Going Manual

The Legacy can be driven in manual mode. It has an upshift and a downshift gear paddle on the sides of the steering wheel.

Whilst in a large carpark with no traffic, I decided to switch to manual mid-drive to test it out. I upshifted from 2^nd gear to 3^rd gear after accelerating on the straight road, then downshifted before the road hump. Then I tried to park the car. Well that’s when I had to get out of manual mode and go into the regular Reverse mode of an auto car.

What I noticed too was that unlike a regular manual shift car, one cannot change gear mid-way with the steering wheel turned more than 90-degrees, especially if one drives with the pull and push method during turns. Those horn-like gear paddles on the inside of the steering wheel would be anywhere but at the default horizontal position on the steering wheel when the wheel is not turned.

Thus far in real life, the only times I overrode the auto gear selection were during twists and turns on the slopes to reduce my speed on these tricky roads, and not to negotiate on simple straight roads. So if I turn the wheel too much, this gear shift paddles mounted on the steering wheel may not work for me.