How does switching a car into sport mode work?
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For my Toyota Camry, the “S” mode is mentioned somewhere as “sporty” in a manual, I think, but not the kind of sport mode others are describing. All it does is prevents the automatic transmission from going above whatever gear you set. So if you set it on 3, that will be the highest gear it goes to.
The only practical reasons I’ve ever used this mode:
* Going down a long steep hill (like a mountain pass), instead of constantly applying your brakes, which will overheat them and cause them to fail, you put it in the lower gear so that you use “engine braking” instead. The engine revs like crazy but it can save your life.
* Going up a hill that’s just steep enough to cause the automatic transmission to keep shifting between two gears. When it “can’t decide” like that, often you might just want to make it stay in the lower gear.
* If I ever need to suddenly accelerate, it *might* be faster than flooring it with the automatic transmission. Maybe.
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