Vauxhall Automatic Gearboxes

Sometime last year I had the opportunity to borrow my parent's car whilst mine was being worked on. It was/is an automatic Vauxhall Corsa. This being a computer controlled manual gearbox rather than a traditional automatic gearbox. It was also a small engined car for having an automatic gearbox so it's problems showed even more. For the record though I have a Honda Jazz with a similar sized engine so I believe I was comparing like with like.


Why did I hate it? Let me give you an example. Suppose you wish to overtake someone on the motorway. My normal move would go something like:
* Realise you want to overtake
* check you can/plan your move
* indicate /double check planning
* Start to move lanes, change gear, accelerate to pass
* finish off the move

However doing anything above a minor acceleration means that the automatic gear box takes about 3 seconds to change down a gear and sort itself out ready for acceleration. This changes the overtake sequence to:
* Realise you want to overtake
* Floor the throttle
* Check you can/plan your move
* indicate /double check planning
* Abort the Throttle if needed otherwise:
* Start to move lanes, Finally the car starts to accelerate to pass
* finish off the move

Don't get me wrong, once its started to accelerate it goes fine, it just somehow takes an age to get itself in the right gear and then get the drive train engaged.

The other gem it has is when you pull up at traffic lights it has a habit of putting itself into neutral and not telling you. This would be fine if it took itself out again - it doesn't it just sits there in neutral with you revving the engine wondering why you aren't going anywhere. The fix I've found is to always stick it into neutral and then only put it back into drive as you wish to pull off.

The point being that to drive it i found two strategies where the gearbox system worked as you'd expect:
1) Drive very sedately
2) Drive very very aggressively.

Anything inbetween and it found itself in the wrong gear and you'd be bricking yourself while the car twiddled its thumbs and woke up.
Not recommended.