It always entertaining when Americans speaking about manual transmissions as something mysterious. It is not, feet on pedal, switch, feet from pedal. Europeans are surprised seeing you manipulating the wipers to control the transmission.
I consider personally most automatic transmissions horrible. The gear is either to high to overtake or so low that the engine is running with too much RPM. The only exception is the gear-less Multitronic[1] by Audi. Sadly replaced by DSG. Nasty rumors say VW did that because the Multitronic had no more issues and worked well ;)
The DSG works somehow and the shifting is somehow acceptable. The automatic transmission Ford uses (e.g. C-Max) is horror for the driver, passengers and the engine. Adventurous people may proceed to double-clutching[2].
> It always entertaining when Americans speaking about manual transmissions as something mysterious.
The car in question is at least 45 years old. That the transmission was never great and has degraded since is not at all odd. At no point did I see ragging on a manual, only the transmission being shot (and having a weird pattern).
ZF8 seems to be used by Audi only for cars sold in America?
btw.
ZF means Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen. Which is owned by the Zeppelin Foundation. Which was founded to support the built of Zeppelin Luftschiffe and social purposes. Weird story. And the Zeppelin Foundation was for a long time owner of Cherry. The company behind most mechanical keyboard switches. They should've kept that, growing business area - mechanical switches ;)
It's been used by numerous manufacturers in addition to Audi, including BMW and seemingly every FCA/Stellantis brand. I've driven a BMW 5 series fitted with one and I can confirm it's a great transmission that is smooth and capable during normal driving, but has reasonable sportiness when required.
The ZF8 is in plenty of euro Audis as well, but only the big, expensive stuff since it's a longitudinal gearbox. The more common, smaller Audis would be on the MQB transverse platform that can't use the ZF8. And Audi has been using a dual clutch on some of their lower-end MLB cars.
Anything A6/Q7 and up is a ZF8 if it's an automatic.
Now would not be a great time to be in that area when "knockoff" switches have pretty much out-innovated Cherry into irrelevance
But that aside, as other comments point out the ZF8 is not Audi specific, Plenty of non-M car BMWs use it, and even heavy duty pick up trucks are running with ZF8s now
I'm in the US and prefer manual transmissions, but I have to admit that the 6-8 speed automatic transmissions that have become popular in the last 5-10 years pretty much solves the "always in the wrong gear" problem that the 3-4 speed automatic transmissions of years past had.
I consider personally most automatic transmissions horrible. The gear is either to high to overtake or so low that the engine is running with too much RPM. The only exception is the gear-less Multitronic[1] by Audi. Sadly replaced by DSG. Nasty rumors say VW did that because the Multitronic had no more issues and worked well ;)
The DSG works somehow and the shifting is somehow acceptable. The automatic transmission Ford uses (e.g. C-Max) is horror for the driver, passengers and the engine. Adventurous people may proceed to double-clutching[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitronic
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_clutch_(technique)