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

Have to agree with Bob.

Automatic's ABS, Traction control.. etc

I am a dinosaur, like the mechanical skills I learned from age 10 (1954) to 

the driving age 12 (1956) have mostly been replaced by technology which is 

good for the most part (be honest who misses points and condencers), my wife 

who I tought to drive a stick (59 bugeye) in the middle of the night in L.A. 

(1967) can pass in the Avelanche by just steping on the gas.

Stephen

----- Original Message ----- 

From: <robert_h_bowser [at] juno.com>

To: "Stephen" <sherman [at] wildblue.net>
Cc: "The FerrariList" <ferrari [at] ferrarilist.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 11:28 PM

Subject: Re: [Ferrari] LA Times: Dan Neil on heel-and-toe shifting and 

theNiss an 370Z

Maybe no one commented because it is simply an example of the logical 

progression of the dumbing down of the modern driving experience.  You 

don't have to be good to drive fast.  Only have a technologically advanced 

car.  Sad, but inevitable.

Bob

-- Fellippe Galletta <fellippe.galletta [at] gmail.com> wrote:
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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Re: LA Times: Dan Neil on heel-and-toe shifting and theNiss an 370Z	<– Date –> <– Thread –>
From: Stephen Sherman (shermanwildblue.net)
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:36:52 -0800 (PST)