Sports mode?
 

Ok I know I had this mode, but today, while drving around, I noticed it goes up and down. What is that? If I just turn it to the left, what hapens? What happens when I push it up or down?

Moving the shifter to the left puts the transmission in sport mode and moving up and down will psuedo-manual shift.

There's also some similar talk going on here:
http://www.x3world.com/x5-e53-forum/...nsmission.html

But as ekaz said, you can select your own gears after pushing it up or down from "S" mode. It becomes "M" mode for manual.

And if you shift the wrong way or over rev, the computer will override...Geartronic shifts the opposite way as does my old Touareg, so I had to reverse train myself.