I don't drive into a corner faster than Ican see around it, and in the GRY, this means going in way under what the car is capable of, which leaves all the fun in hammering it coming off the corner
Agree RE fun.
But in the context of downshifting (or not) when you want it too or doing so quickly enough, those issues push what ⁶/₁₀ is back some. If the system downshifts slowly, your ⁶/₁₀ downshifting point is now however many meters earlier on the way into the corner. If you maintain too high of a gear the lack of adjustability, the need possibly to ask more of your brakes than otherwise, etc can reduce the available margin.
Going through a corner on a motorcycle in neutral-- it happens when you catch a false neutral downshifting and you've not left enough time to try that shift again before you're leaned in. Granted, you try to leave enough time, but sometimes mistakes happen (that's part of why we aim for ⁶/₁₀) or circumstances change suddenly. Now you're leaned over and trying that shift again mid-corner isn't a good idea, so you're going through in neutral.
My formative motorcycling miles were on old air-cooled Beamers and so false neutrals happened some times. I've not had it happen in a long time now, but I still occasionally misread a corner and go in a gear higher than I'd like. I've never had an accident that way, though, because I'm also leaving enough margin on the brakes and the entry speed and everything else.
But it still feels terrible. And it still means I'm leaning further into those other margins.
It's not as significant in a car-- it's not going to fall over, you weren't going to be adjusting it's position within the lane as much, you've got more contact patches, and the greater weight means a mid-corner shift is going to change the balance less and is less likely to break traction. But it's still there.
I've no idea how good or bad the AT for the new GRY is. It's not what's keeping me from buying one. And honestly, a crap automatic can still be a ton of fun. I
loved both of my Smart Roadster Coupes, and they had that terrible robo-shifted manual*. I learned to drive around it and adapted, and the cars were a blast! They are sooooo much fun!
But driving around the transmission meant doing things earlier or giving up some margin.
*For those unaware, it was a conventional manual transmission but with a computer controlled clutch and gear selector. It defaulted to manual, and in that mode the shift lever (or paddles**) just hit a switch that said "If the rpm range is safe for the next higher (or lower) gear, disengage the clutch, select the next higher (or lower) gear, and then reengage the clutch". In auto mode, the computer decided when to initiate that sequence instead of waiting for the switch to be actuated. It was slow to shift and did no rev-matching.
**The paddles, while highly sought after by those shopping Smart Roadsters, made it all worse. Pulling a paddle is an immediate feeling action and it feels like the shift should be immediate, and it wasn't. Whacking the shift lever, on the other hand, felt like a slower process and so the shift felt less disappointing. Also, you always knew where the shift lever was.
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