Vanwall May 21st, 2004 Link
As an enthusiastic CVT owner, I'm very happy with my MINI. I can have a manual shift mode for the twisties, where my MINI keeps up and more, thank you, (could it be me? – Naw!) or a smooth, relaxing drive in heavy traffic with no clutch pedal dancing for stop & go, or when in the “D” mode with the cruise control set, I get quite respectable mileage. It seems reasonbly bullet-proof as well, day in, day out, and the manual shifting is unchanged over the 45K miles I've put her through.
Early on, right after the break-in period was over, I went out on weekends to some of the empty, sprawling industrial parks near San Diego and experimented with the various modes of the CVT. I worked out a lot of personal preferences for driving the CVT, which is very sensitive to driver input, frankly, and came up with the 1-D-SD “Flick”, a take-off tecnique, and also found that the CVT has engine-braking effects on downshifts that are very useful on the twisties. Left foot braking seems to be the ticket for quick driving in the CVT, so I'm in training! I'm a hard-core CVT MINI driver, now, without a doubt, cause it's not like the others!
BCNU,
Rob in Dago
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