03 Jan 07
Time to find out. We'll begin in manual Sport mode, the default setting. There's a gentle, automatic-like creep at idle, which is useful for manoeuvring and traffic-jam crawling, but flicking the upshift paddle to select second results in a sudden cut of power, a pause, then the reinstatement of that power in a surge. It's the classic robotised-manual problem; deft easing of the accelerator at the right time can smooth things out with practice, but the system should be able to round off the edges itself.
Things get smoother through the higher gears, the downshifts quick and clean thanks to a modest but well-judged automatic blip of the accelerator. If I'm driving hard, all is good. It's going gently that's the problem.
Let's try Comfort mode. This slows down the gearshifts and actuates the clutch more gently, so progress can still be smoother than in Sport. If I try to help upshifting smoothness with the accelerator, though, my efforts are less useful because it's harder to be accurate during a lazier gearshift.
And there's another snag, common to both shift-speed modes. As I come to a stop the Vantage snatches and shunts because the clutch disengages slightly too late.
