Gearbox Brain in BMW v AUDI

[david@a8parts]

I was out driving at the weekend in my Mum's BMW 330Ci Auto. Now, I have noticed on many other occasions when driving this car that the gearbox ECU is far more intelligent than any Audi Auto I have driven but the damn thing seems to get more intelligent each time I drive it !

The Audi boxes are fairly clever - if you put it in sport mode it will hold the gears briefly when you release the accelerator (so long as you do it quickly enough) and it will learn your style and if you are in the mood to press on it will work with you. However, the BMW box is on another level. Accelerate hard and release and it will not change up until you accelerate again. Accelerate into a corner and it will not change gear while you are cornering. And something I have never experienced in an audi, and it is so obvious in the BMW, is the engine braking. Coming down Sutton Bank (quite steep) on Sunday in no rush at all I started the downhill and gently pressed the brake pedal. The box shifted down into 3rd to assist me to slow down (cool). Then as I continued to lightly press the brake the speed of the car continued to increase so the box dropped down into 2nd (excellent!) and I travelled down the hill hardly needing to use the brakes at all just as you would in a manual car. How clever.
Now, annoyingly, the BMW box is ZF and the gearbox controller is Bosch so identical set up to Audi - if the W12 controller had this level of intelligence it would make a real difference; I wonder if I can send it on a training course to BMW....