2008 Audi R8: Push to Upshift? Are You Nuts.

They've had this sort of digital gauge for a while, well before Mitsu.

I agree... I have a Mazda and an Audi and the Audi is backwards.

The gear display on the Mitsubishis is much and bolder than the single-pixel numerals found in the Audi.

Actually, the Hyundai Sonata V6 my family rented a couple years ago had the "right" manual gear setup. Weird, huh?

Yup, that shift pattern is ass backwards. Nissan does the same thing unfortunately. Mitsubishi has it right on the EVO X though, both with the paddle shifter design and if you wanted to tug on the knob. Just goes to show who has real racing experience... Mazda, BMW, and Mitsubishi.

and yes, everyone is copying Audi's design elements...

Bass ackwards indeed, Scott!

Hmm...It's odd to me that some of Audi's newer cars have an LCD between the gauges, but the flagship car has to make due with the display from a GTI. Hmm...I guess there had to be a reason for it to cost half as much as a Gallardo.

Also, not to be one of "those" commenters, but doesn't the R8 have Audi's R-tronic gearbox?

It's R-Tronic in the R8, not S-Tronic. S-Tronic is reserved for the dual-clutch models.

Sorry Scott. Gotta disagree with you here. To me, and a lot of other carmakers, the thinking is:

"+" Pushing the gearshift lever forward means you're accelerating—as in going forward.

"-" Pulling the gearshift lever rearward means you slowing down—so you pull back.

To me it's intuitive and makes perfect sense. It's just like with power window switches: You pull up on the switch to raise it, and push down on it to lower it. To me the Mazda and others that use that format, are assbackwards. :)

I've got a BMW and I thought all of you auto-journalists have complained about the direction BMW uses. Now I see the complaining goes both ways.

The fact is that if you're an owner rather than a reviewer, you get used to whatever you've got.

Mazda and BMW do have it right. I find that I use the manual gate in my car all the time due to it's intuitiveness.

However, I think other companies use the other configuration as it makes sense when the car is stationary. Your brain naturally interprets "Up" with moving the lever forward and "Down" with backward. Obviously, this does not take momentum into play so I do think there's a method to the madness.

Bob Holland, I agree in principle. For me it is more intuitive to push forward to upshift and pull back to downshift. I like your analogy to power windows.

That said, there is no *right* way to do this, no matter what automotive journalists may say. It all comes down to your tastes. If you like pushing forward to upshift, find a car that does it. If you like pushing forward to downshift, find a car that does that. But to say there is a *right* way to set up your manumatic shifter is incorrect, since an opinion can neither be right nor wrong.

To me, the lack of a third pedal disqualifies it completely, regardless of the direction of the shifter. Yeah, yeah, it can shift faster than I can. Whoopee.

That said, if I were forced to choose, I like the R8's setup. It seems much more intuitive to pull back to downshift.

I like the BMW/Mazda "push to downshift, pull to upshift". This just makes more sense to me.

In the first picture, it really looks like the shifter gets in the way of the HVAC controls. Is this a problem irl?

This same intuitive (and logical) thinking is used on the paddle shifters, at least the ones that I have driven.

Since we read left-to-right (most of the world that is), that is your eyes go from the left to the right as you read, means (or suggests) going forward.

Therefore the "+" paddle is on the right (moving forward), and the "-" paddle is on the left as in slowing (or going backwards).

Personally I like it the other way. Push up, pull down. When I test drove a Mazda3 automatic last year, I got it wrong every single time. It had been a couple of years since I'd driven a manumatic, so maybe I still had muscle memory from my old Mitsubishi Outlander. Scott's explanation of accelerating and pulling back to upshift is the first rational explanation I've heard. But there is no right or wrong, and the girls who buy these things will get used to it either way. ;)

A small thought on the shift pattern; it seems to me that it'd be faster for the human arm to pull than to push so in that context it makes sense. Downshifting always needs to happen more rapidly than upshifting.

I've never been in a race car with a sequential box, but I could've sworn when I've watched in car footage (ALMS, GT3 Cup, WRC) they're pressing forward for an upshift and pulling back for a downshift?

Sequential boxes on motorcycles are forward for upshift and back for downshift. Because of this my BMW drive me bats. I'm always shifting in the wrong direction.

Add me to the "BMW is right camp."

In a regular manual (or at least driving my Forester XT), there are two upshifts that I want to execute at speed by pulling backwards: 1-2 and 3-4. I usually don't keep accelerating with pedal floored after the 4-5, so we won't count that, which just leaves the 2-3 staggered upshift.

Decelerating, I only ever worry playing about with heel-toe, blipping/ rev-matching, etc., on the 4-3 downshift; first is just too low, and while there is the occasional 5-4 downshift with blip, 4-3 happens daily.

So that's three shifts that I would want to excute (daily) in the BMW fashion, and only one in the Audi fashion. Democracy rules! That's just my opinion; I could be wrong...