"I hope you're not taking a car with a stick shift on vacation." ... "No, It's a new M3 convertible, and there's no clutch."

Technically, I was fibbing. The M3 SMG has a manual transmission and a clutch, although there is no clutch pedal.

This highly sophisticated gearbox should not be confused with the many variations on the Tiptronic theme.

No, BMW's SMG (for sequential manual gearbox) is similar to the Magneti Marelli system used in Ferraris, Maseratis and the Aston Martin Vanquish. But BMW's version has a twist: a Drivelogic button below the shifter lets you select how quick you want the shifts to be, from leisurely to rocket racer (as fast as eight one-hundredths of a second).

At first I found myself missing the clutch pedal, but after rolling up some miles and experimenting with the six available shift programs, I became a convert.