Can someone tell me when to shift into "S" and when to use + and -? In other words, other than just putting my '04 LS into "DRIVE", when would/should you use the other settings? I fess up that I was in a hurry when I took delivery of the car and did not have that explained.

Daryll40

 

I cant really imagine a circumstance when you would need it. I think its only in their because everyone else had it

 

Probably so, but how does it work?

 

I assume you can basically use it right? push up to shift up...pull back to shift down. It could in theory be useful to hold a gear while making a turn, to avoid having the transmission hunt for the proper gear only to be left flat footed coming out of the turn. Thats assuming you were pushing the car, wouldnt make much difference in a normal turn.

 

When you shift into the S position, it always goes into 5th gear. This is true if you're at at stop or if you're driving. You can drive in that setting as you normally would, or you can shift manually by pushing up on the shifter to go to a higher gear or down to go to a lower gear. This setting is used to access lower gears if, for example, you're driving down a hilly road and want to use a lower gear to utilize engine braking. You can also use it in snow for better traction. Audi, Mercedes and BMW have it so Lexus felt they needed it too. It is actually fun to use on an open road with curves. You can manually go up and down the gears as if it were a manual transmission.

 

Ah! Thanks!

 

the manual basically sets it up as a speed lowering mode when you are just about to brake either to reduce speed or come to a stop ie an "engine brake" (the rpm setting of D="6" and manumatic when engaged triggers "5"). it can also be used to accelerate from stop-the thing is that it doesn't have the auto-set feature bmw manumatics have ie when you come to a stop it sets it to "1" even if you've stopped at "3". so in the lexus I presume you have to bring everything back to "1" manually or shift things back to "D" before you can accelerate correctly.

also, i presume your 0-60 times will be faster using the manumatic rather than "D"

 

Think of it as driving a clutchless manual. Instead of leaving it in "D" and letting the computer pick what is the apporpriate gear, you can put it in "S" and pick what gear u want the car in. For instance, say your going into a corner fast and don't want to hit the brakes, you would drop a gear (click the -) to drop down a gear, the car will then engine brake and you can SHOOT out the corner.

Say you want to merge with traffic and want to stay in the cars upper powerband, you would probably keep it in "3" (third gear).