pennetta

I ordered the Sport Auto as well. Can you go into more detail as compared to the Steptronic?

wowe

Very nice car

terracotta

Congrats on the new ride! The sports tranny and its surrounding vicinity just looks sooo much cleaner than the patchwork of the LCI steptronic.

Bris

Congrats on a lovely car. Hopefully, my car with Sport Auto should arive within a week- but it will be drinking petrol- a 530iA

bardel

Does the sports shift only come with the big chrome plate surround?

I've ordered black dash with the black gloss trim, but that chrome plate looks a bit harsh, that said, the standard option is a piece of plastic if i remember rightly?

I went through the order quite thoroughly with my dealer as I've put loads of options on yet he didn't even mention the sports auto. I've just checked the BMW web site and I can see it on the car configurator now and it's only a ?70 option, cheaper than car mats!!!!

Think I'll be making a trip to the dealer tomorrow to see if they've got one to look at and compare.

Barry

Rudy

As others have requested, please give us more information on the transmission -- we're all weeks away from getting our sport autos and you're the first one here to drive one -- how are the throttle blipped downshifts? In sport mode, does it ever upshift by itself? Any and every detail you can think of will be great!

Beautiful car (except that they put the steering wheel on the wrong side!)

mogsyman

Thanks for all your comments.

I'm out all day today (and sadly not in my car!) but will be able to give you a better update in a day or two.

Initial impressions are it's a very smooth box and I'm pretty sure it 'blipped' the throttle on the down shift but the problem is I spent most of the afternoon in a huge traffic jam on the M25 around London travelling very slowly and never really got to drive the car or have a good play!

The stick itself is easy to use. Press the button on the right hand side and either move forward to go into reverse or back to go into drive. Not tried the side 'sports' mode yet so not sure what happens there. The buttons on the wheel seem to be in just the right place and it felt natural to use my thumb to go up and pull towards me to go down. I guess the design is very similar to the M5

I'll have a good play shortly and add more comments

The 8 buttons for the idrive memory are all just under the single CD which can be seen on this photo



Edited to add the following....

The shift through the gears in all my 'old' BMW's even using sports and pushing or pulling the auto stick always happened as it wanted to and almost in a relaxed way.

When I was able to use the paddles yesterday it seemed to shift a significantly faster both up and down the gears and be 'in gear' really smoothly but there instantly. I guess how I would expect an SMG to react but don't forget this is in a diesel and not a petrol and I'm sure the box will be different to cope with both types of engine.

Shame you guys in the States can't have this combo because you get fantastic performance and still return over 30mpg! (even on a bad run with lots of traffic ).

BMWSTL

Very positive sign!

My car just reached "awaiting transport" status. Reading about the new transmission just adds to the agony of waiting.

Lou

Rudy

Are you sure that's how it works? The E60 SMG (non-M) works exactly the opposite way -- thumbs shift down and fingers (pulling toward you) shift up.

(The M5 uses a different setup. On the M, pulling the right paddle shifts up and pulling the left paddle shifts down...)

mogsyman

I'll have a play and report back