Ouch: This Honda Money Shift Lowlight Reel Hurts

We’ve all missed a shift from time to time, but doing it while bang-shifting at 9,000 RPM? You’re gonna have a bad time.

Do you hear that? It’s the sound of wallets emptying and bank accounts bottoming out. It’s also a painful tune if you love the way that Honda engines scream at full song. It’s the agony of the money shift.

YouTuber BigKleib34 trucked to the Haltech Import vs. Domestic 2017 World Cup Finals, where he caught a handful of Honda drivers grabbing first gear instead of third. We’ve all probably done it and maybe even gotten away with it once or twice in a street car. But when you’re already running at 9000 RPM (at least), there is no getting away with an extra few thousand revs.

It’s unfortunate but inevitable that BigKleib grabbed video of Honda drivers grabbing the wrong gear. Many of the pony-car racers run automatic transmissions that make missed shifts pretty difficult. Compound that with the fact that a high-revving Honda engine cuts through the sound.

In other words: It’s hard to miss when things your shift pattern goes “1-2-1-Credit Card” by mistake. The crowd always reacts to the sudden spike in engine sound, usually followed by momentary silence (the sound of wallets emptying) and a collective groan from a few thousand people.

Of course, the knock-on effect is that the driver faces the possibility of crashing when this happens. A second-to-first shift produces crazy engine-braking, sending a couple of these cars into stoppies. Sprinkle in an errant connecting rod and potential for oil spillage at speed and things could get nasty.

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It’s easy to laugh, we suppose, but the violence of an 8-second front-wheel-drive car can’t be understated. The whole car shakes like an earthquake and with short throws, it’s an easy — and expensive — mistake to make.