mikeant13

Hi,

I hope I am not being stupid but I drove a late model Honda Civic and was surprised that at rest on an incline in Drive it rolled backward when the brake pedal was released.

I have driven many cars with Automatic boxes and never encountered this.

On my Audi when stationary facing up a hill when in Drive the car is not able to roll backwards when the brake pedal is released. Why does this not apply to the Honda Civic.

Thanks Mike

0go-part

A lot of cars that have small engines have this problem. It's due to the way that the transmission is set up. Because of the small size of the engine and therefor the low amount of torque the engine can produce at low RPM, the transmission is set up with a higher stall RPM in the torque converter. What this means is that it slips more than a torque converter with a lower stall speed. This allows the car to roll back when its on a steep enough incline.

TLDR: The transmission isn't exerting enough forward torque to keep the car from rolling back. We can safely assume that your Audi makes more torque than your Honda.