New Venture T-350

Chrysler's five-speed manual transaxle — the gearbox of the Neon, and of the Stratus, Breeze, Avenger, Sebring and PT Cruiser built around it. Chrysler also calls it the A-578.

⚑ It is not the NV3500, and the two share a maker and nothing else. New Venture Gear built a longitudinal five-speed for the S-10, the Sierra and the Dakota under that number; this one drives the front wheels and has a differential inside it. A listing offering one for the other is offering a gearbox that cannot be fitted.

It has a reputation it earned — cheap, smooth and hard to kill, on a single spider-gear set and an open differential. The T355 in the Caliber and the Compass is derived from it and is a later, separate unit.

The clutch is hydraulic and modular, driven through the same flexible plate the automatic's torque converter uses — so a clutch complaint on one of these is very often the hydraulics rather than the disc, and the master and slave are the first things to test.

It takes about two litres and it takes Mopar's own fluid. A gear oil makes it notchy when cold and hard into second, which is the same symptom this catalogue has now recorded on nine gearboxes across nine marques, and it is never the synchros.