Not being able to heal toe would be a deal killer for me. The primary reason I would have for driving a manual trans car on the street is for fun and for me heal toeing is part of the fun. However, it's pretty easy to move pedals to allow for easy heal toeing. Rev hang is another issue and could be a deal killer.
I never spent a lot of time using heel-and-toe, although I could certainly do it. Now, with neuropathy in my feet, I can't feel the brake pedal well anyway, so it's no longer an issue.
I find very few cars are set up to heel and toe easily for my feet/legs, even my NA Miata. Most need pedal modifications like ones pictured above, so it's not a deal killer because I can make the changes, more like a bonus when it actually works from the factory.
I have large feet (size 12), so it's not hard for me to heel toe in most cars. It's really only an issue in trucks. In my NA Miata, I had to be a little careful to *not* clip the throttle when going for the brake. It does take some time to adjust, but it's my default mode of driving now so anytime so it doesn't take too long.
I'm currently driving either a '87 944 that I just did a clutch on, or a 2011 Golf 2.5l that I just put a newer transmission in. I think the 944 is more difficult to drive smoothly and quickly, but some of that may be because I don't fit as well. The pedals on the Golf are easy for my feet, but the revhang is brutal -- I may get it tuned just to try to alleviate that (or sell it). Overall, the Golf is probably faster than the 944, but it's not as fun making it happen. The electric power steering, rev hang, and light clutch pedal, and lower road noise really disconnects you from the experience. That said, those things also make it easier to drive on a day to day basis. There's no such thing as a perfect car for all situations, which is why I usually have 2-3...
I heel toe on the street as practice for the track. The Miatas seem to have been built with that in mind. The Mazda3 seems more econobox in it's cockpit design and I couldn´t heel toe until I added a pedal cover on the gas and some spacers to get the gas and brake pedals in the right relative position for my right foot. These did the trick, only used the gas pedal.
The thing with DBW is it's generally pretty easy to move the pedal. The pedal spacing on Fiesta ST, Focus ST and RS is pretty terrible. The throttle pedal is very far right and set very deep compared to the brake and clutch. The work around is a pedal spacer, a couple of the spacers on the market even have left/right adjustment in them. Made a world of difference when I owned a FiST.
In reply to RacetruckRon :
Focus RS is probably the hardest car I've tried to heel-toe in purely because I kept snagging the transmission tunnel with my foot. I figure I could adapt with practice, but never gave it a whole lot more thought and only drove the car briefly (friend's). That kit would be great if I couldn't adapt to it though
i "toe-toe", i can't bend my fat cankles to heel-toe the traditional way. been doing it successfully for over 20 years now. just brake with the left side of the ball of my right foot and rock my foot so the right ball blips the throttle pedal.
every car i've owned has been a manual and i heel-toe every opportunity i get because i just love it. i had to add OMP pedals to my audi but otherwise everything else was pretty well setup for footwork. to be honest the bigger issue than pedal spacing has been flywheel weight on stock cars....just tough to blip.
In reply to ScottyB :
Yeah, I'm an ankle-roller myself. Too awkward to rotate my heel over.
I'm another who brakes with the ball of my foot and blips with the right side for the most part.
Currently the MGB needs better brakes and just a tiny bit more tweaking of accelerator height to be great.
The '16 Mini has auto-rev-match that doesn't seem to have an "off" setting, so my skillz have been atrophying.
EDIT for the OP's actual question: apparently it's not a deal-breaker for me, given the Mini. I didn't even find out whether it could be turned off during purchasing. But I miss it, and with few exceptions I think it would be a deal-breaker for a "fun" car. Looking forward to spending more time in stuff I really like soon. I'm sure I've said here dozens of times that the Mini is neat for an appliance, but it just doesn't spark joy the way, for example, any of my older BMWs did.
RE-EDIT: to add that I don't drive so much or in such a salty place that I feel like I should be driving a boring car to soak up the miles. I need to do a better job of making ready with next "cool daily" than I did with the E28, but it feels silly to have a life revolving around cars and still mostly putter around in a car whose most interesting feature most of the time is whatever podcast is on.
ok, Other than a car with bottom hinged pedals I don't heel and toe either. More like big toe pinky toe. But if I titled this topic big toe and pinky toe it would have sounded a little weird.
In reply to porschenut :
Totally true. I skateboard goofy-foot, and have seen enough video of folks who can actually crank their heel way over there that I've come to feel like I have to caveat my technique, which is silly. The fundamental always just gets called heel-toe, and what part of your foot you're using is just about where the pedals are, your feet, your shoes, and your ankle mobility; it's all just adaptation of The One Thing. Apologies for the tangent.
ScottyB said:i "toe-toe", i can't bend my fat cankles to heel-toe the traditional way. been doing it successfully for over 20 years now. just brake with the left side of the ball of my right foot and rock my foot so the right ball blips the throttle pedal.
every car i've owned has been a manual and i heel-toe every opportunity i get because i just love it. i had to add OMP pedals to my audi but otherwise everything else was pretty well setup for footwork. to be honest the bigger issue than pedal spacing has been flywheel weight on stock cars....just tough to blip.
Exactly how I do it. I could never find a comfortable rhythm on track doing it any other way.
I don't really bother much with it on the street.
I learned in my Beetle with a roller throttle pedal and I mostly drove that car barefoot(because I'm always in flip flops in the summer). So ball of foot on brake and reach over to the roller with my pinky toe. Probably helped my foot dexterity doing all those gymnastics! I've tried using my actual heel and toe but it feels so foreign after years of doing it the other way.
I could never do it in my miata despite having a good idea of the operation. Then I played a few hours on a sim racing rig and practiced the motion. Then bought a FG2 civic si with the bottom hinge pedal, went for a drive and within a couple of minutes was blipping that thing like I had been doing it all my life. Now I can mostly get it on the miata but my foot's got to be nearly sideways.
I could never do it in my miata despite having a good idea of the operation. Then I played a few hours on a sim racing rig and practiced the motion. Then bought a FG2 civic si with the bottom hinge pedal, went for a drive and within a couple of minutes was blipping that thing like I had been doing it all my life. Now I can mostly get it on the miata but my foot's got to be nearly sideways.
You'll need to log in to post.
