Strange strange! Magazine road testers seem to have agreed, following some meeting at a secret location , that pushing anything [knob, lever, paddle] forward had to be for a downshift, and pulling it had to be an upshift!!? Their arguments also included statements that were contravening Newton's second and third laws...

This from guys who normally support/favour manual transmissions, which have push AND pull motions for downshifting as well as for upshifting. They are crazy....have to have something negative to say. My NSX auto-stik [OK my other car is a 997 2 manual, with performance additions...and the NSX is great also] has a stik that is NOT attached to the steering wheel [MAJOR POINT!], and pushing [it is more up+push] is for upshifting and pulling [it is down-pull] is for downshifting...the same as the new 997...has always felt perfectly natural...as well as other numbers of other auto-stiks...

To me the major point is moving the 'lever'/paddle, or whatever we call it, OFF the rotating wheel. While for racing cars, such as F1, the wheel is never beyond crossed-arms [since they must not move their hands], in sports cars used on normal roads and even race-day-tracks the wheel IS turned beyond arms-crossed. At this point hands have to change position, and then the position of the wheel-located paddles/levers is arbitrary and basically useless. The Porsche test drivers tell us never to move our hands, and that we should not change gears while cornering anyway [now that is news...what if you are at redline in a long corner that requires 2 gears...but they now admit that the SPORTS auto mode on the new PDK is so good THEY DO NOT USE THE BUTTONS in their 'Ring testing !! And I will bet that the PDK DOES change gears during soem corners!

I have driven a few cars with wheel-located levers/buttons and only used them [COULD use them] once I was on the highway away from sharp corners.....rubbish.

Please Porsche, move the levers/paddles OFF the wheel like Ferrari [I think?] etc

Merry and Happy   KiwiCanuck