Driving – Mini 2008 Cooper User Manual

Page 44

Driving

Overriding the selector lever lock

Press the button on the front of the selector
lever, arrow.

P Park

Select this only when the vehicle is stationary.
The transmission locks to prevent the drive
wheels from turning.

R Reverse

Select this only when the vehicle is stationary.

N Neutral

Select this when you are in a car wash, for exam-
ple. The vehicle can roll.

D Drive, automatic position

Position for normal vehicle operation. All for-
ward gears are selected automatically.
Under normal operation conditions, fuel con-
sumption is lowest when you drive in position D.

Kick-down

Kick-down enables you to achieve maximum
performance.
Depress the accelerator pedal beyond the full-
throttle resistance point.

Sport program and manual operation
M/S

Move the selector lever from position D to the
left into the M/S shifting slot:
The Sport program is activated and DS is dis-
played.

Shifting with the selector lever

Push the selector lever forward or pull it back to
activate manual operation. Steptronic shifts the
gear.

Pull the selector lever in the + direction.
Transmission shifts up.

Push the selector lever in the – direction.
Transmission shifts down.

The tachometer displays M1 to M6.
To use the automatic mode again, move the
selector lever to the right into position D.
Upshifts and downshifts are executed only when
they will result in a plausible combination of
engine and vehicle speed; thus, for example, a
downshift that would cause the engine to over-
rev will not be executed by the system. The
selected gear is displayed briefly, followed by
the actual gear.

Shifting on the steering wheel

With the selector lever in position D, automatic
drive, you can shift gears using the shift paddles
on the steering wheel. The transmission auto-
matically switches to manual mode.
If you do not shift gears with the shift paddles or
accelerate for a certain amount of time, the
transmission automatically returns to D, auto-
matic drive.