The Japanese-made trucks have gained a cultlike following, attracting small-business owners seeking affordable alternatives to traditional pickup trucks.
I would love a Kei truck, but I don’t live in a state where you can legally have one. That said I really think that if a Japanese manufacturer brought a barebones electric Kei to the American market they could make a killing because “people who want a truck but not a massive truck” is a totally unserved market segment.
Ford and Hyundai have tried to bring service to that market with the Maverick and Santa Cruz, respectively. My folks have one and love it, but I’ve found most people still complain because they “don’t need that big if a truck” but then you mention towing/hauling capacity and they say “well why can’t it just tow something small like an F150 does? I’m not trying to get a dually but if I didn’t want to do X then I’d just get a car!” I suspect most people’s “truck needs” would be accommodated but fomo and marketing leads buyers astray even when they already know what they want. Or they’re fickle and just need something to complain about.
What do you find people want to tow? I’m often at a loss when people bring this up because I’ve never once had a moment in my life where I was disappointed by the lack of towing capacity of my small car
Note that Americans basically all drive automatic transmissions, those have a thing called a torque converter. Unless that part is actively cooled it’s going to overheat when asked to do high-torque stuff over prolonged durations and as that active cooling needs space and weight it generally only comes with truck-sized vehicles.
In short: The reason Americans don’t haul caravans and horses and boats with cars is because they can’t drive stick.
Every automatic transmission car sold since the 1970’s and probably earlier has had a transmission cooler, right there alongside or in front of the radiator.
Also all of them have locking torque converters so there is no energy loss at constant speed.
Also also, unless going upward at an incline. Most of the power requirements come from aerodynamic drag, not rolling friction of the trailer.
You can’t lock the converter when accelerating because that’s not a constant speed you’ll stall the motor under the torque load, and to accelerate you need to overcome momentum. Neither drag nor rolling friction are anywhere close to high torque.
And I have no idea what the previous poster meant with a transmission cooler, I guess it’s a different thing because a torque converter very much is not a transmission, if you want to compare it to anything then to a clutch. In any case I’ve got that explanation from an actual American actual car mechanic and random lemmings aren’t going to change my mind especially while making no mechanical sense.
Wow. The remaining 7,950,999,999 people on this planet now have something to be thankful for, because none of them are as wrong as you.
You clearly did not actually understand what your mechanic told you.
A transmission cooler is exactly what it sounds like. It is built exactly like a radiator and works the same way. It is mounted in front of or next to the radiator for the engine. On a lot of newer cars it is actually part of the main radiator. Transmission fluid flows through it and excess heat is dumped into the air. On many vehicles it’s also served by the radiator fan, i.e. for situations where the vehicle is not getting airflow because it’s not moving.
The torque converter is part of your automatic transmission literally operates by moving the transmission fluid. There is no separation between the transmission fluid used in the torque converter and the rest of the transmission where the hydraulic valves use it to actuate the clutch bands, etc. to shift gears. The same bath of transmission fluid is circulated through the torque converter, the rest of the transmission, and the transmission cooler.
This is not a truck thing. Even my dinkum Saturn SL I had when I was a teenager that was so pathetic it was literally made of plastic and did not crack 100 horsepower had a transmission cooler – as designed from the factory. The vast majority of passenger vehicles made in the last half century or more with automatic transmissions have transmission coolers built in. It has nothing to do with towing, either.
Your torque converter absolutely can be locked under acceleration and in fact, nearly all vehicles equipped with a locking torque converter do so as part of their normal shifting pattern when moving up through their gears. This is observable from the driver’s seat if you know what’s happening. The locking and unlocking of the torque converter feels like an “extra gear” in between the gears. Some Japanese cars from the 80’s have a “TC Locked” light on a dash that illuminates when the converter is locked and you can watch this happen in real time. The usual pattern is 1st gear, shift to 2nd gear, lock converter, unlock converter and shift to 3rd, lock converter, unlock converter and shift to 4th, etc. A traditional automatic transmission only has 4 gear ratios, but it will feel like it has seven. Guess why.
Think about it real hard for a minute. A locked torque converter is the same, mechanically, as a fully engaged clutch. If you could not lock the torque converter during acceleration, by the same logic you would not be able to fully release the clutch pedal during acceleration on a manual transmission car, either. It is glaringly obvious that this is not the case.
I am not a “random lemming.” I have four decades of actual real world mechanical experience and have disassembled and rebuilt more transmissions, engines, and vehicles in general than you have probably sat in throughout your entire life.
I would love a Kei truck, but I don’t live in a state where you can legally have one. That said I really think that if a Japanese manufacturer brought a barebones electric Kei to the American market they could make a killing because “people who want a truck but not a massive truck” is a totally unserved market segment.
Ford and Hyundai have tried to bring service to that market with the Maverick and Santa Cruz, respectively. My folks have one and love it, but I’ve found most people still complain because they “don’t need that big if a truck” but then you mention towing/hauling capacity and they say “well why can’t it just tow something small like an F150 does? I’m not trying to get a dually but if I didn’t want to do X then I’d just get a car!” I suspect most people’s “truck needs” would be accommodated but fomo and marketing leads buyers astray even when they already know what they want. Or they’re fickle and just need something to complain about.
What do you find people want to tow? I’m often at a loss when people bring this up because I’ve never once had a moment in my life where I was disappointed by the lack of towing capacity of my small car
Note that Americans basically all drive automatic transmissions, those have a thing called a torque converter. Unless that part is actively cooled it’s going to overheat when asked to do high-torque stuff over prolonged durations and as that active cooling needs space and weight it generally only comes with truck-sized vehicles.
In short: The reason Americans don’t haul caravans and horses and boats with cars is because they can’t drive stick.
?
Every automatic transmission car sold since the 1970’s and probably earlier has had a transmission cooler, right there alongside or in front of the radiator.
Also all of them have locking torque converters so there is no energy loss at constant speed. Also also, unless going upward at an incline. Most of the power requirements come from aerodynamic drag, not rolling friction of the trailer.
You can’t lock the converter when accelerating because
that’s not a constant speedyou’ll stall the motor under the torque load, and to accelerate you need to overcome momentum. Neither drag nor rolling friction are anywhere close to high torque.And I have no idea what the previous poster meant with a transmission cooler, I guess it’s a different thing because a torque converter very much is not a transmission, if you want to compare it to anything then to a clutch. In any case I’ve got that explanation from an actual American actual car mechanic and random lemmings aren’t going to change my mind especially while making no mechanical sense.
Wow. The remaining 7,950,999,999 people on this planet now have something to be thankful for, because none of them are as wrong as you.
You clearly did not actually understand what your mechanic told you.
A transmission cooler is exactly what it sounds like. It is built exactly like a radiator and works the same way. It is mounted in front of or next to the radiator for the engine. On a lot of newer cars it is actually part of the main radiator. Transmission fluid flows through it and excess heat is dumped into the air. On many vehicles it’s also served by the radiator fan, i.e. for situations where the vehicle is not getting airflow because it’s not moving.
The torque converter is part of your automatic transmission literally operates by moving the transmission fluid. There is no separation between the transmission fluid used in the torque converter and the rest of the transmission where the hydraulic valves use it to actuate the clutch bands, etc. to shift gears. The same bath of transmission fluid is circulated through the torque converter, the rest of the transmission, and the transmission cooler.
This is not a truck thing. Even my dinkum Saturn SL I had when I was a teenager that was so pathetic it was literally made of plastic and did not crack 100 horsepower had a transmission cooler – as designed from the factory. The vast majority of passenger vehicles made in the last half century or more with automatic transmissions have transmission coolers built in. It has nothing to do with towing, either.
Your torque converter absolutely can be locked under acceleration and in fact, nearly all vehicles equipped with a locking torque converter do so as part of their normal shifting pattern when moving up through their gears. This is observable from the driver’s seat if you know what’s happening. The locking and unlocking of the torque converter feels like an “extra gear” in between the gears. Some Japanese cars from the 80’s have a “TC Locked” light on a dash that illuminates when the converter is locked and you can watch this happen in real time. The usual pattern is 1st gear, shift to 2nd gear, lock converter, unlock converter and shift to 3rd, lock converter, unlock converter and shift to 4th, etc. A traditional automatic transmission only has 4 gear ratios, but it will feel like it has seven. Guess why.
Think about it real hard for a minute. A locked torque converter is the same, mechanically, as a fully engaged clutch. If you could not lock the torque converter during acceleration, by the same logic you would not be able to fully release the clutch pedal during acceleration on a manual transmission car, either. It is glaringly obvious that this is not the case.
I am not a “random lemming.” I have four decades of actual real world mechanical experience and have disassembled and rebuilt more transmissions, engines, and vehicles in general than you have probably sat in throughout your entire life.
Which stalls the motor under high torque load.