When I first purchased my xfire (auto) the first thing I noticed was the up/downshift pattern was east/west as opposed to the normal north/south. Just wondering why, must be a reason MB did it that way.

 

You are talking about the auto tranny, right? Well "North/South" is occupied by PDNR. So then you only have "west/east" for manual up and downshift. But that said, in Europe most people used to drive manual/stick-shift cars so my guess is, it kind of follows the stick shift pattern from left to right. But never thought about it, just a guess.

 

I have a VW Atlas and to manual shift you move the shifter to the right from drive and then upshift is forward and downshift is back. Just the way they built em.