But it isn't too difficult to push this one too far or too hard before it starts hiccupping, downshifting, wiggling a bit and letting you know that it's just a dream, something like irrational exuberance over a stock offering.
Now that Mr. Rothhaar is 18 and not so enamored with cars, his lust for speed has downshifted a bit: "I drive a 1997 Volkswagen Golf," he said.
After a long, twisty descent from the pass's apex, downshifting this time for a bit of engine braking, it was back on the Weinstrasse/Via del Vino.
In fact it gets more fun as you learn to feather the clutch a bit more and adjust to downshifting at speed.
But the new more-or-less stabilised rate of services inflation represents a marked downshift from the pre-crisis levels (which had been surprisingly constant at a bit above 3% going all the way back to the early 1990s).
There's a great deal of control even at exceptional speeds, with a bit of throttle or a bit of brake, a downshift here, an upshift there the only requirements to keep the RX-8 pointed where you desire.
An automatic transmission can downshift, of course, but if it has to kick down every time you ask for a bit more speed, the car will feel gutless and unsatisfying.
In ECO, the engine response seemed a bit more leisurely because, in the quest for fuel efficiency, the transmission did not downshift to a lower gear as quickly as in Sport mode.
Our only complaint with the system is that shifts seemed a bit lazy in Normal mode, and you'd find yourself waiting a hair too long for downshifts to happen when the engine wasn't racing above 6,000 rpm.
