Ferrari Mailing List: Re: NFC: Comparing manual to auto trans on race track

[Fellippe Galletta (fellippe.galletta]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 2:29 AM, Michael James
<cavallino_rapante [at] yahoo.com>wrote:

> Eh, everyone is 'in-love' with paddle-shift on the column now, it was only
> a matter of time before Porsche realized that F1-equipped Ferraris were
> whipping Porsche street cars through the gears regularly.  P had to copy F
> as a matter of pride/business or lose market-share to the 'faster' car.
> Ferrari's system appears to be superior in shift-speed and development.
> Anyone who says different can please show me the Porsche-designed Formula 1
> car with paddleshifts.....
>

Hard to say which is faster, but Ferrari is going with a dual clutch
transmission on the California...



>
> But I'm also to understand that Lambo, F and P 'semi-auto' trannies all
> have a 'full-auto' mode as well, where the car requires no shifting input
> from the driver whatsoever and essentially operates like my Grandfather's
> Buick.  This is why we now have the Nu-Money, Paris Hiltons of the world
> bipping around Hollywood in Italy's latest when just ten years ago none of
> these tools knew how to drive these cars.....progress ain't always a 'good'
> thing, no?
>
> M
>

It's annoying in that it winds up increasing the amount of poseurs on the
road. Was there such a thing as a Poseur driving a Ferrari 365 GTB/4 or a
Lamborghini Miura?

If you offer the clutchless transmission, the full auto mode is not really
making anything worse than it already is. If anything, lots of people
dislike it because it's not as smooth as a real torque converter auto.

FG