I took the little beauty on its first road trip (at least with me). Up and down some nice twisty hills for over 200 miles today. The car handles and climbs beautifully.

The only thing I noticed is that when I used the decelerate toggle on the cruise, it would begin slowing the car like I would expect, then I would feel like someone pushed against the front end like it was being held back. I noticed that the RPM's were jumping from 2,200 to over 3k so I'm guessing that as I was holding down the decel toggle, the car dropped into a lower gear causing the rpms to climb due to the current speed causing the car to slow.

Is this an accurate hypothesis?

 

I think so.

 

The automatic transmission in these cars is designed to be smarter than your average bear as it takes various inputs from the cruise control, inertial sensors, load and rpm status to figure out what the car is actually doing before adjusting it's shift points.

If you are climbing a slight grade in cruise mode, you will notice that the Crossfire does NOT jump between gears on a long steady grade, even if it's on the edge of a gear. The system is intelligent enough to know it should simply hold that gear.

Also, when descending a grade, it will downshift in order to trans-brake, just like an intelligent driver would do in a manual transmission.

These cars have an ENORMOUS amount of high technology in them. Don't be too surprised that the car is thinking better than you do on occasion.

 

I have no doubt the car is smarter than I am. Who bought who after all. LOL.

Thanks for the feedback. The more I drive, the more I learn...

 

I know even the 90's Chrysler trannys did that because I've driven quite a few. It's pretty common.

 

My '01 Dakota didn't so I thought there might be an issue. When I hit the decel, it acted like you had let your foot off the gas and let the truck decel that way.

I'm glad the car has intelligence. Now, if it would only pick out the right lady, I'd be set.

 

Be careful what you wish for...