Originally Posted by Justin Heileman
I could see three reasons really. One would be the fact that you can keep your revs up at a drag strip launch simply by just slipping the clutch don't now really how the smg's or what not work but i couldn't see having this kind of control over rpms via clutch. Two would be clutch dump burnouts. Nothing better than just revving the car up to 5 grand and dumping the clutch. Three would be drifting w/ clutch control....Can you tell I break alot of stuff. Good thing for warranties.
One question though on those how does it work taking off from a stop with the clutches or what not. I never have really got much exposure to these.
Very interesting points and I wish I would be able to answer them in the most efficient way, but I never had a car with DSG or SMG and therefore I can't be the person to answer your questions.
The only thing that I know for sure is that the BMW M5, with its 2nd generation SMG transmission, has a feature called "launch control" which is a 1-button procedure (it means just that: you press a button and the car sets all parameters to the perfect point for a start "bat out of hell" style) and gives you all the time a perfect launch (sadly this feature has been disabled for cars coming to the USA...it's only for European models...don't ask me why).
On top of that, semiauto transmissions in racing (and DSG + SMG are the "civillian" versions of the racing semiauto trannies) have been in use in Rallyes and Formula 1 for over a decade now and both Rallyes and F1 start with their engines at a certain rpm level (I believe for Rallyes to be around 3-4 k rpms, while for F1 probably around 8-10k rpms), therefore I would bet that even for the "civillian" versions you ought to be able to do that.
