I bought the car [2001 SL1 with automatic] used at a dealership and it seemed to be in great shape aside from some cosmetic blemishes. I didn't notice any shudder when I test drove it, but later I did. The car would vibrate heavily no matter what gear you put it in, except for neutral and park, of course. My girlfriend owns a *ahem* well-loved
1995 Ford Contour with almost 200,000 miles on it, and there I was, with a fairly new car that vibrated just as bad as hers. Can you say, embarrassing? She noticed it too. Weeks later, it started clunking when upshifting and would downshift with an eyepopping bang from 4th to
3rd under moderate to heavy deceleration. I checked the fluid and the level was fine but it smelled burnt, the filter was rusty on the outside. It was around the time for it to be changed (40,000--close enough to me) according to the manual so...
To summarize: no matter what Dextron III type of fluid I tried, the car behaved the same way. The Mobil 1 Synthetic ATF stock Saturn filter transformed the car. It shifts much more smoothly, very rarely shudders and generally doesn't act as though it's possessed as much. I'm not sure switching to synthetic would help you. The torque converter, AFAIK, doesn't lock until 3rd and 4th gear. So it's either releasing/engaging when it isn't supposed to or it could maybe be a shift solenoid problem or...a lot of different things. It's hard to say since my car has never done that specifically.