I own a 2012 Lancia Voyager 3.6L with 2500 miles on the meter. On a recent trip to the US I rented a Town & Country 2014 Touring 3.6L. I noticed a big difference in acceleration and engine responsiveness in favor of the US car. But according to the specifications the engine should be the same, the 3.6L Pentastar with 283hp. The only difference is that the US version has a flexifuel enabled engine. However, I always fueled up with 87 regular, comparable to the 95 regular I use in Europe. Also, the US model has a button for economy drive, which was always set to "economy". This button does not exist in the European model.

Could there be a difference in the engine performance between the two models? Or could the transmission be configured differently? Or could I simply be imagining better performance due to sunny cruising in California compared to rain and snow in Sweden?

 

I would imagine that the differing emissions regulations mean the ECU's are mapped a bit differently, but I'd be surprised if the difference was that noticeable.

most likely it was the sunshine!

Regards
Richard

 

After some more testing I am pretty convinced that my European Lancia Voyager is using a different configuration for the gearbox. It is a lot slower than its US counterpart to shift down in order to get quick acceleration. I need to push the pedal far down in order to get it to shift down. Overall the transmission feels slow and lagging. Wouldn't surprise me if EU emission regulations are behind a bad configuration setting.

Is there any way to do a software update that makes the gearbox more responsive?