Volkswagen doesn't swap signal/wiper levers?

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Originally Posted by wai

On automatic transmissions, the selector pattern was part of an ADR, however I understand as it has now become industry standard the ADR has been withdrawn.

P R N D

After D, you can have additional forward gear options.

To go from Drive to Reverse, you must go through Neutral, and Park cannot be adjacent to Neutral or any forward gears.

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What would they do pn a nwe jag with the dial?

The original reason for swapping indicator sides was so that you can change gear and indicate at the same time. Back in the early days (way before I was born), I understand that changing gears was a little harder than it is these days (even in a manual) so you spent quite a lot of time with your hand on the gear lever. Not so much of a problem these days, what with synchros on your gears and everything....

We have both. I just seem to remember and use the correct hand when driving. It's no big issue.

Yep, all euro cars that I have driven had then in the euro arrangement. even a holden barina back in 2000 was on the left.

I had a Nissan pulsar and gti for a while and always could just switch over without incorrect wiping/indicating.

Oz assembled Vectras also retained the Euro stalk positioning. Holden at the time said the translation was $250k+ in development it didn't want to spend.

My wife and I have my Passat and her Mazda2. Occasionally we'll flick the wrong lever, usually the first time only in whichever car we're driving.

I used to have a Euro Barina and a VZ panel van, again swapping between the two of them without any hassles, as well as other various family members' cars which swapped sides throughout.

And just to add to the mix, I was also in the fire brigade so fairly regularly went from whichever of my cars to any one of three or four fire trucks, with different gear shift patterns, wiper/indicator levers, not to mention siren/light controls and just shifting from a car to a 12-15 tonne truck....

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Originally Posted by Marakai

Of course, it's as you said and my curiosity was about whether it would be mirrored to reflect some concept based on driver proximity - so 2 o'clock, 4 o'clock, noon, 6, 10, 8 and R push-down and RIGHT & up.

PS: just remembered what the 2CV actually had and something in my hindbrain must have linked to that: 8 o'clock, noon, 6 o'clock, 2 o'clock - and reverse was hard far-shift to right then up. Really!

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Then there was the Columbo car (Pugeot 203 I think) that had a completely different column shift pattern. Also, on automatics, you have the Dodge (and others) that had press button controls rather than a floor or column shifter. My brother had an earlier Honda CRV that had a column mountes selector and it was very dangerous as it did not take much of a bump to cause the lever to change into neutral. Many early column shifters required you to pull the lever towards you before it would move out of the selected position to avoid this, but not the Honda.

It is quite a minefield and quite incredible that despite all the different shift patterns and systems, the foot pedals have remained the same.

AUS delivery EURO cars with left hand indicators is old news, decades old. I recall one of my Uncles Volvo back in the late 70's had indictors on the left so that was my first experience of Euro left hand indicators. Not long after that my parents got their first Mercedes & ofcourse it too had left hand indicators.

Holden ZC Vectra's produced in the UK (2002-2004) for Australian delivery had the indicator on the right hand side. Later production (2004/5-2007) came from Germany & I believe still had the indicator on the right.

Just to confuse things even more, how about motorcycle side stands and centre stands, they all operate from the left of the motorcycle even where you drive on the right hand side of the road.

So things happen and we as users have to generally accept it.

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Originally Posted by wai

Just to confuse things even more, how about motorcycle side stands and centre stands, they all operate from the left of the motorcycle even where you drive on the right hand side of the road.

So things happen and we as users have to generally accept it.

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Now what should happen is that we just switch to right hand driving!

a) Sweden did it successfully as did, IIRC, Okinawa
b) Car makers would save millions and millions not having to design and produce for LHS/RHS
c) You wouldn't even notice on your average Australian freeway because everybody is *already* driving on the right, going 90, while I pass the mongrels on the left! :-P

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Originally Posted by Marakai

Now what should happen is that we just switch to right hand driving!

a) Sweden did it successfully as did, IIRC, Okinawa

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However, steering wheels were already on the left in Sweden, and there were about a million cars registered in 1967. Back in 1971 Oz had 4 million cars registered, and now has around 16.5 million. Given the associated infrastructure changes needed, the change won't happen unless India, Japan and the UK change as well, leaving us stranded with RHD.

:biggthumpup:

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Originally Posted by Marakai

c) You wouldn't even notice on your average Australian freeway because everybody is *already* driving on the right, going 90, while I pass the mongrels on the left! :-P

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