Friday, September 21, 2007

Ford hopes to convert Europeans to automatics: New 6-speed launched

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Regarding fuel economy, the double-clutch gearbox is surely a positive step. However, updating "regular" automatic transmissions and adding speeds is also good news. As our readers know, Europeans aren't much fans of automatics: fuel economy almost always resents the torque converter and most of the available trannies had too few speeds. Moreover, not until recent times have diesels been mated to automatics.

Ford Europe has updated its automatic transmissions for the two most powerful engines available in Europe, adding a 6-speed trannie named Durashift 6-tronic manufactured by Aisin AW. One engine is the gasoline Duratec 2.3 161 HP and the other one is the 2.0 TDCi 130 HP with Diesel Particullate Filter as standard. These two engines are installed in both the Mondeo sedan and the S-Max and Galaxy. No information about mpg improvements has been announced.

Ford announced in Franfurt that the 2.0 TDCi would also be available with a new Dual Clutch Transmission (like VW's DSG) for the Focus but this gives an additional choice once it's expanded to the vehicles that can use these two engines.

Both engines have manual 6-speed as standard.

[Source: Ford Italia]

 

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