Are Clutchless Manual Gearboxes Better Than You Think? — Carmudgeon w/ Cammisa & DTS — Ep 232
The Carmudgeon Show
Are Clutchless Manual Gearboxes Better Than You Think? — Carmudgeon w/ Cammisa & DTS — Ep 232
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61:14
Company
Haggerty
Hagerty is an insurance company that’s known for covering classic and hobby cars. They’re basically the “collector car” insurance brand, which is why the hosts joke about insuring even weird things.
Term
carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a toxic exhaust gas that can build up if the engine isn’t tuned correctly or if the car is run in an enclosed area. The mention of a “carbon monoxide gauge” suggests they’re actively monitoring dangerous levels, which is a serious safety concern.
Term
surface corrosion
Surface corrosion is basically rust that starts on the outside of the metal. It might look small, but if it keeps getting moisture, it can spread.
Term
rust bubbles
Rust bubbles are little bumps under the paint caused by rust forming underneath. They’re a warning sign that the metal is starting to corrode.
Term
touch-up paint
Touch-up paint is small-area paint used to cover damage or spots. It can help protect the metal, but if rust is still there underneath, it may come back.
Car
Dodge Dart
They’re saying a Dodge Dart was the other car that hit them. The takeaway is that accidents can be rough enough to require serious body repair.
Term
chemically strip the bumper
They used chemicals to remove the paint completely. Then they could repaint it so the original bumper texture shows through instead of being filled in by thick paint.
Concept
CO poisoning
CO poisoning refers to carbon monoxide poisoning, which can happen when an engine or exhaust system produces CO in an enclosed or poorly ventilated space. The speaker is using it as a cautionary anecdote about running the car in a way that could expose people to dangerous exhaust gases. It’s not a car “feature,” but it’s a real safety risk tied to how vehicles are started and tested.
Concept
Pebble Beach restorations
Pebble Beach is a famous car show where cars are judged like art. A “Pebble Beach restoration” means the work is aimed at making the car look perfect, not just good enough to drive.
Term
paint code
A paint code is like a recipe number for the exact color the car left the factory with. The point here is that this car’s paint history is messy enough that the “recipe” doesn’t match what’s on the panels.
Car
Volkswagen Egolf
The Volkswagen e-Golf is a Golf that runs on electricity instead of gasoline. It’s meant to be a normal, practical car, just powered by a battery. The episode brings it up because the name and badge are easy to recognize.
Term
clutch
A clutch is what lets you separate the engine from the gearbox. When you press it, you can change gears without grinding them.
Concept
Sport-O-Matic
Sport-O-Matic is a type of “semi-automatic” gearbox. You can move the shifter like a manual, but the car controls the clutch for you.
Term
over rev
Over-rev means the engine is being pushed to too high an RPM. If it happens during a bad shift, it can be rough on the engine.
Concept
column shifted four-speed manual transmission
Instead of the shifter being on the floor or center console, it’s on the steering column. In these versions, it’s a four-speed manual.
Car
DS
The Citroën DS was a famous Citroën from the post-war era. The speaker is using it as a reference point for how expensive the car was when it first came out.
Concept
decontent the car
“Decontenting” means taking out features to make the car cheaper to build. The idea is to lower the price so more people can afford it.
Company
SMG
SMG is BMW’s automated manual transmission. It lets you shift without using a traditional clutch pedal because the system controls the clutch for you.
Company
Bosch
Bosch is a major automotive supplier known for electronics and systems (and historically many mechanical and electromechanical components). Mentioning Bosch in the same breath as Valéo and other suppliers emphasizes that many “car technologies” come from specialized component companies, not just the automaker itself.
Company
ZF transmission
ZF is a well-known transmission and driveline supplier that develops gearboxes for many automakers. The speaker uses “ZF transmission” as an analogy for how Valéo works with car companies to develop and supply driveline technologies.
Term
paddle
A paddle is a small lever behind the steering wheel that you pull to shift. They’re saying this system uses a normal-looking gear lever instead of paddles.
Term
blip the revs
A “rev blip” is a quick moment where the engine speed jumps up. It helps the car shift or launch more smoothly instead of feeling rough.
Term
RPM
RPM tells you how fast the engine is spinning. The transmission computer uses RPM to help decide the right moment to shift.
Term
QP5
QP5 sounds like a specific test or early program name. In this story, it’s used to point to a real example where the clutch got damaged quickly because of how the car was behaving at low speed.
Term
automatic transmissions
An automatic transmission changes gears by itself. You don’t have to push a clutch pedal or shift manually, and most drivers expect it to feel smooth and effortless.
Brand
BMW
BMW is the brand being discussed. The speaker is talking about BMW’s SMG transmission and why it didn’t always match what drivers expected from an automatic-like experience.
Concept
rev flare
Rev flare is when the engine revs jump up during a shift. If it’s too strong, it can make the car feel jerky or like the clutch isn’t engaging smoothly.
Brand
Mercedes-Benz
They’re talking about Mercedes-Benz and how the company chose a particular style of automatic transmission. The point is that Mercedes did things a little differently than other brands.
Brand
Honda
Honda is the car brand being used as an example here. They’re described as using a different kind of gear setup inside their transmissions.
Term
H pattern shifter
That’s the familiar gear-shift pattern you see in many manuals, where you move the shifter into different positions for each gear. People like it because it feels more direct and mechanical.
Term
synchromesh
Synchromesh is the mechanism in a manual transmission that matches the speed of the gears before they engage. That makes shifting smoother and prevents grinding, especially when the engine and transmission input speeds differ.
Concept
0-60 time
This is a simple test: how fast a car goes from stopped to 60 mph. If the car has to shift gears slowly, it can lose time and make the number worse.
Concept
fuel efficiency
Fuel efficiency is how far a car can go per unit of fuel, driven by factors like engine load, shift strategy, and drivetrain losses. In the context of transmissions, modern control systems try to keep the engine operating in more efficient ranges and reduce unnecessary power interruptions.
LIVE
Jinks. No, we said different words.
Oh, does that have to be exactly the same word?
I think so, yes.
Okay, so I want you to use a word, think of a word,
and then on a count of three, just say it.
Okay, ready? One, two, three.
Pterodactyl.
Damn it.
I thought you were going to say automatic.
This episode is pterodactyl.
Okay, anyway, this is the Carmageddon show.
This episode is about pterodactyls.
Yeah, all of which are insured by Haggerty.
This is the Carmageddon show.
They're real.
But they're not insured.
Or you think they're insured?
I guess now their skeletons are probably insured.
You have to insure a pterodactyl.
What about the one that was on Peewee's Playhouse?
That's got to be worth money.
His name is Terry, because Terry, get it?
Okay, so this is all this nonsense is driven by Haggerty.
No, no, no, it's not.
The podcast is driven by Haggerty.
I'm driven by Insanity, to Insanity.
You are heading both by and towards Insanity.
Okay, this episode is about
solutions to manual transmission woes over the decades.
Automation, efforts at automation,
going back as far as the pre-war era, in fact.
So we'll pre-select your transmissions
through single clutch automated manuals
to dual clutches, conventional automatic torque converters,
viscous couplings, and everything in between.
And all those weird solutions that happened
that we kind of forgot about, about automated manuals,
like Volkswagen's automatic stick shift,
and Mercedes Hydrax.
So if you've never heard of any of this,
you will hear of it now.
Hydrax, is that what people do to planes
when they're like bumping in the cabin
and like, you will fly me to Spain?
Sure.
Anyway, also interestingly enough,
given that this show is called the Carmudgeon Show,
you know what we didn't do?
Bitch, about how much we hate automatics.
No, we didn't.
We were very objective even.
No, you did a little bit.
Automated manuals.
Yes.
They're not the same thing as an automatic
and we'll talk about why after Derek
gives me a round of applause.
Just one.
Whatever the singular of applause is.
Applause.
Thank you.
So the cameras are rolling in here.
What are you doing?
Yeah, that's how we're starting the episode.
So apparently a lot of people were upset
about us snacking.
And so what does Derek do?
Wait till the cameras are rolling
and open the bag of snacks.
You guys were fucking around with the lights and stuff.
I'm sorry, that's too good not to use.
I mean, it's up to Mike to...
Anyway, hi.
Someone's gonna have to speak with their mouth
for the business next.
All right, Jason.
Hi, Derek.
Simmer down now.
I am simmering.
I have simmered down.
I've been reduced.
This is a...
Pan sauce.
It's mostly butter now.
Yep, I can confirm.
Look who's back in the studio.
It is...
I hate seeing that car.
I hate it driving it.
Why?
Because it's not my in anymore.
Oh, you have access to it.
You can always ask me to borrow it.
I can charge you...
An exorbitant fee.
That is an indirect way of saying no.
I like that.
I guess I'm sorry,
but I do like the fact that you still miss it
because it means I'm not
deluded in my enjoyment of the car.
So it was over at...
It being the for our listeners.
Oh, yeah.
The Ferrari Weldino
technically 308 GT4.
Yes.
Among the world's ugliest Ferraris we are told.
I don't see it.
Well, up until recently,
I think it might have been the ugliest Ferrari.
I just was going through pictures
from when I bought it from you
and from like in this whole...
I was looking for a picture of the glove box
for the last episode for the cocaine mirror,
and I happened across the first time I ever saw the car,
which was August of 20...
February 28th, 2016.
There's something so wrong with this, man.
Okay, some what...
It was a month of date in a year,
and you've completely derailed me.
You were looking at old photos of it.
Because you were...
Trying to find a photo of the cocaine mirror
and you found huge rust bubbles on it.
Yeah, I did, but that's...
Yeah, but that's not what I...
Oh my God, the dementia has...
You have a senior moment.
Which is a Mexican old person.
Oh my God.
It's gone.
It's gone, but I don't like that it's gone.
Can we edit this whole thing out
where I just don't sound like a moron?
No.
The episode is now over.
If we did that, the episode would be done.
It was a photo that you took,
and I don't remember what...
I did take photos of the car while I owned it.
Yes, and you handed me over a...
A Google Drive folder.
Which I downloaded and sent it.
I took a photo of the car on my ownership.
Anyway, things happened, whatever.
Things happened, and then other things happened,
and then we did an episode, and that was kind of it.
This car I just picked up this morning
from Patrick Otis' shop, which is...
Tengentially, I guess, or parallelly related to...
It's more of a Venn diagram.
Okay, there is overlap between Patrick Otis,
who is a local Ferrari god of note,
and his son, who is your business partner.
Correct.
And so I was over there,
and you have just driven the car again,
because I went in and was inquiring about certain features
that the car has that I don't love.
There now, it's fixed.
And there was a point,
I was going to say something,
and I don't know why, anyway.
But more importantly...
I think you may have consumed too many fumes from this car.
It's got four webers, and there's a lot of carbon monoxide,
and I think we all may be on the verge of death.
Carbon monoxide gauge over there, say.
Anyway, drove back.
It's a car such a pleasure.
It is very much makes me happy.
There was one problem on the car that concerned me
when I bought it from you,
which was a bit of surface corrosion in the back.
And I did happen across those pictures.
So I'll post what it looked like when I bought it from you,
which was scary.
And that was 2018, and it is now 2026.
So eight years later, it no longer looks like that.
Well, interestingly enough,
so I cleaned it up when I first got it from you,
because some of the rust bubbles for those not watching,
these little rust bubbles by the right rear quarter
of the car behind the wheel opening.
And some of them had bled down,
sort of leaving a trail of tears, of rusty tears.
And I cleaned all that up,
and then when I did a really big detail on the car a year later,
I went and touched up,
and I think we used about 71 gallons of touch-up paint on this car,
touched up everything, including all those rust spots.
And over the next seven or whatever years, it barely changed.
No new rust bubbles appeared, which made me very happy.
But also the car doesn't see water.
I don't wash it.
I pad it clean, basically.
But the touch-up was starting to pop off,
and I thought, I need to do something on this.
So you guys, meaning you plus Otis,
had recommended a local guy who is just kind of an artist.
And so I brought the car to his name is Aaron Shepherd,
brought it to him with the fear that he was going to say,
well, your car is effectively totaled.
I mean, effectively, even though this car,
nothing you see is structural.
It's a space frame.
But I was expecting it to be like,
write a check for the down payment on your new mortgage on your house
that you're going to have to do to fix this.
And it just amazes me when you find an artist in this industry,
because I found that every body shop, every glass shop,
every sort of visual arts part of car ownership sucks.
And these are people that get cars in and out of their shop
as quickly as they possibly can and just have no eye for detail.
I mean, I sent the Mercedes, I bought the last surviving,
I got hit in the Mercedes, no, 10 years ago.
I got sort of pit maneuvered by a Dodge Dart.
And I bought the last remaining new old stock bumper in the world
rather than trying to fix mine.
And I brought it to what I thought was the best paint shop in the area,
which was the shop that painted your mirror and did a 10 out of 10 job.
And I sent the car back to them four times.
And finally the owner of the shop walked out with me
and he put his hand on his forehead and said,
holy shit, go, just go.
And my problem on that bumper was I had warned them
there's texture on the plastic on this bumper
and I want to see that texture through the paint.
You cannot put so much paint on this bumper that I don't see it.
Well, they had to then chemically strip the bumper down to bear plastic again.
And it was just, it was a month of frustration or two months of frustration
and this was the best shop.
The difference between that and someone like Aaron
who looked at the car and said, yeah, this is all surface rust,
let's treat it properly and just fix it
and it will probably last 30 years before you ever see this again.
It's just amazing.
And so anyone in the Bay Area or anyone in Northern California,
I guess, because he's kind of in the Central Valley,
we'll put a link to his phone number in the description or maybe email address.
That doesn't seem like a good idea.
Yeah, probably not.
Maybe email address.
We'll figure out a way to include contact info.
He is very competent.
He's a one man shop.
He used to work for one of the best restoration shops in certainly California,
if not the United States, many Pebble Beach winning cars that came out of there.
And that's where he learned to do what he does, but he started his own shop.
So he's very competent and doesn't let anything leave that he's not proud of.
He was a little bit mortified by this car because it's scruffy, right?
I mean, the paint is just 50 year old paint.
Well, it's not, it's 40 year old paint, but it looks.
It's probably from the 80s.
And he actually Patrick, so Patrick Otis himself is maintained this car from 86 through 2000.
And he's the one that did had the bumper conversion done to put the Euro bumpers on it.
And so at that point it was painted and no one remembers who painted the car.
They were clearly drunk, possibly even unconscious when they did it.
And blind.
And blind.
They had the car running so they had CO poisoning just like Jason does.
What?
Um, yeah.
Anyway, I mean, it's just the paint is just meh on the car.
Yeah.
I mean, the car was, I don't even know what it was worth back then, but I remember that.
Everyone paid $20,000.
Yeah.
I was going to say we sold a beautiful one for 22 and a half in like 2010 and it was much nicer than this.
He paid.
So everyone from, I have a bunch of transaction prices.
The original price on the car was 22 or something like that.
And then every single transaction, I think I'm owner six, five or six, every one of them until me.
And me.
Oh, you paid more than 20?
Yeah.
I remember.
I paid $1,500 less than you did.
Oh, you made money on?
Not by the time you factor in literally half of the first service that I did the moment I brought it home.
Yeah.
No, they, this car was for 30 years was a $20,000 car.
So yeah, it was a relatively inexpensive car and the paint job is just, it reflects that.
But anyway, so Aaron took one look at it and was like, okay, let's paint the whole car and let's do this and you know, whatever.
And I know what he wanted to do and why he wanted to do it.
He comes from a shop where they do Pebble Beach restorations of cars.
Right.
And then I would never drive this car again.
So he was, he offered the solutions of like, do we do this concor level?
And with the acknowledgement that you will never drive this car again or do we just match what's there?
And it's so incredibly well blended.
He painted just a bunch of spots on it and he hand mixed of the paint.
There is no like, you pull up a paint code and this comes up, you pull up a paint code and it's something approaching this color.
But every one of them is different and they're all completely different.
Right.
And this car was not painted by the factory anyway.
So who knows what was used when they mixed the paint in 1843 when this car was last painted.
It was sitting on the shelf for 132 years.
Anyway, but just to see what a craftsman and what an artist can do is amazing.
So much appreciation to Aaron Shepherd.
And again, anyone, if you want your car done properly by someone who cares and it's not a shop that's just get it out, bring it to Aaron.
Amazing.
And this is not sponsored, whatever.
I paid full price.
No, we use him regularly for whatever we need to have done where it's a sort of like needs the touch.
Should we just cancel, like edit this whole section out so we don't ruin Aaron?
No, I mean, he just had a kid.
It'll be helpful for him to have a line around the block and to get away from the screaming kid.
Anyway, this episode is not about that.
It is about sort of the opposite of that.
Yep.
Which is specifically non unconventional solutions to manual transmission woes that have existed over the decades.
If we had to summarize it.
Sure.
So fucking Gemini.
You're not actually Gemini.
I'm not.
Are you Aries or something?
Hold on.
I don't remember where your birthday is.
I proudly don't know.
I mean, I do technically know, but I certainly don't believe in aristocracy or whatever that's called.
Oh my God.
Astronomy.
Astronomy.
Yes.
That's it.
You're a paluto with a rising in idiot.
Anyway.
Idiot rising.
Idiot rising.
Yes.
I just saw yesterday.
I was, I saw a karma gear with a fore sale sign and it's this great shade of green.
And I will say that I hate all solutions to automatic automated manual transmissions, but the badge on this car is so cool that I would buy it.
In fact, I'm thinking about buying one of those badges and putting it on something, maybe even the Ferrari automatic stick shift.
You could put it on your e-golf.
Right next to the manual gearbox preservation society license plate frame that pisses everyone off.
Yes.
Oh, I love this.
Okay.
So that's what you need to do.
If anyone has one of those lying around from their junkyard visits, I'll pass a line.
So, so automatic stick shift was Volkswagen's invention creation.
Do you know how it works or what it was?
It is, it is basically a manual transmission with an actuator on the clutch and an actuator on the accelerator pedal.
When you touch the shifter, there's a switch, a micro switch on it that tells it your hands on the shifter.
Basically, it disengages the clutch, allows you to shift and then re-engages the clutch.
And it has two pedals.
Two pedals.
So it must have a torque converter.
No.
Because how do you stop?
If it's like Sport-O-Matic, so Porsche at the same time was doing Sport-O-Matic.
Okay.
I've never driven one.
I haven't either, but out of curiosity, I have learned how to do it if ever I need to.
So the Porsche system, which may have been the same as the Volkswagen system, had we done research.
Porsche's are Volkswagen's.
Yes.
Sure.
Including the Sport-O-Matic technology.
I don't know.
We'll have to look this up while you tell me how to drive.
So yes, if there's a difference between Sport-O-Matic and automatic stick shift.
So the way the Porsche system works is there is a torque converter.
It is a manual transmission, but there's a torque converter so that you don't have to do a clutch in when you reach a stop.
And so it eventually will declutch via torque converter.
But everything else is as you described.
So the car has two pedals.
There is a stick shift that you use in the normal fashion.
The gates on the H pattern that's on the knob has park, reverse, and then there's like a neutral position, which is the same as a manual transmission.
And then there are four drive gears, which are labeled low, drive, drive three and drive four.
Because Germans make sense.
For some reason.
By the way, it is the same as the automatic stick shift.
So automatic stick shift and Sport-O-Matic are the same thing.
So Sport-O-Matic was available starting in the late 60s.
I think maybe 60, seven or 68 and lasted all the way through.
You could get it on the SC into the 80s, in fact.
So this is 15 years.
Of Sport-O-Matic availability.
So the way that you pull away normally in D1, or I guess it was actually called low.
L1 and 2 on the Volkswagen's.
L1 and L2, obviously.
Or just know L1 and 2.
Oh, I see.
That makes actually somewhat, doesn't really make any more sense.
And then like you said, there's a micro switch.
So if you put your hand on the shifter while the car is in motion, it just engages, it puts the clutch in.
So it prevents you from doing that bad habit that some people do.
We've never talked about how you shouldn't drive around with your hand on the shift lever like a lot of people do.
Anyway, you can't do that in a Sport-O-Matic.
And it disengages your clutch.
You can, but you're not going anywhere.
And you will maybe over rev.
And then you move the lever and then it does everything for you.
The same thing on downshifts.
It actually supposedly works pretty well.
But it was designed at solving a problem of clutch and gear change woes, I guess.
And the technology to do this appeared before World War II.
And there were like, I think at least two main solutions that I'm aware of that were used in the early days,
that worked to sort of varying degrees.
One was called a Wilson preselector.
And the other is called a Kotal.
And Kotal was used in Dela Hays.
And the Wilson preselector system was used in Tabalagos.
And a fair number of race cars actually used that system as well.
And so each of them works actually somewhat differently to each other,
but they were both designed to solve a problem.
You've driven some non-synchromesh cars.
So they were trying to solve initially the synchromesh issue,
which is that it is quite difficult to properly do gear changes in an unsynchronized car,
especially as a learner.
I'm like Cricklewood Bentley's, which is Bentley's before Rolls Royce owned Bentley.
So up until 1930 or 31 are for me incredibly difficult to drive.
I would just like to have a day in one of those so I can learn to drive one properly,
because I always struggle with those cars.
Getting into any gear at any time?
First is no problem.
When you're stopped.
Yes.
Drive something even older then, because then that's a problem.
You have a 1919 Peerless.
And when you cast iron gears, I think it was.
And if you press the clutch pedal and you were waiting for over,
I think it was 30 seconds before the gears to stop spinning.
So if you fuck up and you're waiting at a red light
and you've taken your foot off the clutch in neutral,
you're going to be waiting a long time when that light turns green just to,
I mean, you can force it.
But do you really want to do that?
And if you miss a shift in motion, then you're done.
And you have to stop and start again in first gear.
No, you figure it out.
I mean, you figure, you know, one way or another, you find the revs that match gear.
I mean, it's like, it's a million dollar car.
My preference would be to stop and start over again,
rather than find a gear through force.
Well, I missed that downshift on I-95.
And now I'm on the side of the road with my hand blinkers going.
So the original solutions of these,
let's start with the, which one is closer to a,
let's start with the Wilson preselector.
So the Wilson has like this thing,
it looks like a column sticking off the side and it has a lever
that slides in a like, like a traditional automatic transmission column shift plane.
And their gears are numbered and there's a zero or neutral or it was called,
which is like the dead point neutral zero on a French car.
And you would in advance, you would use the clutch, it had three pedals,
and you would use the clutch when departing like you normally do.
And you would use it when you're doing gear changes,
but you would preselect which gear you wanted it to go into
so that the car would do the gear changing for you
instead of you having to negotiate the sinker mesh thing.
So if you're driving long in first gear and you're like,
I'd like second you move the lever to second,
it doesn't select it until you depress the clutch,
then it'll select second and then you let the clutch out again.
And that's why it's called a preselector.
The Kotal system was different because you didn't need to use the clutch
for gear changes when you were in motion,
but you did need to use the clutch when pulling away from a stop.
And so this car had like what looked like a normal shift knob under the,
on the console or on the floor.
And it had three positions which were forward, neutral and reverse.
And so you would select your direction of travel with that.
This also meant that the car had as many speeds and reverses
didn't forward, which is always handy, I guess.
Sure.
And then there was like a little shifter thing that is like tiny,
like it's like the shift lever is an inch and a half long
and it's attached to the column and it's like in a mini gated shifter thing
that sticks off the steering column and it was labeled first through third
or fourth or however many gears you had.
And that one you would move the lever, the little selector switch
while the car was in motion and it would do what you asked it to do.
It would make the gear change as you moved.
It's an electric switch.
It would make the gear change in real time as you move to the lever.
I've seen people also drive these incorrectly where they put the clutch in
and move it like it's a tiny little manual shifter,
but you don't have to do that.
You just move the lever while the car is in.
So how is it actually doing it?
There's like electromagnetic clutching happening or something.
I don't know.
It's black magic.
I just know how to use it.
I actually don't really know how it works.
There's planetary gears in it allegedly and electromagnetic clutches.
But anyway, it allows you to not have to deal with the issues around synchromesh,
but you still have to do the footwork of pulling away like a conventional manual.
So both of those pre-war solutions,
there were three pedals that were used in different ways
than we're used to driving them as manual transmission operators.
Okay.
So they both sort of sound a lot like the Citroen DS.
Yeah.
So Citroen also had the Citromatic, but the Citroen doesn't have three pedals.
Right.
So as a whole part of the introduction of the DS,
there's this elaborate hydraulic system that does the suspension and the brakes and all that.
And in the high trim cars, it also does the transmission.
In low trim cars, you've got a conventional four-speed manual transmission,
albeit column shifted.
It's one of the few for the late cars, you could get a five-speed column shift,
which is festive.
Have you ever driven anything that's a five on the tree?
I have driven two five on the tree cars actually.
A Citroen DS, a late DS 23.
This would be like from the 70s, 74 or something like that.
And then Alfa Romeo 1900 CSS was also available with a five-speed column shift.
That's so crazy.
Okay.
Yeah, try finding, it's a little, I don't know,
finding a gear is about the same as finding a gear in a normal car.
You just imagine that everything is on sideways on the column.
It's just the same sort of age pattern just moved to a different point.
Yes.
And it is sprung on the three, four axis.
So you know that if you're pushing away from you and up,
then you're going to get fifths.
But if you push straight up, then you'll get third.
So it actually works fine.
It's just a little weird because you think of three on the tree.
So the Citroenatic system took advantage of the car's elaborate hydraulic system
and in order to get the car's price down,
because it was expensive for a car of that category when the DS came out,
especially for post-war France, which was very price sensitive.
So they tried to decontent the car and make it a conventional manual to save money.
But the original vision for the car was that it would have the Citroenatic transmission,
which is available the duration of the car's production.
So Citroenatic is goofy as hell, of course, because Citroen.
But it is a two pedal, but it's basically like an F1 in the way that it operates
in the sense that the car is doing the clutching for you
and you can feel it as it's letting the clutch out.
And you know, it works in that sense the same way as a Cambio Corsa,
a Maserati or a Ferrari F1.
And the SMG.
SMG, yeah, correct.
So the shift pattern is on top of the steering column.
And if you're looking at it from above,
it's like a letter C where the bottom or a J turned on its side.
Let's call it that.
Or a C where the bottom leg is longer than the top leg.
And this is so difficult to verbally explain.
Well, the neutral position is at the C, the curved part of the C, the apex of the curved C.
And if you push it away from you, then you have first.
And if you pull it directly forward or backwards towards you, that's second.
And then over one notch is third.
And then over a second notch is fourth.
This is unless your hand is on your head or your left toes are splayed.
In which case it's all backwards.
And we haven't also gotten to the part where how do you start the car.
Because there's also a leg off the C where the starter is.
And then you move the lever over and hold it there.
It's spring loaded like a normal starter key.
And that's how you get the starter to actuate.
And then it pops back over to neutral when you let go of the lever.
Which is a great way to ensure that you're in neutral when you start the car.
Because some other automated manuals later on who were computer controlled with paddles
would require you to be in neutral.
But then you have to go to neutral and then put the key in.
So the idea of designing something so that the starter is actually engaged
by the transmission's position is actually quite good ergonomically.
The downside is that if you're in neutral and the engine is running
and you move the lever over to the start position,
you get that wonderful noise that happens if you,
the same thing happens if you start an already running car that has a key.
So that system, you know, works like an F1 gearbox in the sense that you,
the car does the clutching for you.
And then when you want to gear your change,
then you lift off the throttle and move the lever to the next gear that you want.
And it does it for you.
And the lever is also a hydraulic switch.
So there's no resistance.
You're not actually changing gear you're requesting.
Yes, it is a switch.
So that's the citromatic solution.
You know, I meant to do research on this and I completely forgot to do.
Mercedes had a system called Hydrak.
This is like in the Ponton era in the 1950s.
I've never driven one.
No idea how it works.
But that should also be added to the list of, I don't know,
the littered, littered with weird solutions that never actually ever caught on,
I guess, or if we want to, I don't know,
how would you put these in context?
Like are these dead ends or cul-de-sacs or walking so others could run?
They were speed bumps on the way to dual clutches is what they were.
Because all of the technology required to automate a manual,
you're actuating a clutch and you're finding a shift map at the end of the day.
So what the citromatics and that sort of era didn't do was select,
there wasn't an automatic mode that selected the gear.
Once you get to F1, SMG, that sort of era, there was an automatic mode.
We have not talked about value also.
Well, let's go back then.
We'll talk to you later.
As another cul-de-sac.
Which car was...
Valleo, I have only ever seen in a Ferrari Mondial.
Right.
And the Valleo clutch, Valleo is a manufacturer.
If you look closely at, like, they make all kinds of little bits and bobs in the same way
that LEM, Ford or Bosch or...
The T-run supplier, right?
So they work with the car companies to develop technologies that they then sell to the car
in the same way that ZF transmission would be.
Except they're French, which means they're weird.
Valleo's French?
I believe so, aren't they?
I didn't know that.
That's why it's Valleo and Navalleo that everyone thinks it's pronounced.
Okay.
Because there's literally a fucking accent.
Anyway.
So Valleo is a very peculiar solution because you get into a Ferrari Mondial.
It has a gated shifter that looks just like a normal Ferrari,
but it has two pedals, you know, an automatic style large brake pedal,
which is very peculiar in a Ferrari of this era.
This is well before F1 had been invented for road use.
This is a decade, I guess, before, because, well, no,
you got it in road cars.
F1 is probably a 95 in the 355.
Right.
But Ferrari had done automatics.
Yes.
They had done conventional automatics, which was in GM,
turbo-hydro-matic three-speed that was used in the 400 GT and 400i.
And that was just a regular old automatic.
That was, let's see, the first automatic Ferrari.
There were only two automatic, technically automatic transmission Ferraris,
which would be the 400 and 412 and the 456 GTA.
Oh, that had a torque, I didn't think of that.
Except for the early automatic GTAs, which were not really GTAs,
they were commissioned by the Brunei Royal Family before the GTA came out.
And the GTA, I think, also has a GM four-speed transmission.
And I guess a lot of the members of the Royal Family of Brunei could not drive manuals.
And they didn't deserve a Ferrari.
Correct.
I agree, but they had more money than God.
And so they commissioned automatic 456s before Ferrari had invented them.
And so those have the Mercedes 722 automatic, including the squiggly shifter.
And so there was the Venice, which is the station wagon four-door 456
that they made a few examples of for the Brunei Royal Family.
And one of them lives locally, and it was an automatic.
And the current owner converted it back to a stick or to a stick, I don't know.
And also color changed it back to its original color scheme, which is green on green,
because it was previously smoke-silver metallic with tan interior, basically.
I mean, if you're going Mercedes transmission, you might as well go to a Mercedes color combo.
So it's like a Mercedes colorway also.
That is one of the coolest looking cars I've ever seen in my life.
Yeah, absolutely sensational.
One of my favorite sort of cars that exists, in fact.
You were talking about, sorry, you were talking about Vallejo.
So that was an automatic.
Those were the automatic transmission Ferraris that were made.
And then they did the Vallejo as a precursor effectively to F1.
So we watched together last week a driving video, because there was one on Bring a Trailer.
And I said, oh, have you ever seen one of these?
Because I saw one once 20 years ago, and you were like, no, what the hell is this thing?
So what did you see when you observed them driving it?
It looked exactly what like the driving videos I've seen of VW's automatic stick shift and the Porsche version,
which is just to say it is a two-pedal manual.
And so clearly what is going on, and I believe the transmission is probably identical to a regular one.
What's going on is a computer with an actuator is doing the clutch work for you and you're doing the shifting.
And it looked surprisingly normal.
Yes, or it's like watching someone drive an F1, but instead of pulling a paddle,
they're moving a lever in the gate to the next gear.
And it actually looked, I watched the speedometer on some of the downshifts,
and it didn't look like there was a big jerk when you downshift.
It looked like it was quite good.
The magic in driving a manual isn't driving a manual.
The magic is being smooth and fluent at it.
But it's actually not that difficult as we've just proven by the fact that this VW and Porsche systems did not,
didn't need sophisticated sensors and computers to pull this off.
But to start without excessive revs and without a buck or a stall
and to just get that curve of acceleration correct is the hard part, but you can do it.
And I think it's probably harder with a carbureted car and the calibrations on Citromanics.
I've driven four or five Citromanic cars and they are variable example to example,
because all of the setup on the like the, you would call this the point of initiation on an F1.
There's an official term, which is like how much clutch slip it allows and how much it like is monitoring revs.
And like I've driven F1s before that were fucked up and they stalled because the,
that point was not correctly set.
And there's computers or something that allow you to manually adjust where that friction point is,
the tech, not you, the technician, the Ferrari dealer or technician.
Which should be automatic, but I learned very quickly isn't.
So the first Ferrari I ever drove was an F1.
It was a 360 Challenger Dali and I was pretty impressed with how it would take off from a stop.
It would blip the revs and then just a little bit and then engage gradually and go.
And if you drove it like a manual, meaning, you know, you're sort of accelerating and then you're backing off,
back off, back off the gas until acceleration drops to near zero, click a shift and then get back into it.
It was fairly competent at full throttle.
You have no choice other than to interrupt acceleration for a moment of time and it was very quick at doing that.
So the owner of this car was my old, it was my best friend from high school in Germany.
He bought this and then I convinced him to buy a Maserati Quattroporte to go next to it.
I'm like, you need to sedan. He had an E61 550i M Sport wagon or 545, I think it was.
But a V8 six speed wagon.
I'm like, get rid of that ugly piece of shit. Go get a Quattroporte.
So we arranged with the dealership to drive one and they were like, just be careful.
It's sold, but you can drive it. Just don't kill it.
And I, he drove it. He didn't love it.
I get in it, this red light, put it in drive or put it in, I guess, in gear and floored it when the light turned green.
And it revved, incinerated its clutch and stalled in a mushroom cloud of smoke and then did not want to move.
So I restarted it. It cranked forever.
And then it finally restarted and wouldn't move and everyone's honking at me and we had to get out and push this to the side of the road.
Now, over the course of a couple of minutes, it would get to the point where it was, the clutch cooled down enough that it would start to inch forward,
but then the clutch would incinerate itself again.
And so we wound up having to push it off the road and then call a tow truck and go back to the dealership.
And they tried to blame him for this and he's like, this is the way, look, it's an automatic.
There's an, I, there's, you can't fuck it up. It's the computer fucked it up.
Had a bit of an argument. He won. He left.
And then a month later, his 360 did this exact same thing.
He just laid on the gas at a red light. It slipped.
He gave gas for a second or so, which was a second too long.
Smoked the clutch. It was like 20,000 euro to replace the whole thing.
He said, no, they said it was your fault.
Lawyers were involved and eventually Ferrari paid for it, but it was a fucking disaster.
And it was because the computer didn't learn where the clutch was engaging.
And it would just say, well, you should be engaged here and you're not.
And so it doesn't, and it would be slip and it wouldn't, wasn't smart enough to then cut throttle,
which is what a driver would do, right?
If, you know, if the clutch is not engaging it when, when the, when the pedals halfway up, you'll go a little bit further.
There'd be a feedback loop where it monitors RPM and decides what to do accordingly.
And this is when I say all of these things are precursors on the way to dual clutches.
This is what happens in a regular transmission and dual clutch.
At this point, you have sensors that are looking at input and output speeds of everything.
So maybe a quick discussion about how a dual clutch actually functions.
Sure. A dual clutch is effectively two manual transmissions in one case.
So there are two shafts basically in two clutches, typically a large clutch and a small clutch.
Is that why it's called a dual clutch?
That's would be why.
Who knew?
Typically a large one and a small one because only one of the clutches needs to have a lot of thermal capacity.
The only thing that's really tough on a clutch, if you're shifting properly is takeoff from the start.
And so you're one, three, five, seven or however many gears or other, your odd numbered clutch will be the takeoff clutch.
It's the big one and the other one's kind of small.
And so you can have two different gears engaged or selected at the same time and the computer will release one clutch while it's engaging the other.
And so rather than having to cut power, shift and then reapply power, you can just use the clutches releasing one, releasing one, grabbing to pull the engine out.
The power is passing through the other, the even number or shaft.
And the only danger for this would be a computer control issue where you tried to engage both clutches at the same time, which would just lock up the transmission.
Load the transmission.
But all of the magic in these transmissions is in the tuning.
All of it.
Because if you don't tune them properly, they'll slur a shift or they'll be rough off the line and they have the same problem being...
Well, these are different selectable shift modes.
Like you can choose this.
And this was also something that was always programmed and played with, like by Ferrari, for example, when the 360 CS came out or the 599 GTO came out there.
Like the shifts are half the time of the normal car, which is just they've traded some smoothness in auto mode for speediness, for performance orientedness.
And these are the things that people talk about where they say, oh, I like single clutches because they have this sort of brutality and character to them.
And that's programmed in on purpose.
No one likes an automated manual in drive.
Yes.
And the reason is when you're in an automatic and you can't anticipate when the shift is happening, that jerk forward of the interruption acceleration is uncomfortable.
And this was the complaint that Jeremy Clarkson made about the QP5 when they were first testing it when it came out.
He said, it feels like insert name of female, of course, because it's Jeremy Clarkson.
I think it was Molly from the driving school is doing all the clutch work for you because it's all like herky jerky and unpredictable.
It was unpredictable.
But if you drove it in manual mode and you could raise, lift your foot off the gas, select the next gear and then fade back in.
They were, when they worked properly and weren't smoking the clutch and doing all the rest of this, they were fine.
And this is the council that is always given to people now who own the cars that have single clutches is to always drive it in manual mode.
If you leave it in automatic automatic mode, your clutch life will be like maybe half or something like QP5s because it's a heavy, it's a 4,000 pound car, whatever the thing weighs.
And all of that's going through a clutch.
Like it's of course the clutch life on those cars like in normal use and they sold them to the buyers who were buying seven series and S classes.
And so of course they're going to leave it in auto and then the clutch lasts for 8,000 miles or something like that.
Which is insult to injury because you're trying to parallel park it on a hill or something like that.
Then you, then it's much worse.
So it was, that's why they came out with a torque converter automatic version of that car.
And the, the, the idea that you shouldn't, that it should smoke its clutch on an, on a, on a grade, right?
That shouldn't happen because the manual has the same size clutch and you can do it, but humans have mechanical sympathy.
Some, some manual drivers sort of know the feedback loop.
Oops, that smells or oops, that cost me $10,000 or whatever it is.
Where you sort of learn to keep revs low and load low and you just don't creep backwards into a parking spot.
You sort of either on or off with the clutch and the computers just hadn't figured that out.
When the Ford was a fiesta or focus, one of them was, they debuted in San Francisco with a dry dual clutch.
This is the other thing.
Oh, this is the, when you drive those as rental cars, they would always be fucked up.
I, I've never had it as a rental car. I drove one, this pre-production launch here and they, I asked the PR guy.
I asked the PR guy, why on earth did you choose San Francisco?
Oh, because this is a great place with lots of little tiny parking spots and like a lot of subcompact cars.
And I said, it's a dry dual clutch.
Okay, let me, let me go back for a second.
Every, just about, not every, just about every dual clutch on automated manual on the market today is bathed wet clutches.
And these are clutches that are bathed in a bath of oil.
They're in it fully covered because the oil on the most important car is not acting as a lubricant here.
It's acting as a cooling device.
Clutches make a huge amount of heat when they're slipping.
They don't make any heat when they're not slipping, almost none.
And when you slip one of these clutches, when you're backing up slower than idle speed,
you're creating a massive amount of heat and wear, which is what happened in the QP5 with Garrett back in the day.
And all I did was car had like 31 miles on it and I just backed into a parking space in San Francisco and
This is a Ford Focus.
This is a Ford and I almost didn't make it out.
It was, it would just wouldn't move.
It smoked its clutch within 30 seconds.
And my feedback to Ford was no owner.
When you're dealing with automatic transmissions in the US and people who are buying an automatic,
they don't expect compromises.
They expect it to work like a torque converter automatic and you can't teach them.
You should put a torque converter automatic in a car like that.
And they were looking for MPGs, but the correct way to do this,
if you're going to have a clutch is it has to be bathed in oil.
Dodge Dart is dry, for example, which means Alpha 4C is also dry.
That's scary.
I mean, I remember getting into, in that era, getting into Ford Focus rental cars and you'd pull away from a stop
and you'd just be, it's all like fricking, what are you doing down there?
It was just, they were, I think they might have even been recalled.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were.
I read, I was just, I was actually doing research before we started.
Were entire seconds.
No, it was definitely entire minutes.
It wasn't many of them, but it was.
I'm going to do background research on Hydraq because I'm curious.
And I looked up a car that I think, so everyone sort of knows BMW unleashed SMG
on the unsuspecting public because it wasn't just in the M cars.
You can get an SMG in sort of regular cars, which was.
And as early as the E36 in non-US markets, in fact.
And it was genuinely awful, but everyone forgets Toyota did an SMG.
It was called SMT, sequential manual transmission in the MR2 Spider.
And I've never driven one, there was one for sale once and I went to go drive it
just because I was so curious about it and sold before I got there.
But it was a five speed, which is kind of wild.
There's very few five speed automated manuals.
They were all six.
Most of them were sixes by this point, I feel.
And I looked up car drivers, test numbers for it versus the manual.
And then I happened upon Motor Trend's test of it.
And I never, I tend to not defer to Motor Trend back in that day.
But the first line of the article, first of all, we hate manumatics.
And I thought, well, that is absolutely worth quoting.
And the two that they were referencing on the market were 360 F1
and an Aston Vanquish, both of which were horrendous.
And remember Clarkson did that thing and I think it was a vanquish.
He drove the car down a boat launch and to the end and wanted a backup
and he was talking about how horrifying it was.
Like, I just don't know if it's going to go in the water or not.
They were not fun.
Or good.
They're or good.
Neither fun nor good.
No, nor long lasting.
But the car driver talked to quite a bit about how Toyota had tuned this
for the longevity of the clutches rather than.
So it's not smooth in other words.
Well, no.
So it is smooth because what it did was not allow a lot of throttle.
So it was very slow to shift.
It's interesting the difference between the manual.
So zero to 60 launches are for those who've ever done one magazine style,
really abusive, really abusive.
Car and driver got a six, eight to 60 out of the regular M or two
and an eight, two out of the SMT since 1.4 seconds.
And the difference between a six, eight and an eight, five is two leagues of,
you know, of course.
But then you go over and look at the five to 60,
which is car and drivers sort of trademarked to the only ones that does it
brilliant, go five miles an hour, punch it and see what it does.
Yeah. So that removes the launch.
Removing the launch and removing that.
It's a much closer estimation of what a car will do in the real world.
The manual goes from six, eight to seven, six.
So that's.
Yeah.
You're not getting all the torque benefit or power benefit of having a shitload of
revs when you dump the clutch.
Dumping the clutch.
So it was, I mean, it's 0.8 seconds.
The SMT only went up by three tenths.
But the fact that the SMT is three tenths slower tells me that a lot of,
so it's 1.1, 1.4 seconds differential on the zero to 60,
but at 0.3, which means that it's quite a bit slower.
My calculus calculation on that was the shift itself,
because probably only one shift to 60 cost three tenths of a second,
which is an eternity motor trend dug down in.
And their launch technique was so conservative,
it gives up 0.7 seconds on the zero to 30.
So that's where the big drop was.
And they measured it.
Their test driver could do the one, two shift in 0.23 seconds.
And the SMT did it in 0.61.
So that's over half a second.
0.61 is still a, you know,
it's not that slow of a shift.
Yeah, it's like, but it's like, have you ever driven a smart car?
A smart car?
Yeah.
With their automated manual transmission,
that is one of the worst experiences in terms of driveline behavior
that I've ever had.
And why?
Because the delay, like it's incredibly slow.
It's terrible off the line.
I've had them stall and they're bucky
and you get this rubber band effect where if you,
I describe it as a rubber band,
but what happens is you have a increasing rate of acceleration
until the clutch takes hold.
What you want is a decreasing.
You want to start out and then smoothly engage.
It was the opposite.
And then it was probably a second and a half shift.
And it always did that surge of revs before it engaged the next time,
which makes you just think of the clutch.
Think of the children.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I've never met any sort of automated manual that I didn't despise.
So you despise the one in the 360 CS.
It's so much better than a 355, believe it or not, or even a standard.
I think the F430 one up where I would say it was better.
The standard 430 or the Scuderia.
I remember that one being like,
okay, now I can deal with it because it took off properly.
Again, all of them can be made to shift smoothly
if you're driving like a manual.
Yeah.
And LFA?
LFA had a bit too much rev flare.
And you're like, oh, no, the clutch.
None of them are as smooth as I am.
And that's the bar for me.
You have all this technology in the clutch.
Not all of them are, but most of them are.
Some of them are great off the line, some aren't.
The other, oh, there was something else I was going to say about those early F1s,
that they didn't do well.
What they did often well was blip throttle downshift.
Yes.
Very quickly.
Yes.
But, oh, that was what I was going to say.
It was Ferrari's programming.
Ferrari has a problem with their automatic programming or did,
which was that it would never, in automatic mode,
it would never give you more than a fourth gear downshift.
And even the early dual clutch in the California, I remember, did this.
You'd be in automatic mode, puttering in seventh gear,
and you'd floor it and it would go down to fourth.
Even if you were at 30 miles an hour,
and it could have gone into first or second,
and you had no forward progress whatsoever.
But more noise.
Barely, more vibration.
Yeah, slugging noise.
Yeah.
They just didn't quite understand that an automatic needs to behave a certain way.
And you were never going to get there with a single clutch.
There is no way to have the interruption stop.
And I think the final single clutch,
I don't think any of your production anymore,
would have been the Aventador.
And that was brutal.
I mean, they invented this ISR, independent shift rod,
I think is what that was called,
which was a way to make it shift even faster,
which just was more of a kick in the face.
I mean, okay, you're in a Lamborghini,
you kind of want to beat beat up a little bit.
But that was fucking violent.
Not what I would ever put my own car through.
Yeah, it was when they should have been trying to do a dual clutch,
and instead they invented a better single clutch,
which is still the inferior solution.
I completed my research on Hydraq while you were talking before.
It seems to be the same as Sport-O-Matic or Automatic stick shift.
So a torque converter plus a clutch.
Yeah, with a vacuum actuated clutch,
and then you moved the lever.
And that appeared in 1957.
So quite early.
But Mercedes-Benz.
Which is weird because Mercedes-Benz was, I guess,
not so much then using Automatics widely,
but Mercedes relatively early was like all in on Automatics.
All in, but not on torque converters.
That's the way they used viscous couplings,
which were torque converters without the multiplication.
So they are far less smooth.
But Mercedes never cared about smoothness on their Automatics.
Yeah, I mean, you drive like a 6.3 and it's like...
That has a viscous coupling.
Yeah.
It'll chirp the wheels on a low throttle 2-3 shift.
Yes.
Just...
I mean, it's funny.
It is funny.
And it's appropriate for the character of a 6.3.
Yeah, it's going to punch you in the eye and take your lunch money.
Yes.
Yeah, I just think we've finally gotten to the point
where we've perfected like Automatics torque converters
or dual clutches.
I don't...
They're so close at this point in function that...
Yeah.
The improvement of automatic transmissions in the last...
Ever since the ZF-8 speed came out, I think...
Even the 6 HP was...
I mean, that 6 speed was unbelievable in both...
It's been a look at all the tuning, right?
Yes, manufacturer.
But a 6 HP in like an E39, like a late...
Late E39s.
Those were the 5 HPs?
No, those were a 5 HPs.
They were butter, smooth, silk.
They were slow to shift, but they were so well tuned
that you could just be foot on the floor at all times
and like...
So I had a 525-i automatic wagon.
Foot on the floor anyway.
Everywhere you went, but you never felt the shift.
6 HP and then 8 HP just sort of improved on the quickness
and the ability to tune it and self-learn.
So they stayed that smooth forever.
But if you look at a current 8 HP,
you drive anything like that or a very good dual clutch,
you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference
from the experience.
And that to me, we had wars early on at automobile
about should we use the term for a dual clutch?
Is it an automatic or an automated manual?
And the final decision was...
Got gears inside.
But what's important?
I guess the question is, there are two ways of looking at it.
Do you need to understand the component parts
that go into your car?
Or do you need to understand how it functions?
And from a driver's perspective,
it doesn't really matter what's going on.
This was Don Sherman, our technical editor.
This is the classic case of are you a car enthusiast
because you like driving or because you like cars?
Yes, but do you know, for example,
is it relevant to you that Honda uses planetaries
in their...
Everyone else's automatics are planetaries,
but Honda uses high-point gears.
It's just not relevant to the experience
at the end of the day, what's going on underneath.
And so we decided to call dual clutches automatic.
I didn't agree at the time, I was wrong.
But they're dual clutch automatic
because you just put it in drive and went.
And it didn't really matter unless it was dry
and you were parking on a hill.
It didn't really matter how it functioned,
how it attained that, but it was an automatic.
Whereas the single clutches, we all agree
that is an automated manual
because the experience is so different
and you need to drive it differently.
So therefore it does matter.
But I've just been hearing about people doing
manual ZF8HP conversions.
Have you heard about this?
No.
Manual.
ZF8HP.
So there is...
I've heard about 8HPs going into like old cars before,
but not manual.
So what people are doing is putting a clutch pedal
that is nothing but a potentiometer,
a dimmer effectively,
and then putting a H pattern,
stick shift thing in there that's a bunch of switches,
and then telling the computer to follow
what you're doing, the computer and the transmission.
So it will change the gears,
which is really just engaging clutches,
based on what you're doing.
So you can press in the clutch,
dump the clutch and do a clutch dump launch,
or you can shift harshly if you want.
I haven't driven one of these yet,
but I've heard of a bunch of people working on them.
Interesting solution, or answer, or...
I don't know.
I guess here's why.
That would be finally a world in which
you can have an H pattern shifter
and then just hit D and drive it
in automatic and traffic and never worry about anything.
You could do with the lever.
Just put it over in D.
Maybe there's a...
I don't know.
I don't know.
Porsche just patented another one of these solutions where,
there's nothing difficult about this at all.
For any dual clutch, any automatic at this point,
they're so computer controlled
and you have the ability to jump between
any gear from one gear to another.
It doesn't actually matter.
So I think Porsche,
it wouldn't surprise me if Porsche's next
quote unquote manual is simulated.
Yeah, they have a history of innovating on this axis.
I mean, they did Sport-O-Matic initially,
then they did Tiptronic,
which was just an automatic transmission
with shift buttons and a little separate place
to put the lever when you wanted to tip it forward
or back for gear changes.
And then they, I think,
first started doing dual clutches in race cars in the 80s.
The first ever dual clutch was a Porsche, wasn't it?
Yeah, I think it was a 962 in the 80s, group C car.
And then they introduced it for production in 2009 model year.
So not exactly first.
First would have been Audi TT slash Mark IV R32 in Europe.
Dual clutch.
And Veyron.
Two different suppliers, but same concept.
And then Porsche was a couple of years later with 997.
0.2.
0.2.
But I wouldn't be surprised if Porsche's next manual isn't.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It gives you the option.
Technically.
And I don't, I mean, I guess if it's simulated well enough,
it doesn't really matter.
But what I don't like is, you know, the computer ultimately having control.
There's a difference between you commanding something
and you requesting something.
And so steer by wire is a request drive by wire.
So gas by wire is a request.
There's something different about a command.
And if I want to fuck up a shift, right?
I should be able to do so.
Talk to somebody who's just money shifted their Porsche.
Maybe they wouldn't agree and say, well, I, you know,
I want the idea, I have the ability to put it in first gear at 90 miles an hour
and have the computer say.
No.
Computer says no.
Yeah.
That reference, right?
As opposed to the money shifting, which has got to be like,
if you are particularly abusive,
you should go watch money shifting videos.
It's pretty.
No.
The sound is so terrible.
Yeah.
Especially the aftermath of the motor is still running.
If it's still running.
It's still running.
I think it's interesting to see the way that over the decades,
the objective of these non-manual solutions has evolved.
You know, if you go to pre-war, it was the act of the gear change
and the lack of synchromesh.
That was kind of the thing that you were working around.
And then eventually it was the clutch pedal that became the next frontier
for making advancements and automation,
which is the result of both the technology,
but also like what were the highest pain points of shifting
in the non-synchromesh days or early synchromesh days,
that whole act of gear leverage was kind of, I guess, too much for some.
And so it's interesting to see the way that the technology has evolved
to progressively solve what were the,
from both the technological standpoint and also an operator standpoint,
the most painful points of driving.
And then for the last 20, 30 years, it's been speed plus efficiency
is what everyone's searching for.
Convenience has been solved for.
I mean, a turbo-hydro-matic GM transmission is smoother than just about anything.
And that was true from the early, from the 1940s.
Oh, really?
I don't think I've ever driven a turbo-hydro-matic that old.
Like the two-speed automatics, like Buick early, like 49 Buicks
and stuff like that and 49 Cadillacs,
like all that stuff was really just, you know, the gearing was weird
because some of them were two speeds.
Right.
But the shift itself was probably nearly imperceptible.
I mean, I remember 70s and 80s GM stuff.
You would just la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.
You would go through four gears and not even feel it.
Four.
There hadn't been four gears invented yet.
Three.
Three.
But I mean, yeah, the GM was always amazing with automatics
and you compare that to a period Mercedes,
which every shift would break your neck and spin the wheels.
One was just, you know, the Germans being efficient
because they didn't have free gas the way we did in America.
They also looked at our 7.4-liter engines
like this makes three horsepower per liter.
This is ridiculous.
Yes.
But yeah, everything is just chasing efficiency and speed.
And the reality is, 0-1X, for example,
like you couldn't have a car that does 0-60 as quick as any of these cars do
because the shift alone would ruin any chances.
And now that dual clutches are so well tuned,
their launches are better than we can do.
And the shifts are faster than we can do.
And the whole system can be made to be more efficient.
It's not.
There is no efficiency.
Like a dual clutch will never be as efficient as a manual.
But what you can do is put a stupid long set of cruising gears
and really short launch gears.
Yeah.
And you leave it automated
and it's always going to select a super high gear,
much more so than a person driving a manual.
You're just not going to...
You know, by the time you're doing 21 miles an hour,
some of these cars are in top gear, possibly an exaggeration.
But so they can do better in the real world
and certainly on instrumented testing,
which is what government uses.
And so we're at a point where plus, plus, plus,
don't forget the chassis control integration stuff.
If you have control over throttle and gear selection
and now suspension, diff, all of these other things,
you can help the vehicle handle and drive in a very different way.
You know, you can say...
A person driving a manual is going to put their foot down
and be like, well, that's the wrong gear.
And then downshift.
Oh, that's also the wrong gear and the car will...
But even just efficiency gains, for example,
like I am cruising at 60 miles an hour in a manual
and I'm in a long geared manual, right?
Or let's say it called 50, right?
And I'm at 2,500 RPM in fourth.
The computer could say, well, why not go into sixth
and go foot wide open, foot on the floor and go lean
and reduce some timing or play some tricks with timing
to get to the point of the...
What the fuck is that?
The B-map curve is the efficiency curve, right?
Where the whole car...
It doesn't matter that it's full throttle.
It's actually more efficient than it would be.
So it can play all those games
and you don't even know as a driver
that I'm now under full load
and you wouldn't want to do that in a manual.
You're not going to go...
And keep your foot on the floor
and you feel like you're abusing it.
And with all that stuff happens
in the background of every automatic car now
and it's all for fuel efficiency.
So yeah.
What an uplifting place to end.
Fuel efficiency.
None of that in the Ferrari back there.
And we're back to the beginning of the episode.
Allegedly done.
A gated five-speed that gets no miles per gallon.
And has three pedals.
And has three pedals.
All right.
Well, thank you for joining us
for this week's episode of The Car Margin Show.
That was it.
Well, I'm going to shift and we'll be out.
Ready?
About this episode
The Carmudgeon Show dives into the long, weird history of “clutchless” manual solutions—starting with pre-war preselectors like Wilson and Kotal, then jumping to post-war oddballs such as Citroen’s Citromatic and Mercedes Hydrak, and later to Ferrari’s F1-style single-clutch automation and Valéo’s automated manuals. The hosts compare how these systems tried to solve non-synchro and clutch-footwork problems, why many failed (tuning, dry vs wet clutches, learning/logic), and how today’s dual-clutch automatics finally got close to seamless. Along the way, they debate what “automatic” really means and share horror stories from F1/SMG/SMT experiences.
Original notes
It’s a transmission episode!
Inspired by Jason’s recent roadside spotting of a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia with the rare Automatic Stickshift, the Carmudgeons go for a trip into the origins of abandoning the clutch pedal in manual and automatic transmissions. How has human driving behavior changed or stayed the same throughout history regarding the operation of any transmission?
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Jason and Derek begin by discussing the recent repairs on Jason’s (and once Derek’s) Ferrari 308 GT4 - perhaps the only car discussed on today’s episode with a traditional manual transmission. The 308 GT4 just returned from a trip to Aaron Shepherd - one of the most respected auto body specialists in the San Francisco Bay Area - where it received some wonderfully executed rust repair and paintwork.
The majority of this episode discusses semi-automatic transmissions throughout history, which begs the question - are any of them any good? Wilson and Cotal Preselector transmissions of the 1930s paved the way for clutchless driving and synchromesh - eventually evolving into applications like Citroen’s Citromatic found in the DS21 and Volkswagen’s Auto Stickshift found in the Beetle and Karmann Ghia. Even after torque converter automatics, clutchless manuals still found their way into road cars - like Mercedes-Benz’s Hydrak Transmission and Ferrari’s Valeo Transmission used in late Mondials.
Moving into the 2000s, Jason and Derek remark on how troubled many semi-automatic manuals were at the time - including Ferrari’s F1 gearbox, Maserati DuoSelect, BMW SMG, Toyota SMT, and others which didn’t mind letting a user light a clutch on fire. Luckily - this era was reasonably short-lived, replaced by ZF torque converter automatics and dual clutch transmissions like VW’s DSG and NOT Ford’s horrid SelectShift found in the 2010s Ford Focus, Fiesta, and Escape.
All this and much much more on this episode of The Carmudgeon Show.
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