Anybody know why this is? I was talking to a customer of mine and he believed it was because Mercedes did not have a manual trans that could reliably handle the torque - any feedback appreciated.

 

According to a study by AMG a very miniscual ammount of people are inrested in purchasing AMG products in general with a manual transmission.. if I remmber correctly it was about 5% that was intrested.. for these reasons AMG never opted to use a manual transmission, but either way no manual tranny amg was ever made since the first mercedes-amg production car c36... not even the DTM.. I am not sure about the GTR though..

 

I know I wouldn't have purchased mine if it had a manual tranny. The AMG transmission does a great job of "knowing" when you want it to cruise and when you want it to play. It has to be the most intelligent automatic I've ever driven. The transmission changed my "hotrod" SRT perception of the SRT6 on the first test drive. The car feels graceful and elegant, despite it's rowdy capability when you romp on the gas.

 

Does anyone know the SRT-6's shifting speed? How does it compare to automatic transmissions in other performance cars?

 

I found this on car & driver. http://www.caranddriver.com/roadtest...t-6-page4.html

 

Mercedes protects their drivetrain components with torque shock limiting software between shifts on their more powerful cars. Removing that function with the installation of a manual trans would require that they beef up the drivetrain parts and would make an already undesireable (in their market) drivetrain cost much more than it's worth from a sales point of view.

I developed this theory while investigating the lack of a manual trans in the LX body Mopars using mercedes drivetrain components.

SRT engineers revealed that MB parts can't handle direct-drive old fashioned American torque, and a friend of mine who works at the NJ Merc facility was informed by a company engineer that removal of the torque limiting on a particular AMG model (can't remember which one) would result in a trans life of about 12,000 miles.


In short... "They don't make them like they used to."

 

The NSG370 (6 speed manual trans) can only handle about 270ish lbft of torque safely. All aluminum case with integrated bellhousing, very soft. Not like a good ole fashioned All American NV4500 trans. Cast Iron case and still comes in at a svelte 200lbs. Can handle close to 700lbft of torque, just a lot larger.

 

Figuring this one out (and worse yet why an automatic in the $450k SLR) will only encourage everyone to ponder the other MB tough questions -- like why a $15k American or Japanese car is readily available in a dozen colors but 90% of MB's apparently must come in either black or silver (and if you are so audacious as to order an MB color not suited to a funeral procession, are those little metalic speckles in your paint really an option that anyone should have to pay $500 for).

I've owned a stick shift car of one kind or another continuosly for almost 25 years. I don't manually shift because it's necessarily the fastest way to go -- I just like doing it. That said, it doesn't take too long tap shifting the SRT-6 on a winding road to forget it's an automatic -- almost anyway. I do still keep a manual transmission car to switch off, and so long as I'm financially able plan to keep doing so well into my AARP years.