Ferrari Mailing List: Re: LA Times: Dan Neil on heel-and-toe shifting and the Nissan 370Z

[Fellippe Galletta (fellippe.galletta]

How come nobody responded to this? Did it have to be Ferrari related? lol.

I thought it was an interesting article with potential real world
implications in many enthusiast cars.

FG

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 6:35 PM, Dennis Liu <bigheaddennis [at] gmail.com> 
wrote:

>
>  _____
>
> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-neil5-2008dec05,0,944880.story
>
> >From the Los Angeles Times
>
> With the Nissan 370Z, heel-and-toeing goes the way of the fox trot
>
> The latest Z car gives the few remaining practitioners of the downshifting
> maneuver nothing to dance to.
> By DAN NEIL
>
> December 5, 2008
>
> The heel-and-toe downshift -- whereby drivers "blip" the gas pedal with the
> blade of their right foot, revving the engine, while keeping pressure on
> the
> brake pedal with the ball of the same foot -- is becoming a lost art, a
> performance-driving shibboleth known to few and practiced by fewer.
>
> This tap dance allows drivers to match the engine's speed, the rpm, with
> the
> rotational speed of the lower gear selected; otherwise, when the clutch is
> let out, the engine braking effect causes the car to stumble and slow down.
> If a car is already just hanging on, at the limits of tire adhesion, a
> badly
> muffed downshift will take weight off the rear end and cause a spin. As
> phenomenally brilliant a driver as I am, even I have experienced this a few
> hundred times.
>
> Once, all drivers understood heel-and-toe. Manual gearboxes were
> "unsynchronized" and so, if you didn't rev-match the gears, you'd grind
> them
> marvelously. You also had to "double clutch," but that's another story.
> Heel-and-toe was cultural currency and automotive literacy, the stuff of
> plot points on the old radio cop drama "Calling All Cars." It was to
> driving
> what a proper fox trot was to the summer cotillion. Then synchronized
> manual
> transmissions became common and automatic transmissions commoner still.
> Today, only about 15% of the license-holding public knows how to drive a
> manual-transmission car. I'd estimate that only 1% know their heel from
> their toe.
>
> Within the last decade or so, ultra-performance street cars with Formula
> One-style sequential gearboxes have dispensed with the foot-operated clutch
> altogether (Ferrari, I'm looking at you). During downshifts, the car's
> computers blip the throttle and electrically actuate the clutch mechanism
> in
> hundredths of a second for perfectly smooth, flawless rev-matching the
> likes
> of which Fangio could only dream of.
>
> Then came paddle-shifted automatic transmissions that were nearly as
> efficient as sequential boxes but effortlessly smoother. And then
> cybernetically controlled dual-clutch gearboxes, such as the ones in the
> Bugatti Veyron or the new Porsche 911. Not only did fewer drivers need the
> heel-and-toe technique, there were fewer reasons to learn. Heels and toes
> were being lost like fingers at an Ozark sawmill.
>
> And now it's time to say the final misty and maudlin words over
> heel-and-toe. The 2009 Nissan 370Z is the first car to have a computerized
> rev-matching system -- called, awfully enough, "SynchroRev Match" -- in a
> conventional, H-pattern manual transmission. Gone now is the secret decoder
> ring of fast driving, the sacred handshake of the Clutch Brotherhood, the
> Esperanto of in-car footwork. Sic transit gloria heel-and-toe.
>
> This is the first major overhaul of the Z car since 2003, and Nissan has
> moved all the needles in the right directions. The car is shorter (by 4
> inches), wider, lower and lighter (by 95 pounds), stiffer and more powerful
> (332 horsepower from the 3.7-liter V-6, up 26 hp from the previous car's
> 3.5-liter). The base price holds steady at about $30,000 while the full
> glam
> of the leather-lined, alloy-wheeled, Bluetoothed Touring package with Sport
> options comes in around $36,500.
>
> With its cantilevered roof, whiskered catfish mouth, zircon-like headlamps
> and roped shoulders, the new Z looks like the old car and the Nissan GT-R
> have been slammed together in the Large Hadron Collider.
>
> This is a righteous little sport tourer, nicely balanced and tighter than
> Rick Wagoner's smile. And yet, in the long telescope of automotive history,
> the new Z car would be but a footnote -- a capable and conscientious
> updating of a successful car -- but for the rev-matching innovation.
> Optional with the Sport package, the feature will, I predict, make its way
> to other manual-gearbox cars, in and outside of Nissan's line. In 10 years,
> every stick-shift-stirred car will have it. Toes, heels, adieu, adieu.
>
> I grudgingly concede, rev-matching works beautifully. You can be full on
> the
> boil in fifth gear coming into a corner, get hard on the big brakes and
> walk
> down the gears -- fourth, third, second -- and before you can release the
> clutch, the engine soars with rpm as the computer algorithmically ciphers
> the exact revs to match the gear speed. YUNGgggg, YUNGGGG, YUNNGGGGGG!!! .
> .
> . You can't trick it and you can't beat it to the punch. Release the clutch
> and the uptake is buttery and slick, a dynamic nonevent.
>
> You can switch off the system and practice heel-and-toeing on your own, but
> you will find the machine executes downshifts better, and you will be left
> inconsolable with your obsolete skill.
>
> So what? After all, I don't know how to change a tubed tire. And I couldn't
> get a Model T out of neutral if you held a tommy gun to my head. Techniques
> change with technology.
>
> It's just that heel-and-toeing makes drivers an integral, biomechanical
> part
> of the drivetrain, adjudicating between the engine and the rear wheels. You
> feel and appreciate the machinery. You vibe to the buzzy pulse of the
> engine
> through the blade of your foot and the shifter in your right palm. As a
> matter of driver involvement, heel-and-toeing is a hedge against boredom,
> and boredom is forever the enemy in sports cars, followed closely by
> inattention.
>
> So what if I can wear my big, heavy Allen Edmonds shoes instead of my
> Piloti
> driving slippers? I like my driving shoes. So rev-matching is faster and
> more efficient. So is euthanasia.
>
> Another sodden blanket of technology has been thrown between me and the
> road. Another window opened to the klutzy, unweaned poseurs. More enabling
> of the inept. Progress.
>
> Bah. I wash my heels and toes of the whole thing.
>
> dan.neil [at] latimes.com
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