Modding the slushotronic.

All things are relative.

I owned a '92 525 auto for many years - the first 24 valve with the first

- in contrast to the available performance when you got it revving. Even more so when cruising on a motorway at 70 - it would often have to change down 2 gears to climb hills. The gearing was extremely tall, and the excellent fuel consumption bore this out.

You have to drive a later car with VANOS to realise just how sluggish the early ones felt at low revs.

My current 528 auto which has VANOS and lower overall gearing never feels sluggish under any circumstances - despite being the heavier car.

What sort of fuel consumtion does your 528 return on average? And on a long run?

Peter

I'm afraid that depends on London traffic and the journeys I'm doing. Say just over 20 if travelling outside rush hour in town. I've seem under 15, though.

Motorway use at about 85 on my speedo, 32 ish.

Well, a Morris Minor will spin its wheels pulling away on a corner of a wet road...

FWIW, that's one of the great things about the DSC on the E39 - just plonk your foot down at a T junction etc on a wet road and it sorts it for you.

Well no, not quite - in the wet in a straight line or the dry coming out of a junction though. In the wet coming out of a junction would be a really bad idea....

Yup - a friend of mine once had a BM 316i auto - you felt the need to get out and push the poor thing to get it moving....

True :o)

I've never driven a car with any sort of traction control - I've a feeling it would just encourage me to be (more) stupid....

Ouch, I remember having a 1.6 auto cavalier for a while... that was amazing...

My last works van (108D Mercedes Vito) had some sort of traction control, I think it just attempted to match the speeds of the front wheels if one was obviously spinning - I don't really know how it worked or what it did - a light flashed but nothing appeared to happen as the wheel(s) just kept spinning when you engaged it with judicious clutch dumpage.

Mind you, I never got that van stuck, and I drove it through a lot of muddy fields. On wet tarmac however it was just a game to see how long you could keep the light flashing. It was a manual however.

Douglas

I have a mate who had a K reg rover 820 auto. His party trick was to make it wheelspin on dry tarmac by revving it to ~4000rpm in neutral then quickly slapping it into D. It was FWD however. I suspect the Carlton would pull the same sort of trick but I'm not sure how long the 'box would last if it was repeated regularly so I have never tried. (c:

Douglas

Simple ones just brake the other wheel from the one that's spinning. Go up a notch and they cut the engine power as well.

Yes - that's the same effect as being brutal with the clutch on a manual. Of course, all it does is reduce the acceleration, so is a bit pointless.

To get the very best take off on an auto, hold it on the brakes while revving it up in drive as far as it will go - the torque convertor stall point. But this will heat things up quickly, so not advised as a matter of course...

Yeah, Volvo's does that. In theory it should work great - in practice, it's about as effective as a flea-fart in a hurricane.