Manual shifter and transmission swaps into modern Ferrari cars is big business. The first owners of the cars might not have wanted to take the harder path in traffic, but subsequent owners are jumping in with both feet. That’s led to lots of conversion options, but this one is a first.
It is a new creation from a company called Studio Carrozzi that lets you shift your V12 GTC4 Lusso using a classic gated mechanism. But it’s still going to make a lot of people very unhappy. Here’s why.
A Modern Approach To A Classic Aesthetic
Most Ferrari manual conversions rely on either the same model or one that’s similar, offering a stick from the factory. That’s where the crucial parts like a clutch pedal (and operable clutch) come from. Ferrari’s GTC4 Lusso never offered one, and neither did the 812 Superfast it’s related to. The GTC4 didn’t even offer a six-speed at all. Instead, it comes with a seven-speed dual-clutch box. That makes it a very interesting problem for any kind of manual swap. Yet, here we are.
We’ll get this out of the way early: This car has no clutch pedal. Studio Carrozzi has built an incredible shifter mechanism. Yes, it sticks about half a foot out of the center console, but every part that you can see is a carefully crafted work of art. Each spring is carefully selected, each aluminum component weighted perfectly. It is a visual masterpiece, but that might be because it has to be.
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Because the car has a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, which can’t be controlled like an automated manual, this fancy shifter is really just telling the transmission computer what to do. It’s a fancy Logitech rig from your PlayStation, essentially.
Shifter Conversion Keeps The Paddles Intact
Studio Carrozzi gated shifter conversionStudio Carrozzi
The company, though, is up-front about all this. For example, even in manual mode, a paddle-shift car will occasionally choose a gear itself. That could put the shifter out of sync with the actual gear, so Carrozzi has added an electromechanical movement that will adjust the shifter. As the company puts it, “the hand may lead, or the car may lead, but the gate always tells the truth.”
A side effect of that is that the driver can still use the paddles if they want to. In fact, the driver can alternate from one to the other at any point, even shift-to-shift.
A Ferrari gated shifter has never really been about performance. It has always been aesthetic – visually and mechanically pleasing. Like Studio Carrozzi says, “A GTC4 Lusso does not exist because anyone needs to be anywhere. It exists because someone, once, believed that a certain combination of engine, chassis, leather, and sound was worth building, and someone else believed it was worth owning.”
This electronic shifter is meant to represent that, the company says. “A way of driving the car that treats the act of shifting as something worth doing beautifully, on the days when that is what one wants to do,” is how it describes it. And if you decide you don’t like it, the system is easily removable. No permanent modifications to the car are needed to make it work.
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CarBuzz Insight – Why This Matters:
Studio Carrozzi gated shifter conversionStudio Carrozzi
This company seems to understand exactly what manual transmission purists are looking for. It isn’t alone, though, since Ferrari has multiple patents for a similar system and even for a virtual clutch pedal.
If what you really want is the look, sound, and feel of a classic Ferrari gate, with the ability to rip a cathartic downshift every once in a while, this might be perfection. But we already know the comments will be full of hate.
Source: Studio Carrozzi
