As I pulled out of Harrietville on the Great Alpine Road, heading to Dinner Plain, I selected SPORT, and immediately the trans changed down, and accelerated.

Back off for the bends and immediately it downchanged waiting till the revs built up appropriately for the upchange.

Not once did I feel tempted to touch the paddles, a far cry from the W164 which was always wrong, changing down too many gears when you hit the left paddle under brakes, and changing up as you needed power up the hill.

On top of that, it sat much flatter cornered faster and overall was a far more enjoyable drive.

Nice. Which ML are you driving? Do you have Active Curve System with your AIRMATIC? And the 20 inch AMG wheels?

I should have said it's an ML350 BlueTec, with on/off road pack, Airmatic and standard 20" wheels.

Now I have had the second run up and over Mt Hotham. For those of you overseas, this is the highest open road in Australia, with a 25km section of tight hairpins and virtually no straight more than 100m.

This time it was heavy rain and howling winds, so I opted for a steady drive with the Auto setting.

This showed the excellent torque of the BlueTec as it generally drove a gear higher. On a few hairpins, there was a bit of scrambling to find a lower gear, but overall it functioned extremely well. Far better than the W164. Again I opted not to touch the paddles, and again I did not really need them. Perhaps next time I will use them but only for those few hairpins.

Now I can't wait for the chance to find out how the "Snow" setting will work in the winter.

I should add, the trans worked perfectly for a very quick run down the mountain too.