I'm a slow developer and that's probably one of the milder things I've been called,so I came to the world of automatics a bit late in life.To be honest,I'd always sneered at automatic car drivers.Like, can't you drive a proper car or what?
Time to eat humble pie,I guess.I was totally wrong.What brought about this change of heart? A Renault Savanna,with you've guessed it,a slush box.Within days I was totally in love with the car.Oh it had its faults,like turning its rear lights off when it got the urge,but I could forgive it almost anything,'cept its fuel consumption(horrible),because of its engine and gearbox.The 'box had two settings,economical and sports modes.Economical gave you nice performance,with upshifts happening at lowish revs.This made the car ideal for ferrying gradparents,etc around,the performance being,shall we say,restrained and suited to traffic jams and town driving,which I guess is what most of us get stuck with most of the time.
On the other hand,sports mode didn't exactly transform the car into an F1 contender,we are talking about a seven seater utilty vehicle here for crying out loud,but changing up was delayed until near maximum engine revs and considering the engine was 2litres then performance was satisfying,for me anyway.The Savanna became one of the few cars I truly regretted parting company with.In fact if I can find a decent example I could still be tempted.....