Describe "gentle control of the brake". It may be specific to the 545's though.

10mph and below :
As you come to a stop, the engine is still holding about 700rpm, to anticipate (if applicable) a slow traffic pace - more braking is needed due to those higher rpm. Below that speed however the engine recognizes a full stop is imminent, drops the rpm to 500rpm...you have to reduce slightly brake force and voila: smooth stop. Takes some practice and obviously less applicable when A/C is on, since engine holds 700rpm most of the time.
Hope it helps... :thumbsup:

I think that's what I'm doing now.. but I guess that's what I'm getting annoyed with. I shouldn't have to do that. I should be able to come to a normal stop. I'm hoping that it can be figured out.

Yep, that's what I am doing. In "D" at 10mph, you are still in second. As you approach 5mph or less, the car does sense you are coming to a complete stop, drops the rev and shifts into 1st. That the initial stutter. Once is 1st, you let off the brake slightly but the car continues to stutter until you come to a complete stop.

At first, I though the stutter was cause be the shift and making my body stutter thus shaking my brake leg to amplify the stuttering effect. This is not the case. The car stutters if I let off the brake and not accelerate, just letting it idle to speed. For the first few mph, the car stutter without any input from the drive. This is more apparant if you are in a slight incline and can hold the car at a 3mph speed.

Does this sound like your situation Octee?

Neither my 2005 545 nor 2007 550 had/have this problem in non-sport mode. When driving in Sport mode the tranny is somewhat jerky when slowing down but that happens in sport mode only.

Exactly my situation amadeus00. I've noticed it a lot more often in the morning..

This sounds like some idle control problem, where the car is idling at too low rpm to pull away smoothly, or gets into a situation where it pushes the idle rpm up a little because it thinks it's about to stall. It's relatively common in old cars (caused by a dirty/sticking ICV), but I'm suprised it's happening in new ones. :think:

I thought what the OP described was a classical case of transmission slam - which is probably related to auto V8s (and 3l diesels - as the transmission is the same).

@Sergey: Do bear in mind that "Sport" mode is available as a program even with the car in "D". There's 4 auto box shifting programs (XE, E, S, XS from less to more aggressive) and the box chooses one as you go depending on various parameters (accelerator position, speed of car, pitch and yaw movements, ...). Pushing the lever to DS only selects the 'XS' program permanently. If others drive less gently than you do, they may stop with the car in S or XS mode.

That's interesting and I hadn't noticed that the rpm changes below a certain speed. Will check that out in the morning. When I use DS I start off in M2 since the shift speed from M1 to M2 happens so quick and isn't smooth unless you're on it a bit. Not an easy thing to do if there's another car in front of you that just pokes off the line. The engine doesn't seem to mind at all, shifts smooth the rest of the way up.

What I did was everytime I have to come to a stop at a traffic light, I adjusted my brake power with the car. After countless tries of increasing brake power/releasing it while adjusting to the car movement. I don't really understand the technical part of it, so I can't really explain that really well, but it might be specific to 545i.

I did notice that by downshifting into the M1 as I was braking it eased the stuttering significantly. I'll have to try it again in the morning and see if it's consistent. Again, I think these are just work arounds and not true solutions to our problems. But I'll take them for now.