When some workmates and I were in the US we had a CVT Altima (may have been the Maxima but anyways).

We all hated it.

When you put your foot down to joint highway/interstate traffic it was absolutely gutless, the gearbox just made the engine spin without giving us any go. It made a lot of noise when it did this so we figured the gas pedal was powering some speakers to give an impression of power.

Awful, awful thing to dive. Comfy though.

to be fair, merican cars are designed to drive to the interstate on a grid system, then sit there on cruise at 55 or whatever. they don’t need (or want) a dynamic box. It’s the same here in Oz; a massive V8 plugged into a cruismatic bland-o-tron box.

CVT – Continuously Variable Transmission?

Like TonyG2003 suggests, the new many-geared automatics like the MB or BMW ones make CVT a bit old-hat. The 8-speed auto transmission on a modern BMW gives almost imperceptible changes.

Have you considered an electric car for its smoothness?

Honda Jazz do a CVT

I don’t think that’s right – I think they realised that most of their drivers only ever use third so just took out the rest of the gearbox.

Honda Jazz do a CVT

My parents had a Jazz that I think had the CVT box. It remains the most hateful car I have ever driven and that was solely to do with the gearbox, the rest of the car was fine.

As above CVT has been around for years, whilst I freely admit I haven’t driven one recently back 25 years ago they felt like being on a milk float, bland bland. I’m sure theyve improved reliability but back then the CVT had very poor reputation. We have two 5 speed auto cars which work really well, most of the time/miles you do in a car is in a single “top” gear, simple.