F that 7th is my highway gear. :icon17:

Small correction. Both 6th and 7th gears in the 7AT are both overdrives. Done for improved gas mileage. But I don't see any improvement from the VQ35 5AT, at all. :shakes head:

It's actually a much-improved transmission over the 5AT, there's some technical whitepapers out there from Jatco (the mfg of both). Mostly it's about improvements to the shifting speed/firmness, the downshift rev matching, and the full lockup stuff. For a fluid-drive true auto, it's really one of the best units out there. It's almost good enough to be a poor man's DCT/PDK type thing (which is what I used it for), but obviously a real DCT would be better.

6 and 7 are definitely cruising overdrive. Even 5th doesn't have a lot of umph, and I'd call it an "overdrive" too at the 7AT's rear end ratio, although if you plan to be full in the throttle past ~120mph you'll need to accelerate in 5th as well.

In 5th it will red line the 155 mph before you hit 7500 rpm on the dyno.
2800 rpm @ 100 kms with the 4.08s
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I agree... but im not seeing the improved mileage... period. So they didnt achieve that. extra gears didnt help.

Does anyone know why they didn't make the ratios longer? Wouldn't you ideally shift into 7th around 60 or 65, that way your rpms would be under 2k at 75, thus getting even better gas mileage?

I don't get the bolded part, I mean you can shift into 7th at 42MPH.

I agree, especially when you have 7 gears... It's a joke... It should be so
Slow that it's barely above idle, just so the engine doesn't sputter and die, lol


I REALLY wish our cars had a little ball, or switch behind the gas pedal, so just in case you were in tiptronic and you needed to floor it, it would automatically shift ALL the way to the lowest gear possible. Maybe put that as a feature in place of the SRM button on the sport package? (Just off hand, BMW's, my Maxima, and the Porsche's I have driven have it)

Sorry. I meant make 65mph the earliest shift point for 7th, instead of the 42mph. Surely they know highway speeds are 70+, so it would be logical to have the cruising gear to only be accessed once you hit 65, thus allowing for the lowest rpms at highway speeds.

Yep, sorry, I misunderstood the logic when I first read it :tiphat: