I want the flappy paddle shifter instead of the buttons on my PDK. Which model year has this? How come porsche's website only shows the buttons? I thought it's available on 2010 MY.

 

Porsche only makes the buttons unless it's ordered as an option on the upcoming 2010 Turbo. The paddle shifters are aftermarket . I have them on mine and like them a lot.

 

That is an interesting thing. Some people find the buttons contrary to instinct and others find them perfectly natural. For me, pulling one paddle to go up a gear and the other to go down sounds like a long learning process, if only because I've spent sixty years with my left hand on the wheel and my right hand dedicated to auxiliary controls... like shifting and instruments. My right hand goes on the wheel only when steering is a delicate process requiring both hands.

For an old-fashioned guy, the buttons sound perfectly logical, like the cruise control stalk on our manual shift 997.2: Forward when you want to go faster and backward to slow. Everything else I can think of works that way, horses, airplanes... even tractors! Everything. Not that I don't sympathize. The controls have to feel intuitive or its a real pain. I drove a rented Mazda recently and had to pull back to shift up and push forward to shift down. Drove me crazy. Especially when I needed another gear in a hurry and couldn't wait for the 'automatic' to make up its mind. It's important to pick the one that feels natural.

We must be dealing with something fundamental in our thought processes, almost as strong as left hand vs right hand, because the majority of magazine writers clearly have not had experience flying or riding horses. Most of them complain about pulling back to go slower and want to slap a paddle. Personally, I can't imagine feeling comfortable pushing forward to go slower. But I don't for a minute doubt the people who say the buttons feel backward to them.

Fascinating. I'm glad we get a choice. The manual that is, which always does exactly what I want it to.

 

As I've been taught (whether flying or driving), the default is both hands on wheel unless there is the need to operate an auxiliary control - including the manual shifter. And then only remove ones hand for the duration of that operation. Historically, in addition to the 'finer control' you cite, it avoids accidentally pulling on a control that shouldn't be touched - under stress or other circumstances (e.g. pulling back on the a/c throttles past the decision point), or leaning slightly on the shifter inducing wear.
Hard to relearn all this stuff at some point, but I believe that is the purist view.

 

I have a 2010 C4S on order. I read that the paddles would be available for cars built after February 2010. Since my car is due to be completed on March 4, 2010, I asked my dealer to add the code for the PDK steering wheel with paddles [840 - $490] to my order. Although it was not on his list, I insisted. He did as I asked and it was not accepted by Porsche.

So, as far as I know, the reports/rumors that paddles are or will soon be available to be ordered on non-Turbos are false. Alas.

I will see how I like the "flippers" and be comforted by my dealer's assurance that I can install aftermarket paddles if I hate them.

Speaking of which, has anyone actually installed the aftermarket paddles? If so, which ones and how do you like them?

 

Currently I believe the '10 turbo and Boxster Spyder are the only ones available with the paddles, can't even get them on a Pany turbo as of yet.

 

No, not really. Opinions have always varied. But we each have our own teachers. We need to stick with what we were taught, lest our reactions in a crisis betray us.

In many aircraft roles, the second hand is needed almost continuously for those auxiliary controls. That's true for instrument flight even when a yoke is provided, but in civilian aerobatic work or the Air Force we often provide no place for the second hand on the attitude control. We did put a conventional yoke on transport aircraft, and early bombers, but I think that's mostly tradition. You see, such aircraft in olden days (uh... my day that is) were often seriously out of trim for short periods. Without assisted controls one of the pilots would be needing both hands to maintain attitude until the aircraft could be brought into trim. Sometimes it took both pilots.

That is basically the origin of the purist opinions that insisted on both hands for sports cars. In those early days fast precise steering also meant heavy controls. Many race cars are like that still. Be careful at a race track. When you shake hands with a long time driver, he is likely to have a grip like a jockey. It feels like shaking with a pair of vise grips if he forgets himself. Or herself. Women like my wife who race cars or regularly ride horses develop a grip that will astonish a modern male whose big exercise is loading a DVD. On cars like that, you need both hands to bring enough energy to bear for a quick transition that is also precise. When racing, I would guess that I had both hands on the wheel for easily half of each lap because muscles being asked to exert themselves greatly cannot be as precise. Two hands are needed to divide the load. That isn't the case with a well-designed modern system like our Porsches enjoy.

On recent aircraft the presence of a yoke rather than a 'stick' is more the cause of jokes than serving any real purpose. Not only do fighter pilots need that second hand free for the throttle, weapons, and other controls, they have to learn several supplemental controls put on the stick itself. We used to joke that a GIB (Guy in Back) on the F-14 was a desperation move after the experiments failed that were intended to spawn pilots with nine fingers on each hand.

Since I retired, they have begun to use in production aircraft some 'outrageous' research we were doing. In the latest models, guns on helicopter platforms are aimed by eye motion. Where the pilot or the GIB looks, that where the guns shoot. Spooky to watch. Honestly. Now the F-35 and F-22 track the pilot's head and eye movements in order to supplement his optical view with data from the radar and navigation system. We project it on the helmet visor. And we put the primary control for nav and radar on the bloody stick so the pilot needn't look down at a critical moment to find an auxiliary control.

The truth is we have so many systems in a modern aircraft that crew members cannot spare both hands on any one control and a major design effort is put into "integrating the control experience," which is fancy jargon for making sure the transition from one control to the others is natural and at no point is the pilot required to have more than six fingers on either hand.

Drive the way you learned, but it's probably also good training in quiet situations to use either hand by itself for the day when the time comes that you must get along with only one or the other. It's happened to me.

 

Intesresting thread .
First -- I did like the buttons . I didn't switch to paddles out of dislike like many others . I chose them because I felt the simplicity of keeping the controls separate would work better . In fact when I had the buttons I did accidentally pull instead of push to upshift one time at high RPM . Fortunately Porsche programs the PDK where the car can not over rev . My command was ignored .

I don't take the stance of "paddles are right therefore buttons are wrong" . I see this type of thinking quite often on a variety of topics so I felt the need to clarrify .

Whatever each person chooses is all ok .

 

The Paddle Shifters are available. I just ordered my C4S which is slotted as a February Build and the option 840 paddle shifters was selected. If you go on the Build Your Own Porsche Page of the Porsche Site and select Leather, the Steering with Paddle Shifters is available there!

 

I am obviously doing something wrong. I went to the Build Your Porsche page and selected a C4S coupe. Under Interior. I selected leather sport seats and leather interior (cocoa.) Under Options, after selecting PDK and Sport Chrono Plus under Performance, I went to "Interior Leather" and looked for the Steering with Paddle Shifters and could not find it. So I looked under all the other entries in Options and couldn't find it there either. Please go there again and tell me what I am overlooking.

Sorry to be so obtuse but I just can't find it and it is important to me.

 

Mystery solved - on the Porsche Canada site, you can select paddle shifter option. On the Porsche U.S. site, you cannot. Go figure

 

Thanks.

Strange and very frustrating. I wonder why.

 

Regardless of whether the site shows it or not, your dealer shoudl be abl;e to order it.

 

Hey guys, just thought you would like to see what we put on the site today:

Click here to check it out!



Edit: We tested it out today and it works flawlessly.

 

Do the lights on the spokes indicating Sport mode and Launch Control status work also? Does the wheel installation require any PIWIS coding?

Thanks.