Again, that's a very narrow view of whether something is worth adding or not. All you're concerned about is "performance", and maybe as an enthusiast, that really is all you're concerned about. But to sell cars, there's A LOT more involved than just "performance".

Like I said before and you probably missed, even if this tranny adds NOTHING to the performance, it is STILL a very valuable marketing too for Hyundai to move upmarket. Hell, it even got a thread title update on an Acura forum, of all places!! Something like this that calls positive attention to the brand is a good thing, unlike some things that other certain automakers do (you all know which one) that call more negative criticism for its moves while trying to move upmarket (do you really think paying designers to design a bloody awful grille that some people can "put up with" while others hate was a worthwhile tradeoff? The only thing it added was more negative criticism).

Further, do you actually know if anything was or was not improved moving from a 7spd to 8spd? Do you actually know if there was only miniscule potential? do you know what the change in weight was between one vs. the other? Maybe they researched the current 7-spd and saw that they can add a gear without adding any weight but increasing fuel economy by 4%. Maybe they researched and saw they can add a gear without increasing any cost and make the shifts smoother. There's thousands of possibilities...I don't know, but face the fact that you don't know either, so again, why be defeatist and focus on what may be bad? But an improvement, even if it's purely for "bragging rights" is still an improvement and a brand struggling to move upmarket could use any improvement it can, no matter how "miniscule".

 

I'm going to flip your argument, and ask you to tell me why the 8-speed transmission is good, aside from roping in some people off the street who think something like, "eight is greater than seven, so this car must be awesome!" I didn't say that this transmission was necessarily a bad thing; Acura would be better off with a good 8-speed transmission than the current 5-speed. I was trying to temper some of the excitement and "OMG 8-speed transmission!!" type comments, as no one knows whether the transmission will have any significant performance benefits.

I know you're going to bring up the bragging rights issue again; I wonder why anyone, outside of Hyundai executives, would care whether Hyundai has additional brand cache because of this transmission. If it does improve performance, then this news interests me, but I couldn't care less about how this affects Hyundai's brand image.

 

Like I said, I DON'T know that it's any better than the 7. I don't work for Hyundai and further, this thing has not even been confirmed yet, but i'm sure they'll present somethign in the marketing material about the benefits of their 8spd over the "older" 7spd. Maybe there is no direct gain from the addition of the 8th gear, and re-engineered the tranny primarily for smoother shifts or less parasitic losses or better reliability, and figured adding an additional gear didn't add any weight and would give them an incremental fuel economy benefit. At this point, we just DON'T KNOW, but what we DO know is that this is likely to be a good thing. And I don't see the "excitement" or "OMG 8-speed transmission!!" that you refer to. The only "excitement" I see is the relative enthusiasm between what Hyundai does and what Acura doesn't.

Your last statement is very ego-centric. I'm sure Hyundai couldn't care less about what you think about its brand image either. But there are thousands of potential customers out there that COULD care and these are the customers they are trying to capture. Like I mentioned before (and you seem to fail to grasp), in general and at certain price segments (ie the segments Hyundai is trying to expand upward into), it has been shown day in and day out that brand image is just as effective, if not MORE effective, at selling cars than real world benefits or performance, and if adding a gear allows them to do a little bit more bragging over some other brands, more power to them.

 

Hyundai sucks period i dont give a damn if they made a 600hp car hyundai is a hyundai piece of crap period!

 

IF U SPEND 50k ON A HYUNDAI Y NOT BUY A LEXUS GS350 OR A INFINITI M SERIES

 

thanks for your insight.

 

WTF?

 

Well, that sure broke the tension.

 

His join date is Aug. 2009...did he just join to post that? I wonder what other ounces of wisdom he has gifted us with.

 

I've narrowed that post down to either 1SICKLEX or Water-S...

 

WTF anyone needs a 8 speed auto for? all you need is a 5 speed and its good enough ... you really expect ppl to be like wow its a 8 speed auto in that Hyundai.. Honestly Hyundai is improving their cars but y do they need that 10 years 100,000 miles warrenty on their cars ? is it because they know people still dont have trust in their cars ? personally i would stick with the acura and as for the genesis it would never be able to compare with the BMW 7 series i know cause in our family we have one and it the best ride ever made so far

 

At least he learned to press the "Caps Lock" key again to turn it off

 

Uh, i thought the school year started already for elementary students...shouldn't you be in school or something?

 

I'm going to wait for your thread to be translated into english before I respond.

 

is his username "this asian dude"??? lol

 

i say msl82 and dizazndood open a thread and fight

 

i say mrdeeno is a retard that pretends to know everything but really u dont know shit btw i do have a BA degree u fucking idiot

 

right, because you have expressed yourself so clearly and provided such indefensible arguments.

Can we get some people together to vote this guy off the island?

 

:ban:

 

And I say YOU are THIS close to being banned. Stop the shit or you are out. Being abusive to other users is not tolerated here.

 

Wow some minor excitement for a Thursday, now back to the thread topic....


IMO it's commendable for Hyundai to develope a 8AT into their luxury cars. Nice leap from the the 6AT they currently use, interesting side note the Genesis V6 and V8 use different AT manufacturers (Aisin B600 V6, ZF 6HP26 V8) according to the website.

Hyundai choose the MB and Lexus route and did a +2, MB going 5->7 Lexus going 6->8. GM also did a +2 and went from 4->6 on the Malibu. BMW and Honda stuck with the +1 gear increase plan.

What the purpose of a 8AT for a V8 motor with a torque band as flat as Kansas is a endless debate. I've driven the LS460 and S550 at the Lexus events and both were excellent gearboxes. You can barely perceive the RPM drop on the tach on low-RPM shifts, at redline WOT it's more apparent but the Lexus revs only drop ~400-500RPM.

FWIW, sometimes in a rare moment the opposite happens in terms of trying to copy a competitors approach. Back in the 80's when the Japanese motorcycle manufacturers were creating V-twin cruisers to compete with Harley's. Most of the Japanese cruisers had 5 speed gearboxes while H-D gearboxes were mostly 4-speeds. Funny thing happened Honda went DOWN to 4 gears, then a year or so later the Harley's went up to 5 gears. So a year after that the Honda's went back to 5 gears.

Same thing happened just 3-4 years ago when Yamaha went from 5->4 gears on their YZ450F motocross bikes. A friend races a YZ450F and said most riders rarely use the 5th gear, so Yamaha dropped it for a few years then all of sudden just recently added back a 5th gear.

It's all just marketing folks, nothing to get too spun up about.
Heck if you're old enough you'd remember that Honda's first automatics for cars were 2AT until 1980 3AT , so if you're hoping for a Honda/Acura 8AT and a 6AT is coming out in 2010 (that's 1 gear increase per decade) it'll be another two decades or 2030 if that linear relationship hold up.

 

Haven't driven one but looked pretty closey at a Genesis at work, really nice quality and fit/finish on the interior and exterior. I'd like to see one on a lift and look at the underside and drivetrain/suspension details.

 

My dad is actually on his way to the dealer tomorrow to look at a Genesis 4.6 to replace his aging caddy.

 

I'm not sure when I'll be ready for a new car. If it's not going to be a minivan (you never know), I'm actually looking forward to having a chance to consider the Equus or whatever its gonna be called.

 

A bit off topic but the Genesis V8 is FAST!

 

id like to hear that sc tau engine, gotta sound great

 

x2
It didn't feel any slower than the LS460 when driven back to back.
It also seems like the new choice for gangsters. I see many V8s chromed out with 22ish wheels.

 

It is commendable for them to go for the 8 and advance in technology, but the question is, is it necessary? The LS (the few I test-drove) hunted for gears until no end and driving at WOT wasn't very fun (the constant shifting), there is a limit to when there are to many gears, and the LS is a perfect example of this. I'd be happy with a BMW style 7 speed trans that really is a 6spd. but 7 when you want to drive in a sporty manner with the short first gear.

 

From ITT Tech? Because you write like an imbecile.

 

The 8-speed on the IS-F doesn't seem too bad from what I've seen. Maybe it behaves differently on the LS?

So harsh, but so true.

 

mamma mia

 

 

yes, an 8 speed tr. sounds cool even if nobody needs it really. on the Lexus IS-Fyou get super smooth gears changing, but from 8th to 4th or 3d in a sport car sounds strange.

 

The market strategy of Hyundai is very different between USA and Europe.
And it's clever.
Perceive the Hyundai like a luxury brand (or a brand that is aiming at tier 1) is impossible here. Hyundai is the seller of ugly Tucson, Sonata, i30, i20 and so on.

The Genesis however looks very good and I think in USA Hyundai will achieve the status of luxury brand.

 

All it takes is to watch one episode of Top Gear to hear the derision in their voices when they talk about Korean cars.

Some of it is just snobbery but clearly there is no begrudging respect for Hyundai/Kia there like there has been developing here.

 

While I personally don't know anyone who's lived in Europe for any significant amount of time.... Top Gear is a satirical automobile-based review show... and that's it. Meant more for entertainment than anything. Though I wouldn't be surprised if Hyundai has even worse brand reputation over in Europe vs. the US.

 

Is it necessary for southern rock bands to have 2 drummers and 3 guitarists?

It's been a couple years but I was really curious how much the LS460 would been hunting for gears when I drove it and it was flawless. I drove it 3 times on the same course and could only tell by the tach that a shift occurred under normal driving. WOT and it was easy to tell but the shifts were apparent but you could really hustle the LS460 although it's handling was not up to the 750i or S550.

The main advantage of 5/6/7/8AT is that they can have fairly tall (numerically low) gear ratio's in top gear to get the engine rev's down and keep the throttle more open to cut pumping losses as increase highway mileage. On the 3G TL the 5AT gear ratio's are wider than the 6MT so the 5AT 5th gear has fewer rev's than 6MT's 6th gear at the same speed.

My brother has a Cayenne Turbo and the one small but neat feature is the LCD info display on the dash shows what gear the 6AT is in no matter if it's in full auto or semi auto modes. What I noticed is whenever you downshift in full auto for passing on a highway the gear drops from 6th to 4th or sometimes 3rd gear totally bypassing 5th and spooling up the turbo's for boost.

You mentioned the sporty startoff lower 1st gear. A friend has a 1989 MB 190E2.6 and it has only a 4AT. It always starts in 2nd from a stop unless you move the gear select to 1st or use WOT, really annoying. He recently just got a G8 GXP and loves the 6AT, especially since it only needs part throttle to use 1st gear.

 

Many of you don't seem to know anything about gearing. Haven't you ridden a bicycle that has multiple gears? Go study gear ratios on the web, and to further grasp the idea about gearing go ride a bicycle with multiple gears.

Generally higher number of gears will provide you FASTER acceleration (and deceleration) AND better fuel economy. This will vary depending on the gear ratios of each gear. You would have to be completely stupid if higher number of gears hardly give any performance increase and think is just a bragging rights. Just about all of you in this thread fall in this category.

There maybe a very small increase in acceleration between a 7 spd and 8 spd tranny, but once again, will depend on the gear ratios. If the gears are much closely spaced on the 8 spd it will go faster than the car equipped with a 7 spd. Higher number of gears with closely spaced gears will also do better passing cars in the highways. Your 0-60 can be improved significantly. Your 60- 100 mph will be improved significantly. Your 100- 150 mph will be improved significantly.

And that idiot who said that the 8 spd tranny on the Genesis will be heavier is also ignorant... The upcoming 8 spd tranny will be lighter than the current line up of the 6 spd automatic transmission and there will be less number of moving parts and will be more efficient. You guys like old technology that is inefficient and has slow acceleration? Why don't you go pick up a car that's got 4-spd tranny? Sounds like you guys love the old stuff.

And it is the car with less power (hp and tq) will need close ratio 7 or 8 spd transmission to gain more power to the ground. The reason why the 4th gen Automatic Acura TL has such horrible acceleration performance is because of having only 5 gears, and those gears are ridiculously tall.

Tall Gears = Shit performance
Short Gears = Great performance

You need short gears and at least 7 spd if you want some serious performance. Why the hell do you think cars like Lexus IS-F performs so well in roll-on races? It keeps up or outperforms cars that have 500 hp. This is due to close ratio gears you dumb asses.. Also, why the hell do you think the Mazdaspeed 3 outruns many other competitors in roll races? Nope, it's not only because it's got turbo (higher torque) but also has extremely short gears all the way to the top speed. Only the smart guys like me would pick up one of these cars. As for the Genesis, I cant' comment how good they will be until I review the gear ratios on the upcoming 8 spd platform.

You guys are soooo..... behind.

 

Who pissed in your cereal?

If you re-read the thread, there were only a few people that thought an 8-speed transmission wouldn't provide any benefits. Everyone else agreed an 8-speed would be beneficial.

Also, while short gears do indeed improve acceleration, automakers have to consider fuel economy as well. When you're cruising on the highway a tall final gear may be desirable because the throttle would have to be more open to maintain speed. Open throttle = less pumping losses. Theoretically the best fuel economy could be obtained if there were a gear that kept the engine running at the most efficient part of the power band and also required you to keep your foot to the floor just to keep you going at your current speed, but that's obviously impractical.

 

A+ student @ ITT