[mopar360]

Thanks, rpmalerba!

I have been a Mopar guy since my childhood days riding around in my dad's '64 Valiant w/pushbutton (that was a cool tranny idea) and '65 Fury w/318 (the original style, the one you could lock up with 7 cracked pistons, let it cool and then drive some more!). Buying the Goat was difficult for me, but V-8's w/big power and a clutch are hard to resist and the Viper is a little out of my reach.

From a manufacturer's standpoint, I understand fully why Chrysler wants to rely on the Auto-stick as a "one-size-fits-all" solution. They are harder to break (meaning they cost less warranty dollars), it is cheaper to build/buy 10,000 auto-sticks than 5,000 auto-sticks and 5,000 manuals (one product, one set of parts to assemble is always cheaper in the long run), and they think they can market to both the manual and auto crowds with equal acceptance (unfortunately a manual tranny guy will NEVER accept this product as a viable subsitute).

In many ways they are right. Since the inception of the modern automatic transmission, most consumers have been buying them. Even the old muscle cars had primarily automatics. On the whole consumers like the low maintenance (no clutches to replace) and the ease of drive (shifting in traffic can get annoying). As a couple of posters pointed out, at the strip you can often beat a guy with a manual tranny because of the precious microseconds lost in shifting. If you have a turbo car, the automatics are great because you keep the engine loaded (and the boost is constant throughout the shifts).

Sidebar: it is almost impossible to make a perfect side-by-side comparison of auto vs. stick at the dragstrip because there isn't a production car made that has a rear-end gear low enough to take advantage of all the gears in the transmission (at the end of the strip I only reach 3rd in the Magnum and 4th in the GTO). What you really want to do is to take advantage of all the gears so you can keep you car at the optimum hp range throughout the run, but then you couldn't drive the car on the street without running 5,000 RPM all the way to the 7-Eleven. Then of course there is driver ability, and an automatic can make even the worst drivers look pretty good. A manual will expose all of a driver's weaknesses - trust me, I've been there!

What we are saying is that we want a Mopar pony car that doesn't disappoint. I don't care if they offer a V-6 version. I don't care if they offer an auto-stick. I DO want at least one obtainable version that employs big power (425HP minimum) with a transmission that is fun to drive. The people buying this version will not care about gas mileage, nor will they care if they are a tenth slower at the strip than the auto-stick version. They want to upshift and downshift through a set of mountain curves, passing motorhomes with ease, knowing that when they get to the meet their Plum Crazy Purple (hint, hint, HINT) machine will attract all the attention. And when someone says, "Will it bark the tires?", you'll say, "Oh yeah!" Then they will frown and say with a wimper, "My auto-stick won't..."