All right, if you want to get into Edmund's.......they measured a Verano Turbo at 61.8 db at 70 MPH cruise.....pretty close. And an A8 doesn't cost 25-30K.

 

And if you go by Edmund's, the Avalon at 70mph is quieter than the LS460 from 2007.

 

And what makes Cadillac CT6 customers so special that they won't tolerate electronic shifters, but all of their German competition use them, and have for years? There are 2 potential reasons: their customers are old and rigid; or there is something about the electronic application that makes it difficult to adapt to all of the wide ranging engine choices that the CT6 offers.

Correct. It costs more $$ for the production line to have to utilize multiple AT's for a single vehicle.

 

But not quieter than an LS460 for 2011. That came in at 58dB. Remember the LS460 had a wind noise issue early in its life.

http://www.edmunds.com/lexus/ls-460/...ad-test-specs/



Again, like Mike said you should drive the two and draw your own conclusions. I have to agree with him, that no Avalon I've driven (and I've driven a couple) is as quiet and refined as my LS.

Just to be clear, the CT6 also has an electronic shifter, its just a traditional feeling setup. ALL shifters nowadays are electronic...there is no mechanical linkage between the shifter and the transmission.

The reason the CT6 does not have a style shifter as the XT5 does is not because they need to save cost in the XT5, I don't buy that a joystick style shifter is less expensive than a traditional style shifter, its about demographics. The CT6 is aimed at an older demographic. Its the same reason Lexus uses the remote touch mouse in some models, and the trackpad in other models...trackpad models are models aimed at younger buyers.

 

ok guys we're all over the map here.

i see the term 'e-shifter' thrown around all over here... i don't even know what the term here is trying to specify. i think ALL shifters today are just an input device connected to an electronic control system for the actual gears, so in that sense aren't they all 'e-shifters'? sure there's levers (which seem 'traditional' which i guess they are in operation, but not implementation) vs. ones that just go forward/backward (bmw? my jeep, etc.) rotary dials, and buttons. as for what's 'mechanical', i guess unless there's no moving parts in the controls, like a touch screen or touch 'button', then they're all mechanical, but it's a pretty irrelevant distinction.

as for quiet and the avalon, having been in a new one recently, it didn't seem that quiet to me, with noticeable tire / road noise.

 

I was a little shocked that Buick is doing this. But GM has higher MSRPs than a comparable Toyota Avalon but the Buick rebates and incentives are much higher. The MSRPs get close to Lexus but the Buick will do a 15-20 percent incentive. It seems to work for them.

 

This would be correct. The new LaCrosse system is smaller, has less parts. Howwever, I would bet that there are some vehicles out there that might still have a direct mechanical linkage.

 

It's too bad all the car manufacturers and the SAE could not come up with a well designed system for testing and publishing how quiet a car is. We have a system for tow ratings, MPG and horsepower ratings. It would benefit us all.

 

This review was a far superior lay out than previous ones. Much more appropriate length. Would love to see you move to this style.

 

i agree... like this format better.

 

I think my main gripe with a lot of these new style shifters is that there are no mechanical detents, no mechanical feel to tell if you actually engaged a gear. Since the lever doesn't move back/forth through a mechanical gate anymore, you have to rely on the little indicator on the dash that the car actually shifted from drive to park. I know on BMW and Mercedes, if you just give a quick tap to the "Park" button, a lot of times it won't engage park and still leave you in drive or reverse. You take your foot off the brake and the car rolls, giving you a good scare. Or in the case of really bad designs like the Jeep Grand Cherokee, you can get out of the car thinking you are in park and have the car run over you and kill you.

Really it boils down to this being a safety thing IMO. If the lever on the console moves back/forth, you can feel the mechanical action, you can quickly glance down or just by feel know the lever is all the way at the top just by feel and that the car is in park. Same thing with the old school column shift on an Escalade vs that horrible stubby stalk on a Mercedes SUV, you know you're in park just from the feel of the lever. And I know some people hate the rotary shift ****, but I've noticed that they do have a mechanical "click" to them to let you know you changed gears. Turn the **** all the way to the left to where it won't turn anymore, you know the car is in park without having to look down at the display. Turn it all the way to the right, bam you're in drive.

 

People will just get used to the new style of shifters.

 

Or they'll get run over and killed by their new car that they aren't familiar with.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz...sh-age-27.html

Then they'll issue a recall on the bad design once somebody is killed, for something that didn't need to be changed in the first place. Notice that on the new 2016-2017 Grand Cherokee they went back to a traditional shift mechanism with actual detents on the lever. Nobody needed to die because the Jeep designers decided to make a gimmick out of changing gears to make the car seem more "futuristic" or whatever their idea was behind that bad design.

The other thing is YOU might be familiar with how the shifter works in your car. People in general are dumb(no disrespect to Mr Yelchin), the shift mechanism has been the same for DECADES. Give somebody that crazy Buick joystick or that bad design in the Grand Cherokee as a rental car, watch them bump into something because the car rolled the wrong way thinking they were in drive while instead were in reverse, were still in drive instead of park and took their foot off the brake, etc. Same thing if somebody has to move your car in the driveway or something and they flub it up.

 

Yeah as someone who owned a Grand Cherokee with the shifter in question, it's something I never got used to and I can totally understand how someone would get out of the car and leave it in an unintended gear.

I agree with Aaron, a lot of these don't have an intuitive feel and it's especially an issue when someone doesn't drive just that one vehicle all the time. For example, the Jeep was my wife's primary vehicle, I had more issues with the shifter than she did.

 

OK then, for the reviews that are less than full-length, I'll do them more along this format.

I've got a number of review-requests, though, for the Lincoln Continental, so that one will probably be full-length....or close to it.