Manual Swap Your Ferrari, You Cowards

Screenshot: Vin_ tra on YouTube

Today’s high-end sports cars all use exquisite dual-clutch automatic gearboxes for super-quick shifts and better driver control than even a row-your-own manual gearbox can offer. But back in the heady days of the 1990s the technology just wasn’t there yet, and the best sports cars employed horribly unresponsive single-clutch automated manuals. Ferrari’s criminally bad F1 Gear transmission made even the most responsive mid-engine sports car of its era feel drunk and slow. Using a series of hydraulic actuators and solenoids, these “automated” supercars will shift gears for you. It’s really best to just throw all of that away and install manual-shift components into the same transmission.

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That’s exactly what Vin has done with his “budget” project Ferrari on YouTube. With aftermarket components from EAG in Texas, Vin was able to take his push-me-pull-you button-press transmission and turn it into a proper enthusiast weapons-grade fun machine. The best part of this whole project is that he was able to buy the automatic Ferrari at a huge discount, and put the whole thing together for a lot less than it would cost to go buy a nice manual transmission 360 Modena today.

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This swap seems intimidating on its face, but it took a whole lot less work than I imagined it might. I’ve definitely done more intensive work on some of my cars when they were up on jack stands in the front driveway. With the luxury of a lift a full shop, and a few extra hands, the whole thing took less than a day of work, which is truly impressive. Maybe I should start looking for a cheap F1 Gear 360 Spyder to swap. It seems so easy!