[drburton]

I have a VW Touareg and it actually does show what gear you are in (automatic) in a display on the dash, right in the middle. It if very cool, b/c if you go into the tiptronic functionality it shows the numbers 1-6 in a line and you can easily see what gear you are in etc..

As for the stick shift in question, seems pretty silly to me. What if you had a buddy drive the car for the first time, now it doesn't even tell them the shift patter, where is reverse etc..