[skeeterb]

I just thought of something, if you monitor all the wires on the lines going into the transmission and do whatever it takes to engage the right brakes/clutches at the right time, you could use a simple switching system like the ones you see on arcade games like the Crusin' games (Crusin' USA, Crusin World, Crusin' Exotica). You could use a simple program on a microcontroller to engage the right clutches to make it go to the different gears. This would probably work on a car with an older model car. I'm not sure that it would work with the newer cars because they are so complex in how they operate because more and more stuff is hooked into the car's computer. This is just an idea, but i just wanted to put it out there.