I rented a Ford Edge two months ago that had one. It was quite distracting. At the end of a week, I still hadn't internalized how it worked. I had to think about it every time.

On my old Chevrolet Tahoe, I can tell what gear I just shifted into by feel (shifting into D, it has a slight tendency to overshoot the normal overdrive mode and end up locked into 3rd). And of course, this is essentially a nonissue on manual transmissions.

Most cars have a stop at D; e.g. for the ones where you pull the stem towards to to leave park, you can let the stem spring back at neutral and push it down until it stops at D, and for the ones with a button you can release the button at neutral.

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Honestly if the rotary dial had similar tactile feedback, it would probably be fine. No worse than when they moved it off of the tree as bench seats were retired for safety reasons.

Like I said - it has such a stop, it's just old and a bit worn.

It's column shift despite bucket seats.