The 8 Speed in the 24 shifts smoothly. I have no complaints. It is not a high performance transmission that bangs the gears,
I am not at all satisfied with the 8-speed transmission because it downshifts shifts so slowly in traffic. With 290 HP, there is a huge lag to get to the power and it's not turbo lag. You cannot smoothly use all the power this car has (and it's a lot when you do let it all out).
It's just a crummy transmission tuning and the wrong spread of gear ratios. Poor job, Ford.
There is a parallel, and that is in the Edge ST. When it came out it had the 8-speed, and the magazines who road tested it said that it was so slow to downshift that you couldn't even use all the power. The Ford engineers at the launch said their customers didn't want rough up shifts, agreed, but that they would work on a better transmission and shifting. So a few years later they brought out the 7-speed and it shifts faster and up and down. And shifts are managed electronically so they are always smooth no matter how fast they shift. And there are better driving modes, so Sport shifts faster and holds RPM longer than Regular.
Which brings me to the driving modes in the Corsair - Excite is worthless because while it may shift a bit faster it holds revs bizarrely and you cannot drive around in Excite with that many revs. Very strange, a quick and poor job.
And BTW, the 7-speed is already used in this same platform in the European Focus ST. Which also BTW uses the same exact 2.3.
This comes down to Ford engineering just using what is already on the shelf. And not only is there a better transmisison in the 7-speed (whcih has been very well received), the ST also has better sport mode programming, adjustable shocks, and larger brakes. These woud be tuned for a smoother Corsair ride and braking of course, not as hard edged as the ST, but also would make for a truly Excite-ing and sporting Corsair which is that the 2.3 was supossed to be (as oppossed to the 2.0).
And, BTW, guess what the other platform mate to our Corsair, the new 2025 Maverick sport model "Lobo" uses: the 7-speed and the Focus ST brakes.
All this is a moot point because the next Corsair, if there is to be one, will be fully electric - which means no transmission issues, a huge jump in HP, and instantly available. What is needed then is well-written software driving modes for sport, one-foot, regular, economy, reduced traction, etc. This could unfortunately just be yet another "Fancy Escape" again where the only real diff is styling and cooled seats... assuming that it is built on the upcoming new and cheap shared platform that is a year or two off. I hope that instead it would be built on the successor to the platform used for the Mach-E. That already has everything we want once they get to the next-gen batteries that it desparately needs and the systems to support that.
