Heh heh. I dare ya to tell Old Ray it's a safety feature...

 

Sorry. I mis-typed. Please allow me to clarify. It is a financial "safety" feature designed to protect GM. It was developed at the considerable sacrifice of many lead foot equipped "stock market crash test dummies". (tic)

 

I bought my SS with an Automatic and I love it!!

 

Now I speak from experience (autoxing) that when you have the auto in low it will downshift for turns to hear what it sounds like I will post 2 videos.

Auto tranny in drive while autoxing. You can tell coming out of the turns the auto is sluggish (and trust me you can feel it big time).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i270KWyMKR8


Now this is the video of it in L the engine stays in the powerband and is not constantly figuring out what gear to go in. The worst part was I was barely pushing it (missing apexs and a little less speed on the straights) and i got my quickest time by almost a full second.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ret9qB1jggQ

 

I have now heard on this site at least 3-4 Folks that have had Catastrophic
Transmission and Clutch failure in there 5 speed cars!!!
I am now Officially happy that I bought an Autoimatic!!
Anyone else??

 

Time will tell, but automatics are not free and clear of all troubles.

 

When I am doing 75-80 on the freeway my revs are down compared to your 4speed. I did it for the mileage. PLUS save 1K and got more pony's.

 

At 70 MPH the tach is barely over 2000 RPM in the automatic. That is pretty impressive.

 

Yep! instant mpg is stil 32/33 too.

 

I have had no complaints about the auto transmission. It seems to shift flawlessly at the right times.

I've heard of a lot of complaints about the 6 speed auto in the new Malibu because it downshifts and upshifts at unexpected times. Maybe sometimes simpler is better....