Man, you folks there in states must have had been really proud in the past by the cars that you built.

Oh we were/are.... I'd have to really strain to come up with a foreign car I'd want to own (save for Canadian made American cars).

Oh, Lord, woncha buy me a Mercedes-Benz ?!? Mah friends all drive Porches, I must make Amends ...Well, we ARE proud of the cars we have made in America, but there are also quite a few we kinda wish everybody would "Forget" about..

What models?

I've heared a thing about early automatics: the selecting order wasn't the same on all cars and this caused accidents.

Like the Ford Fairmont that looks like the body work department ran outta ideas on how to design a car and grabbed their 3 year old kids sketch of a car, straightened the lines, and tweaked it a bit then handed it to production....or the pinto where a rear end collision jams the doors and the gas tank catches fire...

Today's "Mercedes" are just a pice of ugliness. No style, just made for people who just want to impress with the name of the brand.
Very old models at least if they whreren't in the had the looks, they had the reability of the brand.
The W123 (a.k.a "Cobra" in Romania) had a certain look (not very beatiful, bot not ugly), but for sure it was good car worth of the brand's name.
In Bucharest there are 2 x 380SL. Both automatic transimision. In terms of look... not only does they do have the appeal, but the overpass any of today's model.
I'm not such a big fan of the brand, but the very old models from them for sure where good. And W123 was a very wade range of cars. Today's cars don't seem so versatile in terms of options.

U.S.A. cars had one problem I think: to big engines. I agree that outside densly populated areas, in U.S.A. (or Canada or even Mexico) you can't go with small engine cars like in Europe. So a 3-4 liters (maybe 5 if you want a really big car or a pick-up truck) is needed, but when you put as a standard a 5-6 liters engine is arelady too much in the late '60's.
But do you have any ideea, what where the most relaible U.S.A brands up to the '50's?
You needed oil change only because you migh had leaks or also because the qualty of the oil wasn't so good back then - plain mineral oil, no aditives.
If you want to run a classic car I've heard that you must be careful, at least here in Europe, because they put Ethanol on it and very old cars don't like it.

Here is something to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-a...c_transmission

And let's not forget about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTZeP5f20PA

http://hudsonterraplane.com/tech/193...ndTechInfo.pdf

I've heard of-but never experienced-ethanol is sposed to dissolve certain types of gaskets. As far as REALLY awful cars, there aren't too many anymore-But, on the other hand, there aren't too many that stand away from the crowd as REALLY Great. In America, we have SO many rules & regulations that in practicality, virtually ALL cars are reasonably safe, don't pollute too much, get DECENT gas mileage, so on & so forth, but its also why they are all so depressingly ALIKE..

When I was talking about too big engines I was talking about the '60's.
Talking about stuff that's alike, today's "Cadillac" 's don't have any appeal...

Yeah....The last Caddy my family had/has is the one I have now, a '73 Fleetwood Brougham. There is really nothing special or noteworthy about it, except its SIZE & weight. It has the 2nd longest wheelbase of any car made in America, 133" Only the Caddy Fleetwood 75 limo & 9 passenger sedan had longer ones, at 149". I think its empty weight is a svelte 4999 LBS., & its overall length is 233". A Smart car fits comfortably in the length between the trailing edge of its rear door, & the end of its rear bumper. I think its motor is 472 cubic inches, or right at 7.8 or so liters. Cars in that era were very throttled back by emission controls, I think Old Huldy can only make something like 275 hp. But, what it LOVES to do is get on the Interstate-Our motorways in America-turn on the Cruise control, put it on 70 MPH, put the Climate control on 70 degrees, turn on a Seventies radio station, adjust the seat to your liking, drape your hand over the steering wheel, sit back & let the Big Dawg Eat up the miles... Omaha ? No Problem, Boss-We'll be there by suppertime... Might have to stop & fill the tank up a time or 2-But you'll need to stop & stretch your legs & Hit the Head by then anyway..

Don't worry. Drive the car for a month or so, and you'll get so buff that nobody will want to pick a fight with you. :P
Well, here's what happened. We Americans love to drive powerful cars. The 1960s was the the peak of performance, high compression engines, and no emissions testing. And once you have a powerful car, you never want to go back. But then, emission regulations came out, and all cars being carbureted, the manufacturers had no technology to keep up performance numbers (in the mid 60s, 1hp per cubic inch was very possible, so imagine ordinary cars with 300-400hp - something that wouldn't really happen again until the late 2000's), so cars got bogged down with emissions equipment, had to have very low compression, and had to be adjusted to run very lean, all meaning very little power per cubic inch. It actually made for very inefficient engines, because you still had a massive, HEAVY motor that could not make that much power, and yet it still had to carry its weight. Still, we wanted power. So the only option was to keep making big engines, even if they didn't come close to the old performance numbers (think 100-150 hp).

This kept up into the 70s and 80s, when imported cars started coming in, and back then, a lot of them were so small that they were not required to meet most emission regulations here (I'd imagine because our laws were written around large cars with big motors). So these cars like the VW Beetle and little Hondas, had an (unfair) advantage. They were much lighter and had smaller engines, but didn't need to meet most emissions stuff, and could keep up with the big cars that were just getting slower. American manufacturers changed things, made smaller cars to compete, and technology started getting better (computers, fuel injection). Now, we can get great power numbers from small engines.

Incidentally, my friend recently bought a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado. It has a 500 cubic inch motor. A massive 8.2 liters making a laughable 190hp (when it was new).
Firstly, most American cars were reliable. By the time WW2 was over, most car makers here stopped advertising reliability, because it was just assumed. That, and making trucks and tanks for the war effort probably increased their quality control. Certain cars might have rusted sooner, but today, most old cars are generally considered much more reliable than anything modern. But I suppose that comes down to there being less things to break = less probability of failure.

Second, you still need oil changes often. I don't care what car it is, if it has an internal combustion engine, the oil WILL get contaminated. That's perfectly normal. This modern idea that new cars don't need oil changes very often is a lie perpetuated by governing bodies like the EPA (excuse me while I put on my tinfoil hat). They make laws that say manufacturers are not allowed to require oil changes very often (and transmission oil changes are not allowed at all), because they think oil changes pollute the environment (they don't - used oil is a commodity that gets bought and sold and either used for fuel or recycled into new oil [yes! that's a thing that happens now!]). And if the manufacturer does not comply, they get fined. So all the car makers smile and tell you that you only need an oil change every 15,000 miles (24,000km), and when your engine takes a shit, they wonder why.

Fact is, oil gets dirty. Could be the best synthetic oil in the world. It's dirty at 3000 miles, I promise you this.

Third, ethanol is completely harmless. The myth that it dissolves parts of the fuel system comes from the 1970s, when during the fuel crisis, a new alternative alcohol based fuel was introduced - M85. It was methanol, which is a very harsh solvent, much harsher than ethanol or gasoline (which is itself a very harsh solvent). People today remember the ...85 alcohol fuel and instantly equate it with E85 (ethanol) and the ~10% ethanol they put in ordinary gas. In fact, that 10% is actually helpful as it will capture a small amount of water, if it gets in the gas (ever wonder what's in a bottle of Heet fuel additive?) Also, it lowers the detonation temperature of the gasoline, which increases its octane number, and is actually really helpful for carbureted engines, especially ones with higher compression ratios.

Ethanol isn't even that harsh, not even compared to gasoline. Even so, let's assume for a moment that ethanol might harm a pre-1990s gasket or hose somewhere in an old car's fuel system. That part is at LEAST 30 years old already, you should be changing it anyway. Rubber hoses and gaskets are considered perishable.

The only other thing is that an old carbureted car might not be adjusted to run well on 10% ethanol fuel. Maybe. If it hasn't been adjusted since before the 1990s, I guess. Or whenever ethanol blended fuel was standardized in your area. That's nothing a screwdriver can't fix.


--------------------------


Long post, sorry. Hope I've been helpful :)

I've never had issues with 10% ethanol gas in my CARS, even carbureated ones. Now my lawn tractor with it's Briggs 18hp I/C twin on the other hand it reeks havoc.

Now that I read this tread, I think the miata with it's 1.8 liter 150hp 4 cylinder is due for an oil change......

In Europe some producers are also saying that you don't need to change the oil, but it's about the oild from automatic geraboxes. Lifetime oil they say. Some say you still need to change it, other no. In Romania it's good to change oil because you know, it's Romania and you can't be sure of the qualty of products...
True, cars in the day where simpler. I want an classical preselector gerabox because it deosen't requiers vacumm or selenoids like other types of preselectors. I don't know if I'm able to start rolling a classical manual, but a classical preselector I think I can do very easy. I don't mind cars having some saftey features, but don't transform it into an space ship.
I think the import cars had also one other advantage: the adrees the public who wanted a small cheaper cars. Big powerful cars are good, but living in New York City, Boston or California will get you in nasty traffic; plus some people didn't had money for bigger cars. And American manufacturers quited for a time making small cars.

1976 "Cadillac". My 1st and only "Cadillac" ride. And 1st and only time that I've seen for real an 8 track cassette player working. And the only car that I feel as confortable as in a train... Europeanen cars are too small. In big cities and for short rides are nice, but for long rides if there are full it's nasty. And I'm not a tall guy. Darn, even in streetcars (trams in British English), trolleybuses and urban buses I have more space for my feet.

A lot of American cars 1980s and older were big and comfortable like caddies....all but the cheapest buyers tended to expect a big floaty car that they could comfortably take 5 hour drive for a weekend trip in.

You do get used to having a car with oomph. Part of the reason I don't like European cars (besides the generally drab styling of post WWII stuff) is most are small and under powered, and the ones that do have power are usually small too. Driving can be scary if you don't have power....try merging onto the highway in front of a semi with bad brakes in a gutless car that can't make highway speed in the distance an on ramp gives you to do so.... Small cars especially vintage ones tend to offer very little protection to occupants. .https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kRJdHkvIRYw
Add to that a lot of power and the illusion that a small light car is more nimble and drivers tend to do crazy things that get them in accidents.
Every centimeter of car between your seat and the car that hits you is that much more a buffer separating you from harm...
The full size American cars really did need the big engines to not be gigantic sluggs... putting the sedan and wagon engines in the smaller lighter 2 door cars is where one could argue the engines were excessive.

Some Europeanen cars are not underpowered. But big, only a few.
I can't remember how big is G.A.Z. M21 Volga on the inside (ride one on twice ocasions - same car). It's not very big, but not too small either. But for here is considered a big car. It wasn't a good acceleration car, but the engine had a good torque. Fuel consumption was not low.
But a 4, maybe 5 litre engine was too small in the late '60's?

What I hate the fact that they don't make cars at that is easy to make some custom stuff, for eg the brake pedal on the right (manual gearbox), light dip on the floor and so on.
Some cars today don't have any longer a spare tire.

That's another reason why Americans typically like large cars: comfort for hours. In most of Europe, the farthest place you'd want to drive is maybe an hour away. In America, everything is much more spread out. Many people routinely commute to work 1 hour, and an hour back. A weekend trip might be 6 hours or more, often with the family packed into the car. Being trapped in a little shitbox for 6 hours is no fun.

Love the crash test video. It's important to remember that old cars like that Cadillac are not very good by today's crash test standards, but that little Datsun it was up against was far, far worse by today's standards. It probably weighed about half the Caddy. Those little old cars that everyone praises for their fuel economy were deathtraps. There's a good reason that the smallest modern Honda still weighs about 4000lbs.
Yes, definitely. There will always be people that prefer a small car. Probably in 1970's America, that was an underserved market.

[QUOTE=MadMan;3216744]Don't worry. Drive the car for a month or so, and you'll get so buff that nobody will want to pick a fight with you. :P

In the time I owned my International pickup I mostly drove it just 2-3 times a week; now, I'm a bean-pole. After a few months I noticed: for the first and only time in my life, I actually had muscles in my arms! My wife was quite impressed. They went away pretty quickly after I sold the truck. The other vehicles I have with manual steering really don't take that much muscle, even at low speeds.

Ethanol: I've had issues with older rubber fuel hose and with some rubber components in a 90's-era Holley 4 barrel. Easy enough to remedy. Certainly if you didn't drive the car much and the gas had to sit for months, you're asking for trouble. I drive mine too much for that to be a problem. We can get ethanol-free gas fairly easily around home, but it's expensive. I tried a tank in my old Ford and saw no difference at all: same power, same mileage, it started no better or worse. Invaluable for a lawn mower, though.

Thank you for patiance with me. I sometimes very curios and insist on a question.
Doese worm and snail steering system helps a driver? In Romanian worm and snail is called "direcţie cu melc" ("steering with snail").

TC3007- Oh, no. Don't worry about it. Trust me, I think you've likely come to the Right Place to ask questions about American cars. While I don't think anyone here buys or sells cars for a living, I also am pretty sure we have quite a few "Petrolheads" in our midst who are only too happy to share our experiences w/you..

Liters displacement really came in around the time fuel injection took over in the 80s.

Most full size American cars of the 60s were underpowered if displacement was under 250CID most of the inline 6 ecconomy engines I've heard of were in the 250s to low 300s...(granted you probably weren't going to be able to pass people, and on a wagon or truck or van loaded it might become underpowered). I've heard that many of the inline slant 6 engines were longer lived than most of the V8s available. Some of the midsize and compacts could easily get away with offering even smaller engines.

This might sound a bit obnoxious but the Studebaker Lark Compact while available with small 6 cylinder engines could also fit and be ordered with rather large V8s...I hear it was a somewhat popular drag racing setup back in the day...heck there is even someone in my area that built one up.and drives it in the summer.

300 cubic inches... that's almost 5 liters (5,000 cubic centimeters). It was underpowered?

My passion are now the British cars, but an old Cady woulnd't be bad.
I'm glad that I got that 1921 auto book.

US cars had big engines, because they were driven on Interstate and rural highways, longer distances, and were so large and heavy. And speed limits then were anywhere from 60-75 MPH. Remember, from Johnson City, Tennessee to Memphis, Tennessee is bigger than Romania. It's in excess of 600 miles East to West.

Even shorter than Bucharest - Tessaloniki (Greece), which is under 500 miles. Gush, for such long distance I would ride only a big car or the train.

That's what people-And foreigners, often-Never seem to realize- or understand-America is a BIG damn place. Tennessee, my state, if you folded it over at the northeastern tip, Memphis would be somewhere out in the Atlantic ocean.. And Tennessee really isn't all THAT big..I left home one morning to see a gal graduate from RN-nursing school-it was about 6.30 in the morning, & we drove to Memphis... We got there about 2.30-3PM...10, 11 hours, & we never left Tennessee !

Back when I was honestly employed (no remarks!) our Korean colleagues wanted to do a signal survey of the new HDTV broadcasts in cities across the US. They announced they were planning to spend a week or less. I couldn't get them to understand the impracticality until I sent them a map of the continental US with a map of South Korea to the same scale superimposed. The project quickly condensed to a couple of cities.

I suggest that any one contemplating a cross-US trip make such a map with their own country superimposed to scale over the US map to let the full import sink in.

Similarly, one of our Korean colleagues stationed in Illinois decided to vacation by driving his family across country in a rented motor home - they got as far as Utah, turned in the RV and flew back.

This is not meant to discourage anyone, just to encourage planning realistically.

I mean, you're asking for trouble, anyway, if you do that. Interesting, though. Still, I'm certain that any new parts are ethanol friendly by now.
Well in the 60s, most of the straight six's you had were basically pre-WW2 designs with minor updates. They were built like brick shithouses. People like to say the old Chevy stovetop was mechanically unable to over-rev.

Then Chrysler came out with the slant six, which was a thoroughly modern engine. Nascar decided to have a 6 cylinder economy car race. Ford and Chevy just raced some off-the-rack 6 cylinders, which were those ancient designs. Chrysler actually had their racing department work on the slant six for the race. 7 Dodges/Plymouths were in the race. They beat the pants off of Chevy and Ford, taking the first 7 places by a long shot. The race was so boring, they decided to never do it again.

Also, a friend of mine who used to buy and sell a lot of cars back in the day told me a story once about a Chrysler slant six. He said the car was going to the junk yard, so he decided to blow the engine just for fun. He said it took a good 10 minutes of over-revving it to do it in. That's insane!
Well consider that most of those straight six motors were very old design, and also because they were the 'cheap' engine option, they usually only had a small single barrel carburetor. I'm sure you could get better performance out of a motor like that now, either with a better carb or fuel injection.

There is a book I would HIGHLY recommend to anyone who is even marginally interested in cars in reading-"Truck", by a chap named John Jerome. It is the story of the trials & tribulations of a guy who buys & semi-restores a 1949 Dodge half ton pickup. He basically just gets it to use on his farm in New Hampshire, not for making a show truck out of. It was written in the early Seventies, it has some "New Age"post hippie-era jibberish, but still is a pretty good read. Jerome is/was a native Texan, also was an editor for one of the national car magazines, so he speaks w/quite a bit of authority. A small book, it doesn't take long to read, & its one of those books that kinda makes you feel good after you read it. I'm sure its LONG outta print, but it might be available at some online source, like EVERYTHING else is...

But why in the early '60's they didn't designed a engine that would be a little more modern and offer a liitle more power at let's say 50 cubic inches less then the models of engines that where still existing.
On a YouTube video some one noticed that the Americans where among the 1st to put fuel injection on cars (Germans had that too), but other went ahead of the Americans.
For long distance I like the trains. I would like to be direct trains from Bucharest to Paris and Berlin (from Paris I can go to London) with sleeping cars and individual shower room (there are this kind of sleeping cars), but no chance... well, there are direct trains from Viena to Berlin (you can go with train from Bucharest to Viena), but to Paris no. Probably I will have to step on my princeples and get into a plane.
Getting back to automobiles, well, some of them still have theyr fans outside U.S.A. or the Americas. Same as British cars, through all there in Europe there is mania with German cars (except with some countries), some Italian cars and maybe some French cars. There where when "F.I.A.T." (Italy) licesend car production to U.S.S.R., Poland, Austria, Spain...

Fuel injection in the 50s and 60's was expensive, complicated and unreliable...the only ones with the patience and money to want to maintain it were drag racers and others involved in motor sports....of the few production cars optioned with it back then many were converted to carburetors as soon as the injection failed.

As mentioned above Chrysler did bother to make a more modern engine fairly early.... Ignoring the Chevy corvair(and GM senior compacts), Studebaker Lark, Nash 600 and Metropolitan, and Ford Falcon and Crosley brand cars (which in the 50s went under just like American Bantam did a decade earlier) American auto makers were not concerned with making smalll efficient cars till the 70s. The concerns were price (the main reason Pre-WWII engines were made for so long), features and comfort.

But the modern engines where a little bit more economic?
I've heard that the focus mainly on price was something that affected in a bad way the American industry.

I've seen that caddy vs. datsun crash test before... the view from inside the datsun where the caddy's front end dives is really striking. Whenever traffic comes to a stop on the DC beltway I'm looking behind me for a car nose diving... I've seen it a few times, thankfully I haven't been clobbered.

-J

Modern engines cost much more. When you wanted power you just
made them bigger & poured more gas in the old days!
Keep in mind Americans loved straight line preformance. We didnt care
about going fast around corners. Most cars were built so you could go
fast WITHOUT much feel of the road. A "cloud like ride" or "sitting on your
sofa".
Motors were for the most part very reliable. The average new car buyer
kept it 4 yrs, apx 80K miles. The new owners often ran them up to
150-200 K miles. By then the car was eaten by rust but the drive line
was still good. New car reliability is more to do with better small parts IMHO.
We used to constantly change hoses, belts, plugs, starters, etc. It never
ended BUT was easy to do & cheap. Most the time you could get home
then deal with it......

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

To be onest, I like cars that can be easily repaired/fixed. Too much electronics aren't good. After all it's car, not a space ship.

@ compu85 : what crash?

There's also a video where a 1959-60 model 4 door Chevy gets smacked in the front by a more modern car. It made me SICK not only because the crash test dummies got a real workout-bouncing around all over the car, but because the Shivverlay looked to initially be in really good shape... Then when the impact happened, you saw all the RUST comin' out from everywhere.. The body, IIRC, deformed pretty badly too, not necessarily on account of the rust. We've all heard those older cars were built tougher & could "Take It".. Well the Chevy pretty much folded up like a Cheap Suit.. But, in '57, GM scrapped their decades old double channel frame design, that had 2 side members going from the front of the car to the tail end, in favor of a centrally mounted frame that provided little or no protection in collision, its basic duty was to allow designers to lower the overall height of the car...Some GM divisions didn't want to use the design, since it was felt it wasn't safe, & indeed in 1965 GM went back to on their "Big" cars to the double channel frame design that they'd used before..

Actually, the early 60s were a time when engines were very powerful and (reasonably) efficient. Higher compression ratios were common, and new(ish) technologies were being employed. Like hydraulic valve lifters, hemispherical combustion chamber (Hemi!), overhead valves, small blocks (making big displacement motors physically smaller), etc. But then catalytic converters became mandatory and kind of ruined the power (and efficiency) numbers of engines in the 60s.
Well focus on the bottom line sometimes does make problems. But normally competition drives companies to find new ways to make things simpler, and therefore cheaper.

As for efficiency, gas was cheap back in the day. Even if it wasn't quite as cheap as you might imagine, people didn't care, they just kept filling up. The economy must have been better back then. To be fair, gas is still pretty cheap in America compared to... literally most other countries in the world. It's probably about $3.00 per gallon (~4L) where I'm at, right now. And people complain about the price. But then you go to Europe and it's probably two or three times that. So fuel economy really was not a pressing issue. Hell, it still isn't, really, but people here like to imagine that it is.
I've seen that video. I think the obvious frame rust played a major part in that, but also, most cars back then were not as tank-like as people see in their rose-tinted hindsight goggles. Those cars were big on the outside, but sort of hollow on the inside. Modern cars are much more densely packed.

1st emission regulation where introduced in California in 1966.
Yes, gas was cheap back then and probably no one thought that they shoul reduce cosumption of fuel.
There where day when in Romania with a minimal wage you could but around 400-480 U.S. gallons of fuel! But cars where very expensive then. Dern, even with most streets in not very good shape you could go from one end of Bucharest to the other in no more then 30-40 minutes. And since there wheren't so many cars, fuel economy was grater. In the early '70's gas was becoming more costly, but it wasn't so expensive up untill 1977-1979. Most cars around here could do 16-24 m.p.g. back in the day. And we had (no very big) busses with V8 gas engines (and trucks too!).
In Romania price for gas is around 3.80-4 U.S. Dollars per U.S. gallon. In U.S. there are areas where I heard there is even around 4.50 U.S.D. per U.S. gallon, but you know, in U.S.A. 800-1000 dollars is a small wage, here the same sallary is big.

Your in Ill where thay have that dopey law that prevents sale of gas not refined in Ill driving up the price...Here regular was $2.33 last I checked.

Yea , he's getting hosed , here in eastern Ma. where the gas is considered pricey compared to the national average we are just a bit below $2.50 .

In Bucharest, before we got to much cars (there are too many for the infrastructure... in the city there it should be no more then half a milion motor vehicles, but they are arleady one million) you could find old small gas stations that are gone now. The gas probably wasn't of the best qualty, but old cars had the advantage of not beeing squeamish on low qualty fuel.
Romanian greasing oil was bad... if you did 4,000 miles with it was good.
But why in U.S.A. automatic gearboxes gained so much power? In Europe they still aren't common... more expensive and there is still the myth that a car with automatic transmisions swallows up more fuel (probably the ones with hydraulic transmision are do, but in today's the difference of compsumtion isn't so big). And there are some idiotic sayings about automatic gearboxes (even about the ones that offer manual control too). The bad thing is that in Romania I don't know if some one can make a good reapair at automatic gearboxes... not even old style ones, let alone modern ones. I wonder how they would deal with a preselector gerabox (classic command, not electropneumatic command).

Even people here say the same things and have the same preconceptions about automatic gearboxes. The thing is, we Americans really do enjoy our creature comforts. If we spend a little more on gas and don't have to be bothered with shifting, most of us will do it. It also goes back to America being a BIG ol' country, and lots of us are in our cars for long periods of time. So anything that'll make that easier for us, we'll do.

I'm sure I've said this before, but all those preconceived notions about automatics are from a long time ago. Just in the same way that people today will tell you not to put a car battery on a cold concrete floor - something that you shouldn't have done with metal-cased batteries from 100 years ago - it's an old wive's tale now. Actually most automatics - even hydraulic ones - generally get almost the same gas mileage as a manual in the same car. And an automatic will usually not require service before the same car with a manual needs a clutch.

Also, most of the early automatics in American cars were pretty reliable. Think Powerglide (they still make them today for drag racers!), Hydramatic, Torqueflite, and Ford's C6. The last three were being put in new cars and trucks from the 60s ALL the way up until the 2000s. So reliability was pretty much always there for us, that kind of eliminates one of the major reasons someone would pick a manual instead.

But what was the ideea with the batteries?
I thought in U.S.A. those preconceptions where gone since automatic becamed dominant in the '60's. It's true that an automatic gearbox is more complicated then a manual one (or even an pure mechanical preselector) so the fear of the costs is justified.
Buses used for public transportation by S.T.B. (former R.A.T.B.) - the service transport owned by the Municipality are all automatic gearboxed. Last manual gerabox buses from Bucharest went out of service in 2007-2008... and unfourtnley 99,9% went scraped in stad of servin other cities :(
Oh, another myth is that vehicles with automatic gearboxes are slow... it was true for the old ones. But the "D.A.F." SB220 * buses introduced in 1994 (all pull over, none of those beauties is in a good shape :( ) where pretty faster and they had automatic gearboxes. And that was a quarter of century ago. The bus drivers where doing races on Kiseleff Road (Avenue) in the night when went to the garage. Oh, and in pure conditions those gearboxes lasted sometimes even a milion kilometers!!!
In U.S.A. you can get driving licence for automatic gearbox and drive what you like. In Romania (and not only) if you're getting a lincence for automatic gearboxes you're stick to automatic, you don't have the legal right to drive manual gearboxes. Also in Romania there is no option for getting driving licence for only automatic gerabox if you want to drive a truck (I don't about buses).

* in fact "D.A.F." made only the chassie, the axle and the steering. The engines where made by "M.A.N." (Germany), the gearbox by "Voith" (Germany), the body was made in Spain or Greece and the seats in... Romania.