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Is the skill of rev matching being lost to computers?

If the ability to drive a vehicle equipped with a manual gearbox is becoming a lost art, then the skill of being able to match revs on downshifts is the stuff they would teach at the automotive equivalent of the Shaolin Temple. The usefulness of rev matching in street driving is limited most of the time – aside from sounding cool and impressing your friends. But out on a race track or the occasional fast, windy road, its benefits are abundantly clear. While in motion, the engine speed and wheel speed of a vehicle with a manual transmission are kept in sync when the clutch is engaged (i.e. when the clutch pedal is not being pressed down). However, when changing gear, that mechanical link is severed briefly, and the synchronization between the motor and wheels is broken. When upshifting during acceleration, this isn't much of an issue, as there's typically not a huge disparity between engine speed and wheel speed as a car accelerates. Rev-matching downshifts is the stuff they would teach at the automotive equivalent of the Shaolin Temple. But when slowing down and downshifting – as you might do when approaching a corner at a high rate of speed – that gap of time caused by the disengagement of the clutch from the engine causes the revs to drop. Without bringing up the revs somehow to help the engine speed match the wheel speed in the gear you're about to use, you'll typically get a sudden jolt when re-engaging the clutch as physics brings everything back into sync. That jolt can be a big problem when you're moving along swiftly, causing instability or even a loss of traction, particularly in rear-wheel-drive cars. So the point of rev matching is to blip the throttle simultaneously as you downshift gears in order to bring the engine speed to a closer match with the wheel speed before you re-engage the clutch in that lower gear, in turn providing a much smoother downshift. When braking is thrown in, you get heel-toe downshifting, which involves some dexterity to use all three pedals at the same time with just two feet – clutch in, slow the car while revving, clutch out. However, even if you're aware of heel-toe technique and the basic elements of how to perform a rev match, perfecting it to the point of making it useful can be difficult.

Autoblog Minute: UAW and FCA avoid strike, Clarkson teases new show

FCA avoids a worker strike, a former Top Gear host teases us with a picture from Amazon's new car show, and Toyota predicts autonomous cars by 2020. Autoblog senior editor Greg Migliore reports on this edition of Autoblog Minute Weekly Recap. Show full video transcript text [00:00:00] FCA avoids a worker strike, a former Top Gear host teases us with a picture from Amazon's new car show, and Toyota predicts autonomous cars by 2020. I'm senior editor Greg Migliore and this is your Autoblog Minute Weekly Recap. A UAW strike of FCA was avoided thanks to a zero-hour tentative agreement reached this week. Worker concerns that were renegotiated in the new [00:00:30] deal include adjustments to the two-tier wage scale, health care costs, and production outsourcing. Now check-in with Autoblog as we update our reports on this evolving story. Shooting began on Amazon Prime's new automotive show starring the former Top Gear crew. That's Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May. Now Clarkson threw out a tweet from day one of filming on location at Algarve Motor Park in Portugal. The picture features the show's [00:01:00] three stars and crew posing with the holy trinity of hyper cars. That's a McLaren P1, a Ferrari LaFerrari, and a Porsche 918 Spyder. This Prime show is being called Gear Knobs though the name is unofficial. Now if a tweet is any indication of what we can expect, who cares what it's called this is gonna be awesome. (Eds Note: Clarkson tweeted Friday that the show will not be called Gear Knobs.) Toyota predicts drivers could be obsolete on highways as early as 2020, with technology dubbed the Toyota Highway Teammate or THT. Toyota is using a modified [00:01:30] Lexus GS to show what this is capable of. THT is already able to create a driverless freeway car that's capable of changing lanes, making passes and taking curves. Plus, it can keep safe distances from other vehicles. Toyota is currently testing this on Tokyo's Shuto Expressway. Those are the highlights from the week that was. Be sure to check out my full recap this Saturday. And I'll have some added insight on the BMW M4 GTS. For Autoblog, I'm Greg Migliore. [00:02:00] Show Logo Autoblog Minute is a short-form video news series reporting on all things automotive. Each segment offers a quick and clear picture of what's happening in the automotive industry from the perspective of Autoblog's expert editorial staff, auto executives, and industry professionals.

Wandering the Chopard Heritage Tent at Rennsport Reunion V

Porsche has a ton to celebrate at its Rennsport Reunion V being held at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca this weekend. While some other luxury carmakers are hurting, Porsche sales are up. The 919 Hybrid won Le Mans in only its second year of competition, then came to America and won the World Endurance Championship race at Lone Star Le Mans in Austin, Texas the weekend before Rennsport Reunion. It just introduced its 2017 911 Carrera with a turbocharged engine for the first time ever for the line, and our initial impressions from the passenger's seat are that it's pretty good. And humor us while we have this out for the conspiracy theorists, but one can imagine some back-room celebrations since with Porsche Chairman Matthias Muller's promotion on Friday, September 26, Porsche completed its takeover of Volkswagen. Remember when that was a thing, when 16-year Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking tried to work the stock market to get control of VW but failed, so VW swallowed up Porsche instead? More concretely, around 50,000 people have come to the Reunion, and there are 1,400 Porsches parked in all the corrals. This year's event is devoted to Le Mans, with eight of the brand's 17 winners in attendance. We spent most of our time on the penultimate day in the Chopard Heritage Display, though, wandering through four rows of vintage machinery. The vehicles were even more instructive than they were beautiful - the Spyders, the RS editions, the Abarth-bodied racers, the company's first flat-eight race car, the 911 SCRS rally cars that led to the shows-topping 959, all help explain in metal what Porsche is referring to in its press releases and when it puts out special editions. They teach the history of personnel inside and outside of Porsche, too: like that Ferdinand Piech led the team that created the famous-on-sight 1968 917K at the same time as he was leading development of the Porsche 914; and that one of our own colleagues, the late Denise McCluggage, drove to victory in the 1957 Watkins Glen Grand Prix in a 1954 Porsche 550 Spyder 1500RS. There's a huge, captioned gallery above of just some of the wares parked in the Chopard Heritage Display. Have a look and a read, and the next time a Porsche rolls out a commemorative limited edition, one of these could be the car they're looking back at. Related Video: