As a European up to today I only drove really small city cars, like Fiat Punto, Ford Fiesta and such, today however I sat in a BMW 3 E46 and the thing that struck me the most as different was the gas pedal and the shift stick.
Unlike gas pedals on the small cars where I could very easily floor it with no effort, here I actually had to push the pedal a lot more, like at least twice the amount I would have to press it on the small cars. The clutch pedal however was about the same effort as with small cars, so…is this a BMW thing, is it a bigger car thing or does this specific car have some kind of a problem? Even though the engine sounds well and I know the guy who owns the car and he says the car is in great condition.
The stick shift also moved a lot harder than it does in smaller cars, not extremely hard, but again, about twice the force was needed to move it.
I don’t have any direct experience of the models you mention, but it is certainly true that different cars can naturally have different characteristics as you describe. Very generally, the more orientated the car is towards performance rather than comfort, the harder to operate the controls might be. In the case of the gearbox this might be because heavier-duty components are required to handle higher power. For the throttle pedal, I would suggest a more likely explanation is BMW deliberately engineered it to be a bit firmer than the average car, to make sure you don’t get a big burst of power unintentionally. That is to say, on a small, less powerful car, if you accidentally floor the throttle for a second it’s unlikely to have bad consequences - whereas in an M3, it could send you into the nearest hedge, backwards.
As I said to start with though, I don’t know if that’s the case, there could still be a maintenance issue with the car - but not necessarily.
If I’m guessing right, the force you have to apply to push the gas pedal almost only depends on the spring constant of the spring the pedal is attached to. Of course this can differ from model to model.
Maybe that’s a WAG, but II have a personal anecdote: 30 years ago I was driving down the Autobahn with my girlfriend beside me, in an Opel Ascona on our way to France. Suddenly the throttle got stuck at 140 km/h in fifth gear, and we were heading for a 60 km/h construction zone. I could handle the situation and made it to the next rest stop. This was an old car with a carburetor, and the return spring on the carburetor’s gas lever was overstrained so that the gas pedal got stuck. Of course we didn’t have a substitute, so we shortened the spring with some pincers, and it worked again. But the force to put down the gas pedal was eminently increased. I don’t know how this works mechanically today with electronic injection, but I think it still is functioning with a metal spring somehow.
Now try old school Porsches… IME, with various 911s, twitchy with the gas, very difficult initially to engage the clutch without stalling, high pedal forces on the clutch pedal. Pre F335 Ferraris were also a pain in the ass, with clunky, notchy shifting, more of the same high pedal force for the clutch, grabby brakes at low speed, etc…
Flip side of the difficult shifter is the transmission in the Mazda Miata. Think of the gear, and you were in it.
As the others said, it can absolutely be different from one car to the next. It just depends on the spring the engineers chose to use in that model.
Now, while not the gas pedal specifically, I did pass on a stick shift car I was looking at a while back. I’ve been driving stock all my life and know what to expect out of the clutch. This car too nearly zero effort to put the clutch in. Like, you barely put your foot on it and it went right to the floor. It made feathering it a bit difficult. Granted, I probably would have been used to it by the time I made it home from the dealership, but at least for the test drive, it was kinda a PITA. It almost felt like something was broken. I meant to (but didn’t) ask to feel the clutch in another car of the same make/model and see if it was different.
I’ve only driven a miata once, but I don’t recall the transmission giving me any issues. Of course, it was probably 20 years old and I’m sure all the gears were good and broken in.
Oh it was great to use. But a much different feel than most of the other cars I drove: much shorter throw, very crisp engagement, lower forces to engage than, say, a Ferrari 348. It dealt with a lot less HP and torque than many of the other cars, to be fair.
I don’t remember the Viper GTS year 1 model being that tough to find the right gear, for one end of the HP and torque bell curve. Not that you seemingly needed to shift all that often.
If you’re referring to the Miata, the only real thing I remember about it is that I could see over the top of the windshield (with the top down, of course). I have no idea how my aunt’s boyfriend even fit it it, he much have been at least 6 inches taller than me. Of course, she probably had her seat hiked up higher than I would have.
What did catch me off guard is how much, ‘get up and go’ it had. My last 5 or 6 cars have been mostly Civics and Accords (and an insight mixed in there somewhere. Just like I always do, I gave it gas, let off the clutch, maybe gave it a smidge extra gas and let off the clutch a hair faster than usual (nothing extreme, I just tend to do that in unfamiliar cars so I don’t stall) and the thing took off like a rocket. It took me a mile or so to realize it’s a ‘sports car’ (at least compared to an accord or civic) and I need to relax a bit.
Unrelated, but years ago I was behind a back Dodge Viper and the plates were “SLYTHRN”
In my distant youth I competed in off-road events in a Morris Mini Cooper 997cc - British built. There was little modification done but the first thing we did was change the standard clutch to a heavy duty competition clutch. Being a light weight female I’d finish the day with an aching clutch leg. The other modification was removing the thermostat…in the Australian heat it was not needed and merely slowed the flow of coolant.
Yes. I don’t know from different models, but my first car was stick shift and I still prefer it. Wish it was more widely available. I’ve rented manual cars and they differ a little.
As to the shifter.
1.The BMW has a larger/more powerful engine and the transmission is larger/stronger to withstand the torque/horsepower from the engine. It takes more force to move the larger components.
2. The shifter in the BMW is an extension of the fork that moves the transmission gears. That’s the direct feeling connection. The smaller cars are most likely front wheel drive and the shifter actuates a cable and/or number of levers leading to the actual shifting fork in the transmission. More “slop” especially after years of service.
3. The BMW shift lever is just that; a lever. Short without much mechanical advantage. This lack of mechanical advantage feels “harder”, more “direct”. In the smaller cars, the shift lever is likely much longer above the pivot point than the BMW. Also longer below the pivot point to get the cable and levers moved into position. It will move easier through a longer range of motion.
Throttle effort.
Again we have larger components on the BMW, also more substantially made due to the premium level of the car and possible track or rally use in stock form. Another area is where the throttle pedal is hinged. Some are hinged on the floor, some are hinged from pedal box on the firewall. You’ll also see different mechanical advantages due to lever length, strength of return spring, geometry of the linkage. On new cars, the system is throttle-by-wire. The connection is electrical (eliminates the linkage and slop, allows computer control for air-fuel mixtures, prevents overspeed situations…). The resistance of the throttle is computer controlled.
My Miata and my Honda S2000 both had wonderful action to their respective manual transmissions. Less like yanking a stickshift around and more like flicking a light switch back and forth.
Yeah, this is a lot of it. The layout of the car affects the feel of the gearshift on a manual a lot. Just about every FWD car in the last 30 years or so uses a cable linkage to shift. Some are well designed and feel good, some are poor and feel vague, but they’re all pretty easy. A RWD car is much more likely to have a nearly direct link to the transmission through it’s shifter linkage. It usually feels more positive and slightly heavier, and any shortening of the lever (short shifters, etc.) increase the effort further.
But then again there are things like Ford’s old 3 on the tree column shift. Somehow they were a nexus of low effort, positive and somehow still vague. (Now that I think of it, those throws felt vague probably just because they were so damn long.)
I think it may be a German ‘thing’. I have driven scores of different vehicles, from basic Mini, through Bentley to 44 tonne MAN and I always had the impression that on German makes, the seats were harder, the steering heavier and the pedals stiffer.
Of course it might have been confirmation bias after driving a Mercedes van that seemed to be designed for rugby players, but Italian or Japanese cars always seem very light and English ones somewhere in between.
My Father owned a Citroën in which the brake pedal was a small bump on the floor under the carpet. The first time I drove it, and in spite of a warning lecture, I nearly went through the windscreen after just resting the weight of my foot on it. The clutch was very light too and the column-mounted gear lever slipped through the five gears like silk on a jolie fille’s leg.
Yes, there are significant differences in brake/clutch/accel, and even the shifter with different vehicles. For several years I owned a standard Corolla and a standard shift 1-ton truck. I had to be careful when switching between them as I’d either floor the accelerator or lock the brakes on the Corolla after time in the truck. I assume it’s related to the amount of power being transmitted (or the weight being stopped).
We now have a newer Corolla and a Camry hybrid. For some reason the hybrid’s brakes are very sensitive and I end up dumping stuff off the passenger seat the first few stops. I have no idea why there’s such a large brake-effort difference, since everything else feels the same.
As an owner of one too—and you’re right, they can be twitchy—my guess is because the brakes have to do two things. The first stage brakes only engage the regenerative braking mechanism and either don’t use the brake pads at all, or only very lightly. The second stage is when the car uses both the regen and the brake pads.
With the Prius, I only needed the brakes rarely. I bought it with nearly worn front brakes, though not so low that they’d make noise, and got over four years out of them before they started to chirp. The Camry needs it a bit more often, so far, but nothing like the non-hybrid sedans I’ve driven before. I think the Camry brake pads have mediocre cold characteristics, and because of the way hybrid brakes work, it takes a while to warm them up. Just a guess, as I’m finding they’re less twitchy at the end of a decent bit of city driving.
The Porsche 911 has been described as the best built badly designed car out there. If the gear shift is anyhting like a VW Beetle, and it is basically the same design, then you are talking a stiff and imprecise shift together with a heavy clutch that bites suddenly. Not for the faint-hearted. On reason Japanese cars were so popular when they appeared en masse in Europe was the light clutches, gear shifts and steering. Not so manly, but much less tiring to drive.
I was under the impression that BMWs have a really light and slick manual shift. My brother had several mid-range ones, and he never complained about them.
Is that right, though? The shift forks do not literally move gears, they move small clutch rings (synchros) which are unlikely to be significantly more massive than in a smaller car. The heavy-duty gears in the transmission itself never change position and are always engaged with each other.
The stiffness of the clutch pedal is not just due to the spring for the pedal, which is minimal, but due to the diaphragm spring on the pressure plate in the bell housing. When you push in the clutch the release bearing (also called the throw out bearing) pushes against the diaphragm spring on the pressure plate and holds the clutch plate away from the flywheel.
It is this diaphragm spring that, when you release the clutch, holds the clutch plate firmly against the flywheel to avoid slipping. You don’t want the clutch plate to slip, it will burn out. So the more powerful engines will tend to have a stronger spring in the pressure plate. This is particularly true for performance vehicles and those that have upgraded to a stronger clutch system.