Technology is a beautiful thing.
It has brought forth plenty of creations that have changed the way we look at the world, and it has also brought change that many just could not adapt to. For the auto enthusiast that appreciates rowing through the gears, it appears that we are living in the end times.
Read on below as Jason Harper of Bloomberg News says:
"This is a love letter to the manual transmission. Or perhaps its obituary."
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I understand the emotion that a stick and clutch engenders. Passionate drivers often feel they're better connected to a car that can be shifted manually. Others go even further. A fellow once told me, "I'll let go of my stick when you pry it out of my dead, cold hand."
I belong in the lovers' camp: There's something lyrical about a well-executed shift -- clutch in, shift, clutch out, power on. Forget about simultaneously eating, drinking or texting. This is the art of driving.
Yet I recently sat in Ferrari's headquarters in Italy and was told, unequivocally, that the new 458 Italia would never see a manual transmission attached to its screaming V-8. The technology was too slow and outdated, the representative said.
That statement was a death rattle -- the skeleton hand gripping the cue-ball knob and shifting into history...
[Source: The Detroit News]
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