun shy, bailing out of the car for about the wholesale price that I bought it.  I only lost the zixty eight hundred poured into the transmission.  That was that, or so I thought.

But somehow the V8 never really left me, and it wasn’t awfully long until I bought the ‘93.....wonderful car.  Went away all to soon, and that is a decision that I really wish I could have back.

Now the ‘90 V8 I have at the moment is my regular driver and the car we take most times when we leave the house.  MOST of the time when we leave the house we travel at least fifty miles out and back.  Michele has had numerous medical issues through the winter and the V8 is the car that does the deal.  It is all open two lane road for about 35 miles, then there is Interstate for the remaining 15 miles.  The car is an automatic and the roads are most often open and even the Interstate near Bangor is what most people would consider “lightly traveled”.  The car is getting a very, boringly regular 21-24 miles per gallon with the way we use it.

There are a few times when I think about having something with a stick again, just for the fun of it. But the V8 does everything I need it to do and does it at least as well as those new Asian s++tboxes with their seven gears or the little bitty ones with their trick dashboards and clutches.

YEMV,

Roger