Breakthrough: The synchromesh gearbox

I’ve had some stick over the Alpine A110. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no complaints – if I had a quid for every time a satisfied owner has come up to me to shake my hand or thank me for single-handedly designing and building their car, I’d have a nice little pile of quids.

But I get some good-natured hate mail for two specific sins. The first, from our cousins in the US for failing to bring the car across the Atlantic. I plead guilty to that one, and hang my head in shame. The second, for not putting a manual gearbox in it, instead opting for a DCT. I still stand by that one, incidentally, but we’ll move swiftly on before stiff letters to the editors start to pile up on the Ti doormat…

Because the consensus among enthusiast drivers (no matter how much I witter on about the theoretical benefits of a good double-clutcher) is that a manual gearbox is, and always will be, the nec plus ultra of how to shift gears. And one can see why. No matter how fast and silently furious a torque-stuffed EV might be, you miss that thump-and-go of manually grabbing the next ratio.