carcounsel.com |HID|

Mini is fitting every car in its range with stop-start technology that switches off the engine when the vehicle is stationary, and an alternator that charges the battery during braking. Cars fitted with manual gearboxes will also be fitted with a display that tells the driver the best gear to use for optimum economy.The additions will come at no extra cost and have no impact on top speed or acceleration figures. They improve fuel consumption by 6.9% on the Cooper, 10.3% on the Cooper S. – What Car?

Click here for a link to a video from Car and Driver.

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(And don’t think you have to get a large truck or SUV to get the job done – a few people I know prefer the BMW X5 4.4i to the Suburbans etc. they’d owned because its easier to feel in control of the vehicle whether somethings dragging behind you or not. Plus you have a really fun car to drive when the trailer’s unhitched).

The Evo’s a tricky blighter to launch. A ball of pent-up energy, it’s all too easy to let the engine flounder off-boost, cremate the clutch, or send such a jolt through the transmission that something pops. But John Barker learned the knack from an engineer some time ago, and it’s something he’s passed on, Yoda-like, to the rest of the evo team. The secret is to hold the car against the handbrake, clutch biting, engine boosting, any slack on the drivetrain taken up, before simply releasing the handbrake and punching away from the line. It’s a bit disconcerting at first, but surprisingly kind to the car. – evo

It’s no wonder that more 16-18 year olds die in cars each year than any other group. Combine hubris, peer pressure, hand-me-down cars with bald tires and all too often alcohol and it’s a minor miracle each time your child’s head hits their pillow and not their airbag. You’d want your children to have mace or martial arts training if they lived in a high crime area, so why not give give them the skills they need to keep their cars under control – something that is sadly NOT taught or required by our government before a license is issued.

I cant urge parents enough to consider a program such as this one. (There is a school in the St. Louis area on May 20th but with only 30 available slots don’t delay).

They will learn to look far enough ahead to anticipate unwise actions of other drivers… They will learn how their cars feel and sound just before and as they exceed the limits of tire adhesion in a controlled situation, helping them to avoid accidents in actual everyday driving situations where they might experience problems… They will experience each exercise element several times, in order to learn from their mistakes and to improve their skills.

(Anecdotally I used to consider myself a great driver who just happened to get into the occasional accident. Then at age 20 my parents paid for my first advanced driver training. Within 20 minutes I realized how little control I really had – I haven’t exceeded limits and lost control since).

If nothing else, $60 is a lot less than an insurance deductible…

Q: When taught to drive stick I was told that, to save wear and tear on the clutch, I should put it in neutral about 100 feet from my complete stop before fully applying the brake. Is this true? Also when should I shift from one gear to the next? Have any other tips for someone who wants to drive a manual?

A: Whoever taught you taught you wrong.

You should stay in gear as long as possible, applying the brake as you would in an automatic until engine speeds falls to where the fuel comes back on (youll feel the burp/hiccup). The speed and distance varies depending on what gear you’re in when you see the red light/stop sign ahead.

Doing so saves wear on the brakes and saves gas too (in a fuel injected car the engine uses no gas at all when you are rolling in gear until the fuel comes back on somewhere above 1000 rpm. Rolling with the clutch depressed or the car in neutral uses as much gas as you would sitting at a stoplight. Rolling with the clutch depressed wears the throw out bearing on the clutch and that or rolling in neutral can cause premature wear of both the fluid and the transmission). If you’re concerned about clutch wear keep your foot away from the pedal unless you’re actually switching gears and get the car going with as little gas/engine speed as possible.

As far as when to shift – that’s more of a feel thing – you press the gas as you would in an auto then shift when acceleration lets up in that gear. The goal is to shift when the next gear has something to offer, not before so its often better to shift a little too late than a little too early (Lugging an engine is more damaging than reving it a little higher).

Anyone can keep a manual from stalling – the real satisfaction is the challenge of executing every shift smoothly. The best drivers shift up and down with such smoothness that your coffee and your sleeping passenger’s head is less unsettled than it would be if you were in an automatic.

Every time we hear someone complain that their car understeers, we think to ourselves “they’re probably not driving it the way it was designed to be driven.”

As we said before in this piece, while some cars like a tidy, textbook technique, those with trick differentials only come alive when tossed into a corner and slid most of the way back out.

It’s a bit of a trend that’s sweeping the industry because it makes for great magazine cover shots but I question if it makes the car less enjoyable 99.9% of the time, for 99.9% of owners who don’t know as much as carcounsel |HID| readers.

Autocar’s Andrew Frankel agrees:

Try as I might, I just couldn’t get into the groove with it. I tried guiding it across the Spanish landscape as I would a Boxster S, but found myself missing apexes, turning in to corners too late, constantly having to correct my position on the road. Had a handy racetrack not presented itself, I might still believe the fault lay with the car rather than me. But on the circuit I discovered that trying to flow with the car and steering it smoothly was about as pointless as wearing sunglasses in bed. It would simply magnify all the problems found on the road, understeering stubbornly and leaving you wondering where on earth BMW went wrong. In fact, all it really needed was a different approach: a brutal approach. Instead of throttling back to stop the nose peeling away from a corner, you do the reverse and use judicious amounts of throttle to drive through the understeer, kicking the tail wide and into one of those drifting powerslides that look several times more heroic than they actually are. Treated like this, and once I’d convinced myself that the differential would allow insane slip angles without actually letting the car spin, it drove in much the same way you feel that TVRs should but all too rarely do. Informed and enthused by my discovery, I removed the Z4M from the track and applied what I had learned in diluted form to the medium of the public road. And do you know what? The Z4M transformed in my head from a borderline disaster to what it always promised to be:a seriously good-fun roadster. Even though it and the Boxster S take diametrically opposed routes to the provision of driving pleasure, this does not mean one is necessarily right and the other inevitably wrong. Indeed, if you get your thrills from the delight of feeling the back of the car move and your reassurance from the knowledge that the car has enough basic agility and suspension sophistication to allow you to round it up with ease, then the Z4M driven with the right measure of controlled savagery provides a kind of pleasure the Boxster S driver will never know. But I might get weary of its relentless animalistic nature. Fun though the Z4M can be on the right road or track, this is no substitute for the sensitivity, precision and feel imparted so freely by the Boxster S. However and wherever you drive it, you will never be as at one with the Z4M as you will in a Boxster S.

(Click here) for a previous post on the Z4 M).

seen in Car and Driver Forums:

Q) Why doesn’t Lexus offer a manual transmission in the IS 350?  Any plans to do so?

A) The IS 250 is our core model, representing over 80 percent of sales. With this volume, we believe the IS 250 with manual transmission (M/T) will meet the needs for those consumers desiring a 6-speed manual and provides a very competitive value.  The volume of M/T sales within the segment the IS 350 will compete is very small, and we do not forecast enough demand to warrant production of a M/T choice for the IS 350.  If the market should change, we will, of course, consider a M/T for the IS 350.

Commentary: A driver who choses a manual is generally an enthusiast, so we’re surprised that the more powerful car comes as an auto only. That said, manual transmissions are a relative afterthought to Lexus and Mercedes-Benz. Proof: the foot activated parking brake makes it impossible to keep the car from rolling back when starting off on a hill in a manual…

(BMWs and Hondas tend to make better manuals, Benz and Toyota better autos).

UPDATE: AutoExpress has driven the manual IS250, and find it the weakest link in an otherwise compelling package…

...the engine’s tendency to hang on to the revs means making smooth progress requires concentration – and this isn’t helped by the clutch’s heavy action at the top of its travel, or the fact that the gearlever is angled, and takes some getting used to. Thanks to the auto’s closer gearing, the manual car is thirstier…

UPDATE 2:

you can opt for a manual IS. That said, you probably shouldn’t. Lexus’s command of super-smooth auto transmissions is unquestioned, but it doesn’t have a good manual. The shift lacks the positivity and involvement of the 3-Series, feels notchy and cheap and is set at a weird angle that, although arguably ergonomic, upsets the otherwise effective cabin symmetry. And this isn’t an option that does any favours to that fabled Lexus refinement… [buy] the manual and you end up with a hell of a lot less car. source: Top Gear

carcounsel was founded on the principle that there is too much information for the consumer to process effectively. In an age of falso advertising, sales and marketing claims we’ve adopted a ‘less is more’ and ‘quality over quantity’ approach that resonates with each of our clients.

According to two pieces we came across recently, a similar approach is needed when it comes to road signs. First there’s this piece from What Car?.

motorists can only expect to cope with between three and seven pieces of information at a time, and instinctively recognise this because they turn down radios when they need to concentrate.

Next up is this piece from Wired

Hans Monderman is a traffic engineer who hates traffic signs. Oh, he can put up with the well-placed speed limit placard or a dangerous curve warning on a major highway, but Monderman considers most signs to be not only annoying but downright dangerous… The approach is radically counterintuitive: Build roads that seem dangerous, and they’ll be safer… The common thread in the new approach to traffic engineering is a recognition that the way you build a road affects far more than the movement of vehicles. It determines how drivers behave on it, whether pedestrians feel safe to walk alongside it, what kinds of businesses and housing spring up along it. “A wide road with a lot of signs is telling a story,” Monderman says. “It’s saying, go ahead, don’t worry, go as fast as you want, there’s no need to pay attention to your surroundings. And that’s a very dangerous message.”

Another sign that causes accidents? Believe it or not speed limit signs. You see studies have shown that it’s not speed itself that kills but speed differentials – if some cars are doing 60 and others 80 there are more lane changes and accidents. If everyone is doing 75 traffic flows more smoothly and safely from exit to exit. Proof: when the national limit of 55mph was dropped the death toll went down more sharply than ever before.

And that’s a fact.