Quote:
Originally posted by bobafett
... and if Greg is humbled... wow. 
Seriously though, it was a VERY informative and very well put article / piece. Definetly put a perspective on things.
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I was amazed that you guys were amazed.
I drove a M3 with SMG, and it was perfectly obvious that it was nothing more or less than a manual, where the software gets to read the "throttle" position and gear switches, and adjust the amount of gas and clutch.
All of the mechanical constraints on the engine still hold---i.e., it cannot blip faster, etc.---so everything is really what I expected, although I suspected that I could have written a better computer program to manage the system, of course.
I just drove it exactly as a manual, i.e., I'd get off the gas, whap the console lever, not bother to blip, and then get right on the gas again, and it worked fine... so, what's the real point of the article? (I must confess that I started to lose focus in the middle, since he droned on and on, for pages, without imparting any real information.)
The author did not touch upon the idiocy in the BMW SMG design, the paddle placement. In short, the paddles have to be on the steering column on a street car (like they are in a Ferrari 360, for example), and not on the wheel (as they should be in a racing car). The 9-and-3 paddle placement is stupid, as nobody should drive a street car like this, due to the large danger of injury upon air-bag deployment during a turn. (Crossing your arms over the air bag in a turn is common in steering a street car with the 9-and-3 grip, and the bag can break your arms.)
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