What is driving pleasure?

Honestly what is it? Is it an emotion that is evoked when driving? But it’s not quantifiable.
To me personally is when I am happy because I am driving. But why am I happy?
why are you? why are we happier when we drive a certain car or happier when driving on a certain road?

As an engineer I try to quantify everything and this is my take on it.
From a drivers perspective a car is a drivers car when it has good handling, decent power and involvement.

The first two are easy to do. at least from the perspective of a car manufacturer. But for a car to be called a drivers car it has to have driving involvement.
So what is that?
I know it is subjective, but for me personally driving involvement is linked directly to steering feedback, throttle response, breaking, and the transmission

The latter is something that changed radically in the past years.
In the olden days you could opt for a manual or an automatic.
When you think about a drivers car before the year 2000 it probably featured a manual.

In the last couple of years however car manufacturers introduced the Formula 1 inspired flappy paddles control scheme, which is an automatic with a request gear option. It is not a manual.
They boast about how faster this transmission is on the track, the fact that a drivers car today is a racecar and it needs it.

But is it? Well not to me. When I think about a drivers car it has a manual in it, or at least the car can come with a manual.
A drivers car is meant to be driven on a great road, not the racetrack. It still has comodities like a radio or air conditioning.

911 GT3 RS vs 911 R

People today do not necessarily buy a car for driving pleasure, and car manufacturers know this. Driving pleasure is just a bonus, it’s not the selling point of a car anymore
The automatic transmission comes in all Lamborghini cars, all Ferrari cars, most Mercedes sports cars, BMW s, Audi s etc.
Ford even announced that the new mustang will come with flappy paddle only. Chevrolet made the same decision about the Corvette.
Drivers cars are becoming less and less popular.

Going back a minute about involvement, does a car with an automatic or a flappy paddle has involvement?

You see that something is missing, the car is just not as involving, and is incomplete as a drivers car( at least for me).

The automatic and flappy paddle have their benefits however.
Although they lack driving involvement they make up for it in features like radar guided cruise control, lane assist, auto-park and so on.
But these are confort and safety features they are not for a drivers car.

If you could only have one car, a car that you have to share with someone else, you probably take these features over driving pleasure.
And so the drivers car becomes obsolete.

But does it have to? What if you could still have a manual, the car could still be a drivers car, yet have the features and the confort of an automatic.
Read the campaign below and tell me what you think.
Donate and I will make the hybrid gearbox a reality.

if it exists, you can have it.

The hybrid gearbox currently exists only as a concept, only in simulations and calculations ,it does not exist as an actual gearbox.

Help me make it a reality!

Comment below on what you think of this ideea, and if you like it, please donate.

Comments

Darg

I agree with what you say. A car to really tickle my fancy has to have a manual. Getting that perfect heel toe downshift is euphoric to me. Like buying my sti, i knew there was more powerful or comfortable options. But the sound is what really gets me

02/03/2017 - 22:56 |
1 | 0
Williard

In reply to by Darg

As nice as it sounds no one’s gonna go and spec an optional extra hybrid gear box that would have a larger premium that manual or automatic and will be a lot more hassle to service. You’ll either buy a manual or automatic

02/04/2017 - 10:22 |
1 | 0

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