- BMW felt the 850Ci's engine was too strong and have too much torque for the manual selection of 1st gear on the steptronic so decided to desable the manual selection of the 1st gear. It should work (and it does) on the 840 but not on the 850Ci. Since I haven't tried it on the 850Ci I cannot confirm that. On my 840Ci I can select 1st gear anytime I want to ! But that reminds me of my long term questiuon about steptronic ...

: When driving in the "manual" mode, and making a stop in lets say 4th gear the tranny won't shift back to 1st or not even 2nd (in case of maybe a 850 mode) but only to 3rd. Of course the V8 isn't that torque to take off in 3rd, so I have to pull it to 2nd or first whatever I desire. But why ? My cousin has a '00 Passat and his steptronic shifts back to 1st gear ! I guess if the first statement is right then a tranny should shift back to 2nd on the 850Ci and 1st on the 840Ci. So please help me out too , is soemthing wrong with my tranny or just BMW was all confused about the shiftronic and confused us even more ?