I have a 300 with that shifter. If you open the door with the car not in gear it will bong bong bong bong bong bong bong at you. But it'll also do that if you

I have a 300 with that shifter. If you open the door with the car not in gear it will bong bong bong bong bong bong bong at you. But it'll also do that if you open the door with the engine running. I always found it amusing too. For a car, the cars that have that ZF shifter are really heavy cars. The other amusing thing is HOW MUCH WORK they put into that shifter. It's doesn't just bounce back to its home position. It's also got some kind of ratcheting mechanism in it, so that when you shift from park to drive you can "feel" the shifter clicking from park to reverse to neutral to drive. That mechanism has lots of clickety parts in it that will probably fail with time. Why the heck did they do that?! Of all the things you could do with an electronic shifter this seems like the worst thing you could possibly do. They could have used a dial like they do now ,or even buttons. Anything. Why try so hard to replicate something - and take up so much space internally, when they could have just used the real deal? The gated shifter that they used on the 5 speeds was a better shifter anyway.