Knowing how to drive the car efficiently is also a big help. I know everyone wants to go racing in their car, but that's just not the right thing to do. Neutral bombs (putting the shifter into neutral, revving the engine, then drop it into gear) are like playing Russian roulette. You may be lucky and still have your transaxle, but you don't want to be unlucky and shoot a piston through your transaxle pan and wiping out the gears with it. Brake torquing will heat up the transmission fluid and that's what you don't want to do either.

Now that the obvious is out of the way, let's go on to the not so obvious things. These transaxles are slow to shift. You might have noticed it when it shifts from first to second. Personally, I would take it easy and not go above 2000 RPMs when it's shifting from first to second. You can go a little higher, but don't go excessively high (like past 5000 RPMs). Once it completes the first to second shift, the other gears are a lot more firm and quick. The reason for this is because it does the first to second shift a lot more often than the other shifts thus wearing it out faster. It gets sloppy over time and becomes the most noticeable. Just take it easy until you get out of first.

Speaking of slow shifting, it doesn't just apply to the forward gears. When you move the shifter manually it will also shift slow. Like when you shift from Park to Reverse, Park to Drive, Reverse to Drive, etc. The most noticeable "lag" is the Reverse-to-a-forward-gear shift and vice versa. It seems to take the computer a while to think about the decision. On the older cars you can feel it clunk into gear when it's ready. The newer ones have a softer shift, but it still takes a while for the computer to change the gear. You should wait a second or two before taking off. You should always come to a complete stop before moving the shifter. If you let it roll and then add gas while the computer changes gear, you end up doing a mini neutral bomb.

First gear is mainly used for going up and down steep hills. It offers engine braking going downhill while keeps the engine in the torque range for better climbing. As long as you don't exceed 30 MPH, it should be fine to use. Locking first gear is also great for premature failure in rush hour or in parking lots since it likes to shift between first and second gear a lot in low speed stop-and-go. I wouldn't recommend shifting into it while the car is in motion. It's a rather harsh shift. It's also not a direct linkage into first gear. If you're going fast enough, you can pull the shifter into first, but it'll only downshift into second so the transaxle won't blow itself up. See, the computer can be smarter than the user sometimes. I wouldn't recommend doing it often though because that's mainly for engine braking going down a hill. Once it gets to a low enough speed, the computer will lock the transaxle into first until you move the shifter again.