Ye Olde World According to Buchs

I learned something new about my car last night. Apparently the Volvos with automatic transmission come with something called “Geartronic“, or as Les called it “Fake-Stick”:

While driving

• If you select the M position while driving, the gear that was being used in the Drive position will also initially be selected in the M position.
• Move the gear selector forward (toward “+”) to shift to a higher gear or rearward (toward “-”) to shift to a lower gear.
• If you hold the gear selector toward “-”, the transmission will downshift one gear at a time and will utilize the braking power of the engine. If the current speed is too high for using a lower gear, the downshift will not occur until the speed has decreased enough to allow the lower gear to be used.
• If you slow to a very low speed, the transmission will automatically shift down.