Your guide to automatic gearboxes - Paddle-shift

Invented by Ferrari for F1 racing and now favoured by many makers of high-performance or sporty cars. Actually, they’re not automatics at all but manuals without a clutch pedal.

The driver flicks paddles behind the steering wheel or nudges a lever on the floor and electro-hydraulic actuators take over the work he or she would normally do with the clutch pedal and gearlever.

We’ve included them here because they also have a fully-automatic programme supposedly to make life easier in traffic. In practice, the auto programmes on most of these gearboxes make for jerky progress, especially when manoeuvring.