My dealer told me there are 3 ways for the transmission to operate. "Drive" is one, "Drive sport" another, then "full manual". I dont recall 2 settings on the Automatic anywhere. Is this true or no? Anyone with a 07 wanna comment?

Thanks in advance!

BTW I won't have my 07 till Thursday... In case the sig. threw someone off.

 

Yes this is true, there are a few threads up on the forum that refer to this.

 

When you slide the gear selector staight back, that is drive. Then when you slide the selector to the left that is sport. Finally while still in the left position you shift up or down you switch from sport to manual. That is how you get 3 modes.

 

Well then, thats why i didn't see it. Makes sense. Thanks

 

Actually you could call it four modes:

Straight auto
Sport auto
Man shift with shifter
Man shift with paddles

Also, someone else found out that you can actually hit the paddles while in auto (D, not DS), and it will temporarily let you select gears. Not sure how long "temporary" is, haven't played with it enough.

 

^Uhh, only on the sport. He is getting an X.

 

Donno if you were referring to the paddle comment or not, but otherwise X has the exact same modes.

 

yes. I missed the "^" in my last post.

 

Ah, excellent point - thanks for correcting.

 

No worries. Hopefully it served to inform a few more people.

 

The paddles will shift the car in any mode any time. In D mode, the gear selected is shown by number on the dash but after a few sec. it reverts to "D" again.

 

I have the car now. It works great. The regular drive mode seems a little aggressive for "normal mode" but im getting used to it. I have not tried drive sport because im trying to keep the revs down for the break in. Ill put this car through its paces after the 1200 mile mark

 

I think Sport mode is the better mode for breaking in the car. Unless you give it full throttle, the revs stay below 4000 rpm.

Why is it better? Sport forces the car to use more of the rev band from idle to 4000. I also read somewhere that when breaking in a car, you shouldn't allow the engine to lug at low rpm's. Sport mode will keep the car in a lower gear and keep the revs a bit higher.

I have to say that I love the new auto trans. Leagues better than the one in my old 2003 G.

 

Is it? I saw a thread on here with a lot of people saying it is the same transmission and how dissappointed they were with it (especially compared to the 335i).

 

I've driven the 335i. Not measuraably better than my 2007G's.

My 2003 downshifts like mollasses, won't allow downshifts that end up much above 4000rpm. My 2007 downshifts completely before I finish moving the stick back to center detent! And it happily allows downshifts to high rpms. Still breaing in the car, so far I have only allowed downshifts to 6000 rpm.