How To Use Paddle Shifters
Paddle Shifters provide you the best of both worlds. You can drive your vehicle – that is equipped with shift paddles – in full automatic- or manual mode. When you drive in full automatic mode, you may not even use the paddle shifters at all. But when you select manual mode, the gear selection is at your fingertips – literally.
Using paddle shifters is very simple and intuitive. While driving, pull the left paddle towards yourself to shift down a gear, and the right paddle for upshifting. These shifters are especially useful in manual mode or sport mode for enhanced control and quicker gear changes.
To learn whether an automatic transmission with paddle shifters or a manual transmission is quicker, read our post here.
Safety features built in
The use of paddle shifters are also a lot safer than a manual transmission. With them, you are always aware of which gear you selected, so the room for error is very low. There is no accidental miss shifts, where you could go from 5th gear to 2nd, if you don’t pay attention. This simple mistake could cause you a lot of troubles and your engine will not be happy about it either.
What vehicles offer paddle shifters?
A few years ago – maybe already even 10-15 years – mainly high end sports cars had shifter paddles, like: Lamborghini Murcielago, Nissan GT-R or the BMW F87 M2. All these vehicles had the advantage of using either a set of shifters mounted on the steering wheel column, or directly to the steering wheel.
In today’s world shifter paddles became much more popular. Nowadays you can find them in basically any vehicle with an automatic transmission, even smaller sized SUVs – or SAVs – like the Citroen C5.
BMW and MINI are both using paddle shifters in many of their models. Not only in their sports cars like the G87 M2, or F90 M5, but in lower end cars like the F40 1 series.
Upgrade Your Factory Paddle Shifters
BMW designed their shifters in both their BMW models and their MINI lineup in a way that they can be replaced. All one need to do is disconnect the negative terminal on the battery and remove the airbag. From there on one could simply unscrew one screw per side and remove a pin. We have created an easy to follow video how to replace your paddle shifters. For BMW F Series, G Series and MINI models – you can watch it here.
If you are interested about upgrading your interior and replacing your shifters, take a look at our carbon fiber – and aluminium paddle shifters here. If you like racing, or driving on the race track, you can get yourself a set of magnetic paddle shifters.