Diminishing take rates haven?t curbed our enthusiasm for stick-shift automobiles. The fact is, our latest brainstorm could invigorate our Save the Manuals! agenda.
Carmakers no longer have the luxury of designing, engineering, manufacturing, and certifying two totally different transmissions to serve every customer whim, especially when they know their stick-shift sales will be modest. So our idea is to assign a conventional dual-clutch automatic transmission to the dark reaches of every vehicle. To provide a choice between stick and automatic shifting, the cockpit would be outfitted with what looks, feels, and acts like manual or automatic controls.
It?s a snap for the automatic half of the equation. Provide the usual console lever along with paddles near the steering wheel to offer the driver fully automatic operation when that?s preferred, with the option of going crazy with their own gear selections when traffic-free mountain passes are the venue. This is the new SOP for any car or crossover with sporting intentions. Imitating a manual transmission demands creativity. As noted above, the box of clutches, gears, shafts, and servos living under the floor is, for all intents, identical to the automatic edition. The difference is mainly control-strategy software plus a fresh approach for the clutch-pedal and stick-shift mechanisms.
The third pedal becomes a clutch-by-wire device. When it?s activated by the driver?s left foot during launch and while shifting, an electrica...