Beginning of the end for the (Auto) "Stick" Shifter?

[ls99]

Get rid of the consoles. Return to the good old days when your girlfriend could snuggle up to you. With consoles you can barely hold hands. If your date didn't sit close, it wasn't going to be a good date.

Many pickup trucks have fold up center console. In time I may get to have the benefit.

 

[Chuckanut]

Back in the early 70's a friend of mines' father drove a car that had the those push buttons on the dashboard to the left of the steering wheel. Have no idea what the car was.

Mike

My father had a Chrysler Imperial with Push Button Drive. I think his Chrysler Seratoga also had PBD, but I am not 100% certain.

 

[aja8888]

Yeah, I've seen many models with a rotary selector. I'm thinking Jag started this trend.

The paddle shifters are typically used with automatics not manuals. With more gears to select (e.g. 8 speed automatic) many offer a paddle or other +/- selection to supplement PRND.
In the heavy duty world we offered customers a choice of push button or traditional selector since the 90s. Push button was 1/3 the cost and captured 90% penetration.

Many direct shift gearboxes (DSG's) have paddle shifters also. This is the dual clutch manual transmission that the Germans developed 10+ years ago that is becoming commonplace in Euro and American performance cars. I had a 6 speed DSG in my 2006 Jetta diesel.

 

[GravitySucks]

Can we get the 61 Chrysler /Dodge setup back? It looks classy.
https://goo.gl/images/gHgDEP
Everything old is new again.

 

[GravitySucks]

Many direct shift gearboxes (DSG's) have paddle shifters also. This is the dual clutch manual transmission that the Germans developed 10+ years ago that is becoming commonplace in Euro and American performance cars. I had a 6 speed DSG in my 2006 Jetta diesel.

Paddle shifters on my 4 cylinder Camry SE.... Most useless option ever.

 

[aja8888]

Paddle shifters on my 4 cylinder Camry SE.... Most useless option ever.

Yeah, it's a Camry...agreed!

 

[Rustic23]

Not exactly on topic, but I would like to see the steering wheel disappear. Put a joystick between the seats. Hook it to the gas pedal, break, and steering. You could then drive from either seat. Place buttons on top for lane keeping, active cruise control and such.

 

[Out of Steam]

Paddle shifters on my 4 cylinder Camry SE.... Most useless option ever.

I have them on my Subaru and use them quite a bit to downshift, mostly when going down hills.

 

[scrabbler1]

Back in the mid-1980s, I had a friend who owned a 1963 Dodge something. It didn't run but it had that push-button transmission. She was hoping to keep it until at least 1988 so it would attain antique status and she could get some money for it. I recall she was able to do it.


When I took Driver Ed in high school in 1981, we drove a car which had its transmission handle in the steering column, pretty typical for 1970s cars, especially those made in America. But it had a minor flaw in that the letters in the steering column PRNDL didn't quite line up with the gear the car was in, making it somewhat awkward to shift gears. You had to count the clicks and feel the car shake slightly ever time you passed through a gear. But I had no problem with this flaw because my family's main car had a similar flaw resulting from a minor mishap back in the mid-1970s which caused the letters to misalign with the actual gear the car was in. I was used to lining up the shifter in "N" when putting the car into Drive. Pretty strange coincidence, huh?

 

[jazz4cash]

Get rid of the consoles. Return to the good old days when your girlfriend could snuggle up to you. With consoles you can barely hold hands. If your date didn't sit close, it wasn't going to be a good date.

You could invent and patent the seatbelt system that lets you snuggle up while belted in. Also an airbag targeting system that protects the couple[emoji2]

 

[jazz4cash]

I have them on my Subaru and use them quite a bit to downshift, mostly when going down hills.

Yeah but 99.999 % of drivers only know P,R, and D. If you include N, it's maybe 90%.

 

[scrabbler1]

I drove a stick for much of the 1980s and into the early 1990s before I bought my first A/T car in 1992. One habit I developed in those stick years when stopped at a red light was to put the car into neutral if it was on level ground and take my foot off the brake. When I drive an A/T car, I do the same thing at red lights on level ground - put it into neutral and take my foot off the brake. Keeps me from accidentally moving forward when at a red light.

 

[dixonge]

The first car I got to drive on a regular basis was a 60's Plymouth Valiant - looked a bit like this:

 

[Car-Guy]

I had one of these "at one time". 1960 Plymouth Fury. Push button auto (buttons on the far left side) and a rectangular steering wheel and a bar graph speedometer.

 

[Koolau]

Given my 'druthers' I'd keep the shifter either on the 'tree' or on the console AND it would be the usual lever - unless it were the dual clutch with paddle shifters (on console.) That's just my druthers for location. I HATE cars with the shifter coming out of the middle of the "dash" just above the console. It feels all wrong.

BUT no matter where they decide to place the shifter, I want as much control as possible over the car. Some auto-trans models today have only P R N D. There appears to be no option to use a lower gear at will. There are times when it is advantageous to have a lower gear (hauling larger loads and or up-hill, long decent of a hill, etc.) Also, most cars do not provide it, but I had a Subaru Loyale which had the ability to "launch" the car in 2nd gear instead of DRIVE which starts the car out in "low" gear (auto-trans). This car had on demand 4WD but starting it out on ice in D the wheels might spin because of the excess torque - especially when the fuel injection was enriching the mixture during warm-up. Placing it in "2" cut the torque and allowed the car to gently extricate itself from almost ANY slick situation. Only problem with that car (and I'm guessing most 4WD cars): It would get you into trouble faster than the brakes could get you out of it. It gave a false sense of traction which the brakes didn't share. I forget if it had ABS - probably not.

As far as a console is concerned, most cars aren't really wide enough to provide a middle front seat (not really a middle back seat either - but that seems to be standard.) My guess is that the safety issues of adding a middle front seat (air bags and safety harness) would cost too much for the added room. We've adapted to vehicles with 5 seats. If your family is too big for such seating, you have options for minivans or 3-row seating in an SUV.

Back before seat belts (and especially back before harnesses and air bags) I had a 1960 Ford Falcon (a COMPACT) that more-or-less comfortably seated six teenagers (before the middle-age spread set in.) But now we're talking ancient history. YMMV

 

[eytonxav]

I can remember my father's 59 Plymouth Fury with the big fins and fake spare tire on the trunk and the push button dash mounted transmission. It was a great looking car.

 

[ncbill]

with a CVT replacing traditional auto trannies there are no longer discrete gears.

P-R-N-D are the only settings needed.

i still don't like 'em - would rather buy/lease a manual tranny vehicle.

which I can't do since no one else in my family knows how to drive one.

I also drive them nuts by shifting into N at red lights...