6 ms·

> Depress the clutch as you would in any car, and pull the knob from its secure location out of first gear. Now you will become adrift in the zone known to earl

> Depress the clutch as you would in any car, and pull the knob from its secure location out of first gear. Now you will become adrift in the zone known to early Porsche owners as “Neverland” and your quest will be to find second gear. Prepare yourself for a ten-second-or-so adventure. Do not go straight forward with the shift knob, as you will only find Reverse waiting there to mock you with a shriek of high-speed gear teeth machining themselves into round cylinders. I was confused by this until I searched for "Porsche 914 shift pattern" on Google Images. I guess it's a dog-leg gearbox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-leg_gearbox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-leg_gearbox).

bombcar 5y ago
The Deuce and a Half has an even more interesting one, just when you think you've figured out the dog-leg you find the last two are reversed again. HN supports shift pattern unicode! Ⓡ②⑤ |–|–| ①③④
- tyingq 5y ago
  If that sounds crazy, it is. The M35 2 1/2 ton truck shift pattern: https://live.staticflickr.com/4130/5082855966_efbf3c3f00_c.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/4130/5082855966_efbf3c3f00_c.j... Also, odd, but the Citroen M35 has a similar name and shift pattern, even though it's a car and completely unrelated. https://ranwhenparkeddotnet.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/m352bshift2bpattern.jpg https://ranwhenparkeddotnet.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/m352...
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Patterns like those are really, really really common on truck transmissions. One rail is 1st/reverse. Another rail is 2nd/3rd and the last rail is 4th or OD and direct. Whether the "fore is a lower gear than aft" holds between the 2nd and 3rd rails is a function of whether or not it's a the pair of gears that constitute "forward gear on the right rail) will either be greater or less than 1:1 depending on if it's an overdrive transmission whereas the rear position on the right rail will always be direct for reasons that boil down to "that's the sensible way to build it". There's not much to "figure out" when you have a direct lever that goes into the shifter.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Exactly, the more the device can assume the operator is trained the simpler it is - so truck transmissions are closer to the "Platonic Transmission Form" if you will than fancy car transmissions. The Deuce doesn't even have synchronizers, you're expected to double clutch and handle that part yourself.
    - fragmede 5y ago
      They make automatic semi trucks these days, so depending on your POV, that's either closer or futher from the platonic ideal for transmission layout.
- oliveshell 5y ago
  You’re not kidding! I first learned to drive stick in a deuce-and-a-half that my dad bought cheap at a surplus auction. I accidentally shifted from 1st straight into 5th quite a few times. The darn thing had so much torque that it wouldn’t even stall when you did that!
  - lvh 5y ago
    Much better than shifting from 5th straight into 1st though :)
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Fun fact: the torque converter was invented a few years before the automatic transmission - and some cars were sold with a manual transmission and a torque converter. With only two or three forward gears, they found most of the customers would leave the car in the top gear and just accelerate slowly ...
    - userbinator 5y ago
      The Buick Dynaflow was almost entirely reliant on a multiple-element torque converter, in front of a 2-speed manual similar to the Powerglide. Slow and inefficient, but very smooth.
- ourmandave 5y ago
  Reminds me of the Terminator when he commanders the tanker truck and pulls up the schematics by scanning the shift lever. They should have had a throwaway scene where he tries to steal a Deuce from an armory and it comes up, "File Not Found." Or he's throwing errors and has to reboot himself trying to find 4th.
optymizer 5y ago
What a blast from the past. I learnt to drive using a VW Golf, and I've always thought this shift pattern is just standard on German cars with manual transmission (at least in the 90s). One thing I don't see mentioned is that you first have to press down onto the knob, then shift forward, in order to shift the transmission into R. Simply pushing the knob forward won't go from N to R.
- RajT88 5y ago
  Not just press down on shift knob, but a bit to the side too. On my old Jetta (left hand drive), it was more like "Up and to the Left a little bit", and not a straight throw from first.
  - browningstreet 5y ago
    My first car was a 78 Rabbit that had the push-down for R. I also had a Renault Megane that had a pull-up-collar to find R.
- telesilla 5y ago
  First time I rented a German car I yelled out in the parking garage for help! Some kind strangers explained this to me about the reverse and I got on my way.
- masklinn 5y ago
  From a video I saw recently I think some of the old lancias (group b stuff) were similar, the pattern was not shown but the driver referred to being careful with first so as not to launch the car in reverse. So I’m guessing this was one of the standard gear patterns in the late 70s / early 80s euros, back when car affordances were often nebulous concepts.
- theluketaylor 5y ago
  Reverse lockouts came around in the 80s or so, so his 914 wouldn't have one. On older transmissions you're free to try to ram it into reverse at 100 kph if you really want to try.
- 5y ago
technofiend 5y ago
> and then rapidly wig-wag the shift knob side-to-side along a lateral axis. I learned this driving my first car which was a similar vintage Karmann Ghia. It still did it out of habit twenty years later driving my stick-shift Jetta. The second YouTube video I found of someone learning to drive a KG was doing it instinctively as well. [1] I guess there's so much play you just learn to wig-wag a little to see if you're in gear or not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF77y8IVi8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF77y8IVi8k
- reedjosh 5y ago
  I wonder if the linkage could be replaced by a cable? My 77 Firebird has aftermarket shift and throttle cables. Of course, my Firebird is an automatic, so who knows. Maybe a two cable system would do?
rob74 5y ago
Not sure if this is specific to Porsches, I think several factors are at play here: (1) old cars (even Porsches) were not so precision-engineered as they are today. Today you can operate the gear shift using only two fingers, not so in the seventies; (2) of course, a car being ~50 years old doesn't help either...
dugmartin 5y ago
That part of the story reminded me of the 1978 MGB I had as a teenager. If you had just a little leftward pressure on the stick going from 1st to 2nd the gearbox would happily announce "welcome to reverse!". The throw between gears was so small I ended up just using my middle finger to push down from 1st to 2nd and 3rd to 4th and then hooking my thumb around the knob to go from 2nd to 3rd. 5th gear was electric - a little switch that seemed to break every few months.
fosk 5y ago
It’s a better pattern for racing since you can more easily shift between 2nd and 3rd gear in a quicker way. Older Ferraris (I believe the Testarossa and the TR512, but maybe others too) also have the same pattern.
- technothrasher 5y ago
  The Ferrari V6/V8 cars from the 206 Dino through the 328 have that pattern, but they switched to a standard shift pattern in the 348. You can't accidentally shift into reverse though, as the metal shift gate has a stop on it. You have to push down to get past the stop and into reverse.
- hinkley 5y ago
  > since you can more easily shift between 2nd and 3rd gear in a quicker way That is in part a secondary effect of how wide and crisp the offsets are between gears (how 'deep' the H shape is). On the gear boxes people tend to like, going from 2nd to 3rd, and 3rd to 4th take very close to the same time. On my little roadster I'd just stomp on the clutch and throw the gear knob in the general vicinity of where it needed to be, relying on hand-eye coordination and the synchros to do the real work (I missed maybe 3 shifts a year, and half of those when I was tired). Compare this to the car I learned stick on - the infamous Chevy Citation, made during the nadir of Detroit - where the gearbox was roughly shaped like an X, although at the time it felt like an l. I lost track of how many times I accidentally upshifted instead of downshifted at a stop sign, and that engine had less torque than an electric pencil sharpener, so the engine would simple stall the moment I tried to let the clutch out. The roadster I subsequently drove, I experimented and found that if I was even a little careful I could get moving from a dead stop in 3rd gear. Basically a modified tractor engine. All torque, no horsepower.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
everybodyknows 5y ago
The name "Neverland" is new to me, but I remember that place of limbo well. Assuming the tranny is in good order, there's a firm spring detent that generally saves the driver from 1->R upshift failures. The 1->4 mistake OTOH, having drifted a little too far right in Neverland, was easily fallen into, and the shuddering deceleration that follows may have been the cause of a few rear-end collisions over the years.
michaelcampbell 5y ago
I had a 3 speed + R transmission in a 1970 Ford. It was originally a column shift but the original owner converted it to a standard floor shift. I don't know if that was the reason for the weird shift pattern it had (nor do I know the original shift pattern), but by the time I got it, it was: 1 2 R 3

bombcar 5y ago

The Deuce and a Half has an even more interesting one, just when you think you've figured out the dog-leg you find the last two are reversed again. HN supports shift pattern unicode! Ⓡ②⑤ |–|–| ①③④

tyingq 5y ago
If that sounds crazy, it is. The M35 2 1/2 ton truck shift pattern: https://live.staticflickr.com/4130/5082855966_efbf3c3f00_c.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/4130/5082855966_efbf3c3f00_c.j... Also, odd, but the Citroen M35 has a similar name and shift pattern, even though it's a car and completely unrelated. https://ranwhenparkeddotnet.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/m352bshift2bpattern.jpg https://ranwhenparkeddotnet.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/m352...
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Patterns like those are really, really really common on truck transmissions. One rail is 1st/reverse. Another rail is 2nd/3rd and the last rail is 4th or OD and direct. Whether the "fore is a lower gear than aft" holds between the 2nd and 3rd rails is a function of whether or not it's a the pair of gears that constitute "forward gear on the right rail) will either be greater or less than 1:1 depending on if it's an overdrive transmission whereas the rear position on the right rail will always be direct for reasons that boil down to "that's the sensible way to build it". There's not much to "figure out" when you have a direct lever that goes into the shifter.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Exactly, the more the device can assume the operator is trained the simpler it is - so truck transmissions are closer to the "Platonic Transmission Form" if you will than fancy car transmissions. The Deuce doesn't even have synchronizers, you're expected to double clutch and handle that part yourself.
  - fragmede 5y ago
    They make automatic semi trucks these days, so depending on your POV, that's either closer or futher from the platonic ideal for transmission layout.
oliveshell 5y ago
You’re not kidding! I first learned to drive stick in a deuce-and-a-half that my dad bought cheap at a surplus auction. I accidentally shifted from 1st straight into 5th quite a few times. The darn thing had so much torque that it wouldn’t even stall when you did that!
- lvh 5y ago
  Much better than shifting from 5th straight into 1st though :)
- bombcar 5y ago
  Fun fact: the torque converter was invented a few years before the automatic transmission - and some cars were sold with a manual transmission and a torque converter. With only two or three forward gears, they found most of the customers would leave the car in the top gear and just accelerate slowly ...
  - userbinator 5y ago
    The Buick Dynaflow was almost entirely reliant on a multiple-element torque converter, in front of a 2-speed manual similar to the Powerglide. Slow and inefficient, but very smooth.
ourmandave 5y ago
Reminds me of the Terminator when he commanders the tanker truck and pulls up the schematics by scanning the shift lever. They should have had a throwaway scene where he tries to steal a Deuce from an armory and it comes up, "File Not Found." Or he's throwing errors and has to reboot himself trying to find 4th.

optymizer 5y ago

What a blast from the past. I learnt to drive using a VW Golf, and I've always thought this shift pattern is just standard on German cars with manual transmission (at least in the 90s). One thing I don't see mentioned is that you first have to press down onto the knob, then shift forward, in order to shift the transmission into R. Simply pushing the knob forward won't go from N to R.

RajT88 5y ago
Not just press down on shift knob, but a bit to the side too. On my old Jetta (left hand drive), it was more like "Up and to the Left a little bit", and not a straight throw from first.
- browningstreet 5y ago
  My first car was a 78 Rabbit that had the push-down for R. I also had a Renault Megane that had a pull-up-collar to find R.
telesilla 5y ago
First time I rented a German car I yelled out in the parking garage for help! Some kind strangers explained this to me about the reverse and I got on my way.
masklinn 5y ago
From a video I saw recently I think some of the old lancias (group b stuff) were similar, the pattern was not shown but the driver referred to being careful with first so as not to launch the car in reverse. So I’m guessing this was one of the standard gear patterns in the late 70s / early 80s euros, back when car affordances were often nebulous concepts.
theluketaylor 5y ago
Reverse lockouts came around in the 80s or so, so his 914 wouldn't have one. On older transmissions you're free to try to ram it into reverse at 100 kph if you really want to try.
5y ago

technofiend 5y ago

> and then rapidly wig-wag the shift knob side-to-side along a lateral axis. I learned this driving my first car which was a similar vintage Karmann Ghia. It still did it out of habit twenty years later driving my stick-shift Jetta. The second YouTube video I found of someone learning to drive a KG was doing it instinctively as well. [1] I guess there's so much play you just learn to wig-wag a little to see if you're in gear or not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF77y8IVi8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF77y8IVi8k

reedjosh 5y ago
I wonder if the linkage could be replaced by a cable? My 77 Firebird has aftermarket shift and throttle cables. Of course, my Firebird is an automatic, so who knows. Maybe a two cable system would do?

rob74 5y ago

Not sure if this is specific to Porsches, I think several factors are at play here: (1) old cars (even Porsches) were not so precision-engineered as they are today. Today you can operate the gear shift using only two fingers, not so in the seventies; (2) of course, a car being ~50 years old doesn't help either...

dugmartin 5y ago

That part of the story reminded me of the 1978 MGB I had as a teenager. If you had just a little leftward pressure on the stick going from 1st to 2nd the gearbox would happily announce "welcome to reverse!". The throw between gears was so small I ended up just using my middle finger to push down from 1st to 2nd and 3rd to 4th and then hooking my thumb around the knob to go from 2nd to 3rd. 5th gear was electric - a little switch that seemed to break every few months.

fosk 5y ago

It’s a better pattern for racing since you can more easily shift between 2nd and 3rd gear in a quicker way. Older Ferraris (I believe the Testarossa and the TR512, but maybe others too) also have the same pattern.

technothrasher 5y ago
The Ferrari V6/V8 cars from the 206 Dino through the 328 have that pattern, but they switched to a standard shift pattern in the 348. You can't accidentally shift into reverse though, as the metal shift gate has a stop on it. You have to push down to get past the stop and into reverse.
hinkley 5y ago
> since you can more easily shift between 2nd and 3rd gear in a quicker way That is in part a secondary effect of how wide and crisp the offsets are between gears (how 'deep' the H shape is). On the gear boxes people tend to like, going from 2nd to 3rd, and 3rd to 4th take very close to the same time. On my little roadster I'd just stomp on the clutch and throw the gear knob in the general vicinity of where it needed to be, relying on hand-eye coordination and the synchros to do the real work (I missed maybe 3 shifts a year, and half of those when I was tired). Compare this to the car I learned stick on - the infamous Chevy Citation, made during the nadir of Detroit - where the gearbox was roughly shaped like an X, although at the time it felt like an l. I lost track of how many times I accidentally upshifted instead of downshifted at a stop sign, and that engine had less torque than an electric pencil sharpener, so the engine would simple stall the moment I tried to let the clutch out. The roadster I subsequently drove, I experimented and found that if I was even a little careful I could get moving from a dead stop in 3rd gear. Basically a modified tractor engine. All torque, no horsepower.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

everybodyknows 5y ago

The name "Neverland" is new to me, but I remember that place of limbo well. Assuming the tranny is in good order, there's a firm spring detent that generally saves the driver from 1->R upshift failures. The 1->4 mistake OTOH, having drifted a little too far right in Neverland, was easily fallen into, and the shuddering deceleration that follows may have been the cause of a few rear-end collisions over the years.

michaelcampbell 5y ago

I had a 3 speed + R transmission in a 1970 Ford. It was originally a column shift but the original owner converted it to a standard floor shift. I don't know if that was the reason for the weird shift pattern it had (nor do I know the original shift pattern), but by the time I got it, it was: 1 2 R 3