Ask The Best And Brightest: Your Shifting Paradigm?

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

Ladies and gentlemen… As Katt Williams once said, “this country is in turmoil.”

If you haven’t read Brendan McAleer’s CX-5 review yet, go read it! I will wait right here while you do.

Pretty good, huh? I have to admit that when I read it, I was coasting along, just kind of enjoying B-Mac’s trenchant turns of phrase, and then…

Occasionally, however, a bit of a firm prod on the accelerator is required to provoke a downshift. And the manual-shift mode is BMW-backwards

Did he say backwards? I immediately sat down, opened up my ultra-modern text editor known as “emacs”, and composed the following measured response:

OMFG HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT PUSHING FORWARD TO DOWNSHIFT IS WRONG I MEAN FFS HOMIE DID YOU EVER STOP TO THINK THAT WHEN APPROACHING A CORNER UNDER FULL BRAKING THE ONLY GOD DAMN MOTION YOU CAN COMFORTABLY AND NATURALLY EFFING PERFORM IS TO EFFING PUSH FORWARD I MEAN THINK ABOUT THE KINESWHATEVER OF THE ORTHOTHINGY I HOPE A GORILLA ESCAPES FROM THE TORONTO ZOO AND BREAKS INTO YOUR STYLISH TOWN HOME TONIGHT IN CANADA AND VIOLATES YOU REPEATEDLY UNTIL YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT RAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGEEEEEEEE UHH! BULLS ON PARADE!

Unfortuantely for me, however, when I was typing I accidentally banged my head into the keyboard hard enough to force me to pause and consider the situation for a moment. Yes, the “push forward to downshift” configuration is correct for any kind of fast driving, particularly fast back-road driving in a street car where loose inertia-reel seatbelts can occasionally make it difficult to stand your whip on its nose at corner entry and pull back on a shifter. Every sequential-shift race car in the world uses push-to-downshift. Even motorcycles are push-to-downshift, and that works correctly as well because acceleration and deceleration change the way your weight rests on your feet while riding.

Let’s take a moment, however, to consider the times when drivers in “normal” situations will call for a downshift from their automatic (or double-clutch) transmissions. Typically it isn’t during deceleration; it’s during a situation where the driver wants to accelerate more. Let’s say you’re on a two-lane road and you are getting ready to pass a slower vehicle. You know you’re going to need the lower gear, so you select it ahead of time. In that situation, the “pull-to-downshift” motion makes the most sense. Veteran auto-transmission drivers who are used to pulling a shift lever back to engage one of the manually-selectable lower gears in an older vehicle are also comfortable with this motion. The oft-cited “man in the street” expects to pull back to downshift.

Some day, in the far-flung future, merely touching a car will enable it to read your DNA and know your established preference for such things. In the meantime, we need to settle this issue once and for all. Push, or pull, to downshift? What say you, B&B? No wimping-out and talking about paddle shifters, either!

Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

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  • Tedward Tedward on Mar 23, 2012

    speaking for myself only, forward for downshift and back for upshift. Doing it the other way around always requires a conscious effort, despite the fact that basically every car I drive with a selectable auto does it the "wrong" way. The people that don't care will adjust to whatever is given them, they really don't know enough to even notice. Those of us that do care tend to want it the "right" way, so why not cater to us instead? Let's be really real, you know the test drivers in house are all in the down = forward camp.

  • DeeTee DeeTee on Mar 27, 2012

    My Back-asswards Motor Werks is a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. Many of the controls are so frustratingly counter-intuitive that the car proves the point that thinking inside the box is under-rated. Wipers in a modern car should be easy, right? Nope. Down is one wipe, up is low, but the little button on the end is auto. Cruise stalk up or down to go faster or slower, right? Nope. Either move will cancel. iDrive is a game of Snakes and Ladders - five clicks, four twirls and a couple of shoves followed by one wrong move and you're back to square one (don't touch the menu button - it's the meanest snake). Ever see a five series turn a corner and flash it's indicators left then right then left again? Pity the poor driver who is just trying to cancel the indicators. To zoom the map out just spin the wheel left. Or maybe it's right. Doesn't matter which way cause you'll never remember which way does what and you'll have to spin it the other way anyway. And there's a bunch more like this. So the thing is an ergonomic mess of Germanic proportions. Except for the transmission. Maybe the blind squirrels found a nut but I suspect the engineers genuinely figured it out because the transmission works perfectly. Want Sport mode? Pull the lever closer (not further away) - right where you want it to be. Then drive the car as hard as you like with your eyes down the road and your hands mostly on the wheel, changing gears when you need to. The car abides. When pedaling hard (for example, the DC Beltway late on a Tuesday evening) you want the next lower gear *exactly* when you want it and that's invariably at the same time that a lot of other exciting stuff is going on. (Like, oh I dunno, a minivan defiantly entrenched in the left lane and a closing gap next to it with some trucks and orange cones and stuff). A half second to late is a small problem but a half second too early can be a disaster (well, in a manual box anyway - the auto's computer won't allow a bad shift - but once you've compression locked the rears or over-revved an engine then you kinda remember how important this is to get right). Downshifts are much more time-sensitive events than upshifts and pushing on the lever makes shifting more consistent and faster (by faster I mean less time with your hand off the wheel). Upshifts are more relaxed and don't have the adrenaline or split-second timing of a downshift. You have time to reach down, wrap your mitt around the lever, look in the rear-view mirror at the rapidly receding scenery and then pull one more full-throttle upshift before the next "third gear chicane aka minivan in the left lane I'm gonna grin like a loon again" event. (Warning: The author does not condone the practice of driving a minivan in the left lane. Always drive responsibly.)

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    • Ophelia Ophelia on Mar 27, 2012

      @Occam I haven't had that problem with automatics at stops. I shift in and out of Neutral at stops all the time in the four banger Fusion. I do wait for the car to shift slightly before adding gas though. Ford console shifters are quirky with the button depress to get into and out of Neutral. Other autos I just slap in or out of the Neutral gate. The V6 and V6 AWD models will give you the awkward +/- shift button on the lever. The earlier model years had a discrete M shift gate.

  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.
  • ToolGuy Ford is good at drifting all right... 😉
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