That prospective future is looking to be a good ways further out than the hype would have us believe. Turns out that ~2.9lb of grey matter + 2x Mk.1 eyeballs + 2x sets of inner ear semicircular canals have tricks that the most complex of silicon + dozens of sensors have yet to match.
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I just removed one of the six pedals on the floor of my 1953 Chevy pickup.
From left to right -
- Emergency or parking brake
- High beam switch
- Clutch (or millennial theft deterrent as I call it)
- Brakes
- Accelerator (or gas pedal if you prefer)
- Stomp starter (recently removed with the change to a modern starter)
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At one point my father improbably owned a 1949 Chevrolet Suburban that featured all of those. I tried to start it once as a kid and all I managed to do was unexpectedly propel it forward a few feet with the starter motor … suspect that had I known to engage the clutch and pull the choke I might have been more successful.
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Oh the many joys of driving w/ a manual trans -
Short shift
Skip shift
Drive by throttle
Tach on something w/ auto shifty thing is a waste of gauge space.
If the auto shifty thing can hold a gear on occasion (ie. flappy paddles, other novelties) then it’s of some utility to the driver albeit only on the rare occasion that they’re not in fully-auto mode.
Fully disagree. Their smooth sweeping motions accompany the zoomy sounds to sooth my ADHD and the illusion of knowing quantitatively what’s happening inside the boomy-bits soothes my OCD tendencies, regardless of the shifty-bits.
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True.
Gotta wonder how many such drivers understand what the tach is telling them…
Redline is not a shift point 
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Perhaps not. But I’d rather an engine that bumps into that redline occasionally than one that’s lugged routinely.
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Feather the throttle - it’ll be OK.
That looks like a brake release.
We used to have an early Mustang and its emergency brake control was under the dash instead of a pedal.
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My S2000 whole heartedly disagrees. I regularly bounce the tach at the Start/Finish line at MSRCresson. Shifting to 5th then braking down to ‘rattlesnake’ doesn’t seem to get me any reduction in laptime. That said, short shifting to 5 doesn’t seem to hurt a ton either. If I don’t get a good shot through ‘little bend’ I’ll top out 3rd as well at MSRC.
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S2000, isn’t the power band and the redline mark identical?
WT everloving F…
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Seems like a gimmick that’s unlikely to survive past the initial model year.
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I’m surprised it’s taking automakers this long to do this; we’ve had games simulating the experience for, what, 30 years? Some are pretty good, I hear. Not to contradict MT, but the pedal and shifter are real. Their function is fake…
Approximating something that’s necessary on the thing being simulated, sure. Sort of like how you might want to read the actual big boy manual whenever you play DCS, a good driving simulator will give it the old college try approximating reality.
Applying the same concept to something real that lacks a multispeed gearbox while also freeing the operator of the pitfalls of said gearbox might be fun but it’s a far looser connection to reality than an actual simulator and won’t even really teach someone to drive stick. FWIW I wouldn’t pay extra for the feature but wouldn’t refuse it either since I’m not overly fond of the weird rotary dials and other new paradigms in modern vehicle control schemes.
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