A Synchro Gear box isn’t the opposite of a crash box. A Crash box is one with straight cut gears rather than helical gears. You can have a crash box that is synchromeshed, but being straight cut just a lift of the throttle, slam the gear and you are in just like my Classic mini.

Dan

Of course one problem with cars and technological advance is currently (and not true 10 years ago) the gasoline is pretty expensive (although cheaper in terms of GDP than it was in 1980).

However to be honest, the car industry hasn’t gotten far.
Cars aren’t significantly more efficient than back then.
They don’t last longer.
The only progress has been in reliability, but we might already have passed a peak here.

Actually I drive a Fiat and I love tossing gears in that sloppy box back and forth.

I suppose though, that the ultimate manual drive would be a steam car, I’d love to give a Doble a spin

A few notes on the history of synchromesh: The first synchromesh car was the 1929 Cadillac. By the early 30s, virtually all American cars had synchromesh. In Europe, synchromesh was a little rarer: economy cars usually had crashboxes. (Bugattis, interestingly enough, always had crashboxes, even though they were luxe cars.) As an austerity car, the first VWs all had crashboxes. I believe that VW added synchromesh to export/Deluxe models in the early 1950s. Certainly by the late 1950s/early 1960s, all VWs sold in America had synchromesh.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that synchromesh on all the forward gears was common. Before then, 1st and sometimes 2nd were unsynchronized. To this day, it’s extremely rare for Reverse to be synchronized; the only cars I know of with synchromesh Reverse are Saabs. That’s why it’s always best to come to a complete stop before engaging Reverse.

Volkswagen had also US-Trannies which had the reverse below the 5th gear or right to the 4th
today and in Europe VW uses the left beside the 1st position in combination with push down
Renault has a locking ring around the stick which has to be disengaged to shift into reverse

Most europeans yes, but Americans, no.
It has a manual gear box which is the standard in Europe, while Automatics are more normal in the US

I don’t follow Matthew’s argument above. What is a pace of innovation? How do you measure it? This is something that’s easy in computers: cycles per second, memory size, power consumption.

The automotive sector has involved lots of innovation in mechanical linkages, control layout, fuel delivery, power, economy, comfort, traction and roadholding, braking systems. Even though the cars of 40-50 years ago are operated in a similar fashion to modern cars, try one, then tell me they are the same. In my ‘65 triumph, the driver had to take responsibility for stopping the car or making the corner, not the ABS or the tyres! Gear changes were more a co-operative activity with the car rather than a simple selection of gear. Maintenance was a genuine weekly necessity. If you go back to the 1920s, you need to manually adjust the timing advance when you are accellerating, something rendered obsolete by vacuum advance.

Measured by horsepower, yeah innovation’s been slow. They had 130HP in 1907: http://www.bigscalemodels.com/....._1907.html

On the other hand 53bhp, 47 years ago, if you had a growth rate of 2% per year that would mean 134 bhp today, which is about what that car’s equivalent have, don’t they?