057while the most aggressive mode constantly
holds the lowest possible gear.
The controller watches throttle and
brake inputs and lateral g’s to activate per
formance shifting or to revert to the stand
ard setting after a period of softpedaling.
The only way to decipher which perform
ance algorithm is active is to study where on the 7500rpm
tachometer the needle is spending its time. It’s a slightly strange
and opaque way to control the transmission, but it works surpris
ingly well. All it takes is a single corner of hard driving to trigger
the performance shift.
The sheer number of gears removes a lot of the joy from manu
ally paddling through the cogs. Not to mention that downshifts in
this mode feel significantly slower and clunkier than when the
gearbox is left to its own devices. Engineers did attempt to address
the tedium of toggling through six or seven or ten gears by writing
code that jumps to the lowest possible gear when you hold the left
shift paddle, but we found the system to be wildly inconsistent.
Sometimes the downshift was nearly instantaneous. At other
times, whole seconds passed before the shift occurred. And some
times, inexplicably, there was no shift at all, no matter how long we
held the paddle.
Yes, the Shelby GT500
of a few years back
made more than 650
horsepower. But the
new ZL1 has a chassis
that can actually handle
its ridiculous power.