Why Some High-Performance Transmissions Are Called Dog Boxes

It’s finally happened. You have the chance to drive your dream car, which, for the sake of this example, we’re saying is a 1987 Lamborghini Countach, a car so cool that “60 Minutes” once did an episode on its unhinged testing procedures. Getting in takes some contortion, but when you finally get seated, you’re greeted by that gorgeous gated shifter. 

This’s when you notice something odd. There’s a little metal tab blocking the first gear slot. As you go to move the shift lever into “first,” the owner, who wisely decided to supervise, slaps your hand and tells you, “That’s reverse! First gear is down and to the left. It’s got a dog box!” You hadn’t noticed the shift pattern, embossed on the knob.

Ah, yes, the dog box, or as it’s also called, the dogleg shifter. It’s called a dogleg because the pattern going from first to second gear is a similar shape to a dog’s hind leg. Now, cats have the same rear leg shape, so why settle on dogs for the comparison? Probably because people would look at you funny if you said your Lamborghini had a “cat box.” You’d probably get air fresheners as gifts for a while.

Dog boxes are common in older performance cars because that’s the pattern race car transmissions used to use. At least, it was common back when race cars still mostly used manual gearboxes. By putting first gear down and left, this puts the uber-important second and third gears in a direct line. Second and third are used far more often in racing, because first is generally for starting out and not much after that.

In a classic episode of “Top Gear” — which also makes those great tunnel run videos on YouTube — James May kept accidentally shifting into reverse in his dogleg-equipped Mercedes 190E 2.3-16. It was likely a goof because, as the entirety of the internet has pointed out, there’s a lockout to prevent accidentally doing exactly that (and an awesome goof it was, love you vintage “Top Gear,” no notes). That is also what that weird tab is in the reverse gate on the Lamborghini Countach mentioned earlier: a manual reverse lockout to prevent a costly error when downshifting.

That’s not to say a dogleg shifter would present zero issues. You could still have muscle memory kick in, attempt to shift into first, and wonder why it’s taking so much effort, only to realize you’ve been trying to force it into reverse as the traffic light turns red again. It would also be annoying to try to engage first when slowing for a tight turn, only to be greeted by an unyielding lockout mechanism. Also, if your car has a manual lockout, that’s only as effective as your ability to remember to engage it.

Lamborghini switched to a much safer reverse lockout for the Diablo, specifically to avoid accidental gear abrasion/synchronizer dustification. In a Diablo, the driver has to twist the gear lever 90 degrees counterclockwise before it will go into the reverse gate. That’s a pretty unlikely motion when you’re downshifting around a hairpin.

Oh, the Mercedes-Benz 300SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe, which once ferried its namesake engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut over 137 miles from Munich to Stuttgart in just one hour. Everything about it is neat and weird. 

First, this Mercedes is the most valuable car in the world, having been sold at auction for $143 million in 2022. Its 3.0-liter straight-8 has desmodromic valves for spectacularly high revs (F1 driving great Juan Manuel Fangio claimed he hit 10,000 rpm). The pedalbox is split in two, with the gas and brake on the right, the clutch to the left, and a leather-clad drivetrain tunnel in between. 

The weirdest part, though, has to be the shifter, which operates like a Bizarro mirror-image dogleg. First gear is up and to the left, as it would be in a standard H-pattern transmission. But to shift into second gear, the driver has to move diagonally, down and to the right, as if shifting into third. To move from second to third, the shift lever moves straight and up. This maintains the fast second-to-third shifts you’d find in a dog box, just backward. Let’s hope the car’s owner can keep all this straight, because it’s been spotted driving in Monaco (assuming it’s the real one).

These days, manual transmissions are unfortunately rare, and dogleg shifters rarer. Even stalwart dogleg-using companies started to phase them out in the ’90s (Ferrari abandoned the dogleg 5-speed 348 transmission for an H-pattern in the 6-speed F355). The easiest way to acclimate yourself to a dog box pattern is to get a game such as Assetto Corsa, a decent steering wheel, and a gated shifter for your computer. When setting up the shifter, you can set key bindings for a dogleg pattern and practice to your heart’s content.