This one is definitely a head scratcher...
The previous owner (2 owners past) installed a nice short shifter and then proceeded to absolutely ruin it with this botched shift knob. They clearly were dead set on making it work even though it was not meant to be. What boggles my mind even more is the car was driven well over 30k miles with this POS since then and the next 2 owners just... didn’t care?
Essentially, they glued a faux wood knob onto a cylindrical faux carbon fiber shaft. The short shifter shaft is the same shape as stock. Obviously there’s a mismatch here, so in order to get the cylindrical shaft to stay they tapped in a screw into the metal shaft and topped it off with a hefty serving of electrical tape.
When I bought the car, I immediately noticed a ton of play in the shifter assembly and figured I would have to replace the whole thing. Nope... just got a knob that actually fits and feels 10x better.
New knob:
