waremark wrote:I agree - dumb and disappointing, I am not about to buy a 911, but if I was thinking about it this would discourage me. I remember long ago asking John Lyon why people liked the first generation of harsh and slow paddle shifts, and he said that you have to remember that most people don't know how to change gear. You would have thought that if any manufacturer was going to make cars for those who do know how to change gear it would be Porsche, but it seems even they limit the option to do it yourself to the few who can get their hands on limited production models like the GT4, and probably the forthcoming 911R.
I had a passenger ride on circuit in a 911 with PDK recently. I was surprised and disappointed that in sport mode, gear changes were horribly lumpy and aggressive (you could feel a big "thump" as it went from one gear to the next). I'm sure the engineers designing the system could have made it perfectly smooth, but someone in marketing said that drivers want it to feel "sporty" [which equates to feeling "something" rather than nothing], in much the same way as they have destroyed ride quality by fitting ever larger wheels