I had wondered why Dodge didn't follow suit with ford and chev. by offering the stick as standard and auto as an option in 09 and 10.
Most of the american sports cars had always had a manual transmission as standard equipment. To be truthful, I'm a bit P.O'd about it now that they've changed it around for the '11 MY.
Great news for the new buyers, sux for us who purchased in previous years....still a great car with either transmission though:bigthumb:
In the past years, the automatic was the "have it" option and mfgrs could charge extra for an option that 80% of the buying would opt for since manuals were mostly considered inconvenient and the automatic was the 'modern' convenience/luxury feature to have (in years past).
Now that automatics are commonplace in today's market, some mfgrs charge extra for 'stick to recoup the costs for certification and additional complexity of building a more 'niche' offering of a driveline. There's more steps to install, align and put together all the hardware (flywheels, pedals, hydr. lines, different pedal support brackets, etc) and align the clutch to the flywheel and there's a lot of machining going into a m/t assembly.
In the overall picture of RWD cars that Chrsyler builds, the manual tranny is a small % of the production...even looking at Ram trucks, the offerings with 'stick trannies are pretty limited even on the trucks.
Even GM was charging extra $$ for manuals in Corvettes (when both auto and manual are possible, ZR1 and Z06 have been 'stick only) and in the Camaro, where in the past the manual was n/c and automatic was extra cost...