(insert muffled sigh/groan here) Yeah yeah yeah, I know it's not truly a slushbox, I know the technical differences between a CVT and a traditional auto (and I also knew it when I posted it, and I suspected that someone would be unable to let that pass unnoted. I thought about posting a footnote saying "yeah yeah yeah, I know, it's not technically a slushbox", but sometimes I ignore the voices in my head so I didn't).
Don't bother with the "do you understand" business, yes I do, and yes I have driven one. I also know that the term "slushbox" is frequently used in the automotive press in a pejorative manner to refer to all automatics, even if they aren't technically a conventional slushbox, the reason being that two things that both CVT transmissions and conventional automatics have in common is that you don't have to know how to drive stick to use one and they both tend to be markedly slower in acceleration vs an identical car equipped with a manual tranny (the posted 0-62 time of the CVT Cooper is 10.4 seconds, the 0-60 time of a 5-speed Cooper is 8.5 seconds). While the technical differences between a conventional auto and a CVT may be interesting, the net results are the same. I also happen to be fond of the term "slushbox" because it doesn't just describe the transmission, but also because (in my humble opinion) it describes the way such a car accelerates (unless you can afford a Bentley or the like. I can't). So I call automatics slushboxes. Sue me. All of this carries me farther adrift from my trivial original point that an 115hp automatic, be it a CVT or a conventional auto, isn't in the same category as a 170hp 6-speed stick...
-Ricardo (who learned to drive on a stick and still stomps the floor looking for the clutch when he drives an automatic rental car)