except the other day... Twice I noticed it shifted extremely hard (so hard my wife said "what the hell was that"[>:]) between 1st and 2nd gear. That was was 4 days ago, since then it has continued to shift like a 2007 Mercedes. Has anyone else ever had this problem? Can anyone give some insight to this?
TIA, Vern

 

A slammin' shift is normal when the engine (actually, the catalytic converters) is cold. This is a scheme MB came up with to reduce overall toxic emissions from their fleet. The engine revs higher than normal, to about 3K rpm, which causes stiff shifting and accelerated lighting of the cats.

If it happens after the car is warmed up, then it's something else.

 

The car has never shifted hard when it was cold. Both times when this happened the car was warm. Any other ideas as to why the car mysteriously did this?

TIA, Vern