ZedZed

Yeah, I love to stroke my handbrake whilst starting up on a hill, makes me real horny .

Seriously, I guess it's because we Europeans are more used to driving manual cars than Americans and thus options such as hill assist wouldn't even be considered when buying a car. In fairness, over in Europe, a lot of people just press on the foot brake to start up on a hill but this means you'll most probably move backwards quite a bit.

Personally as far as hillstarts are concerned, I was taught to use the handbrake and apply a little gas, when the car starts moving off you then release the handbrake. This is very easy to do and prevents the car from moving backwards. I just don't see the point of getting hill assist or park assist, or whatever kind of unnecessary assist. As far as ESP, ABS, etc., it's a different matter, it's for security reasons which I'm personally all for. I could do without Synchro Rev but then again it's just a gimmick on the 370z and is not optional in any case so no choice.

Also, if the Z had more options to offer it would probably increase the base price for it. The reason why there's not many options on the Z is to reduce factory cost for production. As far as I can tell they don't make Zs on order but rather they churn out Zs every day with different optional combinations, i.e. some Zs are produced having sports package, some base, some nav + sport, some with persimmon, different body colours, etc. If you were to bring out more options such as hill start assist, etc. then the cars would have to be built on order and this would mean a more expensive base price for the Z.

OK I'm not 100% sure what I say above is fact or not (built on order or churned out from factory) but it makes sense and it's pretty much based on what my dealer has told me (which is probably bollocks but oh well...). Someone will know better if i'm wrong /