Okay... let me give a brief backgrounder on this before I get flamed. I have had 2 Minis already. 03 MC 5 speed and most recently an 05 MCS 6 speed. I have since moved on and am looking to get a clubman S with auto so my wife can enjoy the car as well. For all the "Manual" pundits out there, I already have a manual M3 for a weekend toy. Now my question is, with the auto on the S, is it like "put it in Manual mode" and just shift up with the paddles... and I'm assuming it's pull for upshift and push the button on the top of the paddle to downshift, right? Just leaving it in the "fat" curve say on the twisties.... I'm looking forward to this so any tips on maximizing the auto tranny for more fun would be appreciated

 

Put it in manual auto and shift the heck out of it just like you would while getting on it with a stick. Use either the paddles or the stick and have fun with it. Fyi I came from a manual porshe boxster and I am impressed with the clubmans auto.

 

I like to use the shifter also. I put it in Sport and like to think of it as my very own sequential shifter. Pop it forward to downshift and pull back to upshift - it's probably quicker than a real sequential.

 

I am a LONG-time manual tranny owner - every car for the past 37 years has been a stick. But with traffic the way it is nowadays around Washington, DC I absolutely insisted upon getting an automatic.

And, believe me, I had my worries about that. I'm a control freak and really enjoy having complete say-so as to when the tranny shifts. I'm also pretty damn good at driving a manual, I've also had 40-50 motorcycles in that time period, too. Having said all that, the Aisin 6-speed auto. in the Mini REALLY impressed me when I test drove the car.

It shifts as quick as anything I've ever driven and the fact that it has both sedate and sporting modes really sold me. I use the paddles on occasion, but I've found that by simply engaging the Sport mode the tranny does a whale of a good job of selecting the proper shift points for the job at hand.

I use the Sport button for specific conditions - I use it for pulling away from stoplights, the gas pedal re-mapping makes for a much quicker pull out of the hole. Then, once I'm up to crusiing speed, I reach down and dis-engage it, thereby allowing it to go into super-overdrive mode. 6th gear is something like .672:1 as I recall, that's a hell of an overdrive figure. Even 5th gear is overdriven, I thinks it's around .850:1

And I certainly don't miss the throbbing left tigh muscle that I suffered with when caught in the ever-present stop and go traffic we have. My only real ***** about the whole setup is that they should have placed the Sport mode button somewhere on the shifter or the steering wheel. By now my left index finger knows EXACTLY where the button is located, but the alternative placements I recommended would have made much more sense.