If past manual cars are any indication, if the car is turned off but the key is still in the ignition in the ON position and you dump the clutch, the engine will fire back up like a roll start.

I assume you're referring to pulling the key out while the ignition is set to ON - never actually turn a car off at speed - all the power systems shut off (like power steering), and the steering column may lock, turning your car into a missile.

 

Pls tell me you're just joking

 

? It's not hard -- I daily drive a 88 Prelude, and the clutch died on me on a 400mile trip, so I didn't use the clutch to shift up or down. As long as you can match the RPMs between engine & transmimssion, there is no harm. If my 240,000 mile trasmission on the Prelude can take it, then so can the S2000 (or at least it should).

It's not a bad skill to know in a bind (like mine)

 

As a moderator here I would not advise people to shift gears without the clutch. You will very likely damage your synchromesh if not your gears.

Yes, use the clutch.

 

i have a bit of experince in the matter.
first off, you can take it out of gear easily without harm to the trans or clutch. how you go about doing it is during the first moments after you let off the gas pedal. you cannot/should not do it while under load or while coasting for a while.
example: vehicle is in 4th gear. throttle is 20%. put slight pressure on the shift lever towards neutral. right as you release the gas pedal, the shifter will slip into neutral. but if you wait too long (1 1/2 seconds and more) after letting up on the gas pedal to push it into neutral, it will not go.
a friend showed me how he up and downshift without clutch in his civic. he did it by rev matching. rev matching is the only way to do it without destroying your gears instantly.
after a year we took apart the trans and the gears were chewed up worse then cletus the cowboy's theeth. he had no symptoms at all of beat up gears.
even though it is possible to revmatch and execute clutchless shifts in our cars, i would much rather clutch it and slam into 1st at 75mph!!
lets take a walk over into the world of big rigs for a moment shall we? some say that to drive a big rig double clutching is needed to match the trans speed to engine speed. they are WRONG!! in a semi tractor the clutch is needed only for 1st and reverse. the proper way to shift in a semi truck is to revmatch. 95% of all big rigs have a rev limit of 3k rpm. clutchless shifts are made at 1500 and 3000 rpm.
why is it safe to revmatch in a semi and not in consumer vehicles you ask? because the trans in semis are hardened steel and our cars are not. also the fact that semis shift at a max of 3k rpm and we average at 4k. our tranny gears are of a softer material then those of semis. that is why we have synchros and semis do not. now, even though semis are made to shift without the clutch does not mean they are immune to mushroomed gears. i have seen it many many times. i have seen so much that i would not try it in a vehicle that comes equiped with synchronized tranny.
thank you for reading. have a nice day.