Very few things are more satisfying than nailing the perfect shift in a classic H-pattern gearbox, especially when you know that if you do it wrong, bad things can happen. Ouch, that’s a serious money shift! That’s why you never let your friends drive your race car. Unfortunately, the art of using all four limbs to drive a car is becoming a thing of the past. Thanks to ever-increasing terrible traffic, the invention of lifeless, gearless, CVT transmissions, flappy paddle gearboxes being arguably faster than traditional stick shifts, the rise of electric cars with only forward and backward settings, and lazy drivers optioning for automatic gearboxes, you’d think the death of the classic manual transmission is all but assured.
I bet you didnt know that Volkswagen Group has actually owned 100% of Porsche since 2012, that Tata Motors, an Indian company, owns the reliably unreliable Land Rover, or that McLaren owns... well, McLaren! Who owns the world's most popular car brands here in the USA is about as clear as mud, like the kind you can slide through in your Rolls-Royce (which is owned by BMW). Wait... that's got to be a mistake... there’s no way BMW owns the British icon Rolls-Royce! Are you kidding me? Well, guess what, it's the truth. I’m going to dig into the 12 automaker parent companies and which brands are under their care. This is going to be a fun one. And by the end of this article, you might be surprised who actually made your car!
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