Hey Scotty,
I recently bought a 2020 Acura MDX brand new for $33k. I just realized that it has the 9 speed transmission that is on Chrysler vehicles. What do you think about the transmission overall? I was expecting Acura to make quality choices on their high end vehicles.
It's the ZF9 transmission. ZF arguably makes some of the best transmissions on the market. However, the ZF9 has been problematic and still to this day has not seen all of its bugs sorted out. Acura did not cheap out on using the ZF unit...it is a very expensive transmission. It just isn't as good as ZF's other offerings.
From my experience with FCA (both for exclusive ZF products and FPT developed transmissions - such as the ZF 9 speed developed specifically to be used in FCA’s higher-performance line) Just because they charge you a lot for it doesn’t mean they didn’t cheap out.
It was used in the $25k FIAT 500X, if they’d sell them without marking them up as much as they do,
it would be a $2k-$2.5k transmission - the average for any automatic.
Honda transmissions were never the best, but recently the new ones have been probably the worst.
The 9HP48, reliability wise, managed to be probably the worst transmission put on a modern car.
There are documented instances of total transmission failures as early as 30k miles, and I know many people who complain these randomly shift into Neutral.
We had these in Europe for almost a decade and they generally don’t seem to consistently last over 90k miles.
basically that’s the tranny used in the FIAT 500X, Crysler 200, RangeRover Evoke and other unreliable cars…
So yeah… it is that bad…
modern transmissions between the Camry 6/8 speed, VW DSG, Corolla CVT are definitely going downhill…
The only new recently released automatic that’s actually decent and can consistently last over 200k miles is the Mazda SkyDrive 6 speed (not the AISIN one - the AISIN tranny is the same one from early 2000s Volvos that was considered their weak point)
