It bought Birfield, a British rival with better technology, and later extended its control over Uni-Cardan, a German-based maker of transmission gear for carmakers in continental Europe.
One possible use of this technology is to provide context information from the car, something like the engine speed has reached 2000 rpm, the parking brake has been disengaged, the transmission gear is in drive and the brake pedal is fully off the floor.
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But Folz defines it to include not only the skeleton of the car but also the engine, the gear box, the transmission and the suspension.
As such, it's a lot like driving a manual transmission stuck in second gear and using engine braking to slow down.
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HCD-14 Genesis uses optical recognition to identify the driver and initiate the starting sequence, while gear selection for the 8-speed automatic transmission is performed via paddle shifters.
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The M6 with the TwinTurbo V8's mesa-flat torque curve (500 pound-feet from 1, 500-5, 750 rpm) and multiplicity of gear ratios (seven-speed dual clutch transmission, the M-DCT) adds an uncanny effortlessness to the experience.
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Instead of stepped gears like a conventional transmission, it has a fixed planetary gear, and changes engine speed by adjusting the generator electric load.
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Another is that if you take enough load off of an air shifted Liberty transmission, it can pop out of gear into neutral, and the run is done.
Also, the six-speed automatic transmission in my test car (no manuals available in the U.S.) was a little bit fussy, and there were occasions when the engine-transmission software was momentarily stymied as to which gear to jump to.
It comes with a 744cc, 48.8-horsepower engine and a five-speed transmission. (Beware the first-gear kick down that Italian personality makes it finicky sometimes to lock into place.) I found it stable to drive, even on Old Montauk Highway, and perfectly suited to zipping from Navy Beach to Clam Shack and back again.
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With the car transferring power to the ground through a single-clutch mid-rear transaxle, the Vanquish doesn't cycle through gear ratios with quite as much impact as a car with a dual-clutch automatic manual transmission, the Ferrari V12, for instance, which also enjoys a 165-hp advantage.
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While it works well and includes a manual gear-select mode, a proper manual gearbox or a quicker-shifting dual-clutch automated manual transmission would afford livelier performance.
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Paddle-shifting the automatic transmission as you enter the corner, you'll hear the engine automatically rev to match the selected gear ratio blipping, it's called and the SL just rips along in a way no luxurious grand touring car has a right to.
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