My theory is that people with cars that have optional-use paddle shifters use them for about, oh, 12 minutes per month in the first few months they own the car, and then after the initial novelty has worn off, they forget about them. It’s quite likely you, the devastatingly sexy person reading this right now on the deck of your pleasure-helicopter, have a car with such paddles. Now, I’m not talking about genuine racing cars with transmissions that will only shift with paddles – I mean the sort of paddle shifters that actuate semi-manual gear selection on otherwise automatic transmissions in mainstream, mass-market passenger cars. They’ve been around for a while now in fact, I’d say they may be the most common and yet least-used controls in a car, because, let’s be honest: aside from playing around with them every now and then, nobody really uses these things. This time, we need to talk about paddle shifters, commonly found on a wide variety of vehicles you can buy today. And that’s good, because we need to do another episode of Prove Me Wrong! As you know, this is important. In 2003, it became the first series-production car to feature a dual-clutch transmission an addition that helped it crack 0-100 km/h in just 6,4 seconds.I know I’m supposed to be off today for Yom Kippur, but it’s technically the night before, so I think if nobody rats me out to any clergypeople or their authorized agents, then I’m probably okay. It wasn’t just the eye-widening 177 kW and 350 N.m served up by its Audi-sourced 3,2-litre V6 engine that made the R32 a remarkable machine. Co-developed with ZF and wearing the Tiptronic moniker, this system allowed the driver to manually shift gears using a now-familiar staggered H-gate shifter. While Ferrari may have pipped Porsche to the paddle-shifter post by roughly eight years, the German performance car manufacturer was the first to offer an automatic transmission with manual override. The first such system can be traced back to 1956 when Chrysler adopted a dash-mounted button shifter for the two-speed Powerflite automatic transmission in the 300 B Coupé. Many modern performance cars have completely eschewed the gearlever in favour of push-button, shift-by-wire gear selectors. Initially a concession to mechanical packaging, its vertical placement of second and third gears so often used in spirited driving saw this configuration proliferate among sportscars for the next 40-odd years. The Model A was the first mass-produced car to feature a dog-leg gear shifter that placed first gear to the bottom-left of the gate. The Ferrari-Magnetti Marelli system is bolted to the standard F355’s six-speed manual gearbox and its single-plate clutch and utilises an electric oil pump feeding six hydraulic electrovalves that mechanically actuate gear selection and clutch operation. The F355 marked something of a renaissance for Ferrari.Įssentially setting the standard for electro-hydraulically actuated manual gearboxes in Formula One cars, Ferrari decided to transfer its motorsport knowhow to the road with the development of its Selespeed transmission. But while there was no doubting the immense appeal of the snappily mechanical manual gearshifter coupled to the F355’s mid-mounted, five-valve-per-cylinder 3,5-litre V8, Ferrari felt drivers would best be able to harness the full potential of the 297 kW on tap by keeping both hands on the wheel. Fast forward to 1995 and the release of the knee-tremblingly beautiful F355 marked something of a renaissance for a Scuderia that had endured mixed fortunes in the previous two decades.
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