bruddahmanmatt

I was about to say. How about Nissan/Infiniti strip all 6 gears of their synchros and force us to double clutch our upshifts as well as our downshifts? That way we get even more "manual control" over the car.

In all honesty I think hill assist is a great feature. Yes it is doing work for the driver, but that standard reverse camera on the rear end of an FX is doing work for the driver as well and yet I don't hear any of you guys bitching about that or the fact that the G37 is going to be available with one? In all honesty I agree and disagree with both sides. Hill assist would be a nice feature to have, but I'm not gonna die without it. The big drawback IMO is that you'll miss it when you get into a stick shift car without the feature. One of the downsides to the reverse camera on the rear of the FX or the QX for that matter is that when I get into other similarly sized SUVs, I'm like "ugh crap, I have to turn around." Yes these features make us a little more lazy, but they're benefits that come with owning a higher line luxury car. "Full feel of a manual?" Give me a break. Half of you ladies would run home to Mommy if you drove a REAL M22 or A-833 4-on-the-floor stick shift. Besides, if we had a hill assist feature on our 6MTs you folks would be slamming other manufacturers for not including it on their products.

Now how about we stop this girlish bickering and all go drive the s**t out of our 6MTs?

dmkozak

iTrader: (1)

Actually, a manual transmission allows the driver to control what gear they want to drive in. Nothing more and nothing less. This should be the "control" you are talking about. And, this has nothing to do with starting or stopping.

As long as they are shifting gears for themselves they are "manually" shifting the transmission.

dmkozak

iTrader: (1)

A few years ago, a journalist was interviewing Al Unser Sr and Al Unser Jr at Indy. He asked them how fast they thought the average driver could drive an Indy car around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. They both kind of chuckled. The writer asked them what was so funny. They replied they didn't think the average driver could even get an Indy car out of the pits onto the course. I butted in and said I disagreed. They both reminded me how hard it was to use an Indy car clutch (especially if you had never driven one before) and how hard it was to shift the dog-cut gears. They told the writer that if someone had never driven a car like this, no matter how fast they had driven elsewhere and no matter what kinds of production or production based race cars they had driven, there was literally no way someone without experience could jump in an Indy car and get it going and up to speed.

I wonder how much this applies to most of this thread. I don't hear anyone complaining about starter motors (should we hand crank our cars to get them started?). I don't hear anyone complaining about power brakes. I don't hear anyone complaining about clutch master cylinders. I don't hear anyone saying we should go back to a purely mechanical unassisted clutch. (Try driving a Corvette or McLaren with a 467 Reynolds aluminum engine and tell me it's clutch is the same as your G35 clutch.) So, what is the problem with hill hold assist? Personally, I don't care if the car has it or not. It will some day. And, I'll drive the same whether the clutch has hill hold assist or not.

P.S. When I had butted in to the Unser interview, I had forgotten that actually having driven Indy cars might have separated me from the all the drivers that hadn't.

verbal assassin

hill assist? hahah. stick to the automatics......

if you really need help on steep hills or if some moron is up ur crack on a steep hill, just pull up the ebrake... when its time to roll, just gas it up, and let go the brake.

dmkozak

iTrader: (1)

I am confused. Shouldn't all the cavemen also be criticizing Geico in these posts?

RBull

iTrader: (1)

Correct, there are some on this thread that need to learn that.

RBull

iTrader: (1)

I haven't really got any issue with hill assist. I don't personally have any trouble with driving my MT in hilly areas but I also think if it can make driving on them a little easier that's fine too.

I don't really see it as dumbing down driving a manual. We are seeing many technological advances such as synchros, SMG trannies etc and this is all good IMHO. hill assist is just anther small improvement.