Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

My car has a button on the transmission lever to select between "sport" and "economy" settings. (Yeah, it's an automatic; not my first choice, but beggars can't be choosers and driving an automatic isn't really bad enough to complain about.) When I took possession of the vehicle it was set to "economy", and since the performance failed-to-suck I just left it there. But on the most recent tank of gas I figured I'd experiment, and drove the entire tank with the button on the "sport" setting. I wondered just how much difference to fuel economy the button made.

The car does feel different when I change the setting, and yes, it does feel more "sporty" or "sportscar like" in a mostly subjective, partly describable way. In some ways choosing "sport" made it feel a little more like a manual-transmission car despite my not having to shift. I expected the big change to be the shift points, that it would shift a little later in "sport", but I noticed a difference when not accelerating as well. Taking my foot off the gas resulted in more engine drag and a more noticeable drop in speed than when the button is set to "economy" ... making me think, "clutch instead of torque converter?"

My gas mileage for this tank was slightly better than average. Not so much that it couldn't be random variation (and there was that one weekend when I didn't drive as fast as usual, but the rest of the time I've been driving normally), but it's a smidgen better than the highest fuel economy I'd gotten in this car to date. I found this a little surprising.

Of course, this also has me thinking, "using the clutch more and the torque converter less?" -- that would explain both the sensations and the slight increase in fuel economy. But it wouldn't explain why the clutch (assuming my car actually has one, which I suspect but have not confirmed) isn't used more often in "economy" mode. After all, wasn't the whole reason for adding clutches to four-speed electronically-controlled automatic transmissions to improve gas mileage?

(What I don't know is whether all four-speed automatics have clutches or not. The first four-speed I drove, a Pontiac, was the first time I'd heard of any automatic having a clutch, and the only reason I knew about it was that it was misadjusted so that the transitions were more abrupt -- and more noticeable -- than they should have been, and I noticed six state-transitions instead of the three I'd expected (the clutch never engaged in first gear, so the transmission had a total of seven states when in "drive"). Now I'm driving a 1990 Honda, and haven't found out the details of the transmission, and the transitions are smooth enough that I could easily believe I'm simply not noticing clutch/torque-converter transitions or that it has no clutch.)

In the "sport" setting the shift points are a bit later -- the engine almost never gets up to 6000 RPM in "economy", but winding it up that far is a pretty nice option to have on a short merge-apron at the end of a tight ramp -- so perhaps if I drove like a peak-testosterone 17-year-old drag-racer-wannabe the mileage would drop way off in "sport" mode, I dunno -- I'm not going to start peeling out at traffic lights just to find out. But for folks who drive reasonably, I wonder whether the difference is not so much "performance vs. economy" as it is "remind you subtly of a sports car vs. feel as though you're being good even if it costs more gas".

Interestingly, other aspects of the car's performance feel more "sporty" in sport-mode as well. I'm not sure whether this is purely psychological (my guess), or perhaps an actual subtle change in the steering since it is, after all, a front-wheel-drive car, so changing the transmission might conceivably affect handling. Again, I wonder.

But if (with the way I drive) there is no fuel penalty to using the "sport" switch, and not a really huge penalty for using so-called-economy mode, I think I'll start switching between the two modes depending on conditions and situation. It turns out I prefer some aspects of the feel of "economy" mode and other aspects of "sport" mode, and as long as switching between them while the car is in motion harms nothing, I'll take the best of each. (In particular, cruising at [mumble] MPH over the speed limit feels more comfortable in "economy".) And my guess is that the switch merely signals an embedded controller to use different constants in its algorithm, not to make an immediate change to the mechanism when the button is pushed, I think it shouldn't cause increased wear or other damage. I hope.

Of course I'm still left with a lot of guesswork. If more concrete clues fall into my lap as a result of my posting this, I shall not be unhappy about that. Or other guesses than mine, for that matter. :-)