Car is a 2000 Corolla with a 4-spd auto.
The gears are as follows in order:
Park
Reverse
Neutral
Drive
2nd
1st
Should I go directly from Park to Drive or stop at Reverse and Neutral for a second to let the transmission gears properly engage?
No need to stop on the way to Drive, put your foot on the brake, move the lever to Drive and the transmission will take care of itself
Not only is there no need to engage Reverse before putting the shift lever into the Drive position, there is a potential to increase the wear on the transmission’s clutches by needlessly engaging Reverse.
Simply move the shift lever in one fluid motion from Park to Drive, and then…drive.
Should I go directly from Park to Drive or stop at Reverse and Neutral for a second to let the transmission gears properly engage?
This is a joke, right? Why would you want reverse to “engage” before going foward?
Too much Star Trek The Next Generation “Engage Number One”
@xaml…I think you are over-thinking this. The transmission is designed to go directly from park to drive…and from drive to park instantly after you have stopped the vehicle of course.
.and from drive to park instantly.
ONLY after the vehicle is at a complete stop!
Need to be very specific for this OP.
I would not slam it, but one fluid motion with steady pressure. Car makers know what they are doing. Not to fear. At least you don’t have a clutch to deal with in those pesky manuals ! BTW, it looks like you have a three speed auto with those gear selections unless you have an OD button on your shifter.
What about with CVT?
Transmission: continual variable Trans
Whether it is a CVT or a “conventional” automatic transmission does not matter.
Just move the lever in one fluid motion from Park to the desired gear position.
I suspect that somebody is giving you this bizarrely bogus advice about engaging reverse before you engage a forward gear.
Am I correct?
No, I thought it was common sense 
How about this one:
Is it best to park front-in or rear on a very slightly elevated hill? I noticed that when on slightly elevated hills, the fuel guage is off slightly…does this apply to oil in the engine too?
I park on the street sometimes. Is it ok if I go from park-drive?
Common sense?
Really?
So, can we assume that before you walk forward, you always take 1/2 step backward, as that would follow the same type of “common sense”?
;-))
Regarding how to park on a hill, vis-a-vis the engine’s oil supply, the oil pickup located in the crankcase more or less floats on the surface of the oil and is pivoted so that it will change its orientation along with the oil.
Yes it is Okey to go directly from Park to Drive.
It is best if you have the car stopped i.e not rolling and wait long enough for the clutch(s) to engage before you get on the gas. You don’t want to get in the habit of slipping the transmission in your haste to get down the road.
FYI for all you youngsters out there, the only reason that reverse is between park and neutral is safety. Reverse used to be at the bottom of the order P-N-D-L-R but on occasion when someone would try going from D to L, they would pull down a little too far, two words here, the first is Oh.
Keith is correct.
IIRC, it was the early Hydramatics (used by many other car makers in addition to its manufacturer, GM) that placed Reverse at the bottom on the shift quadrant.
This placement had one advantage, in that a driver who was “rocking” the car back & forth in order to get out of some deep snow had a much easier time with this placement of gear positions. That was the good news.
The bad news was that many accidents were attributed to people thinking that their car was in “Low” when it was actually in Reverse–or vice versa. Thus, the positions on the shift quadrant were eventually changed in the interest of safety.
The shift pattern in my '60 Olds is the P-N-D-2-L-R pattern.
Something along the same lines but related to motorcycles is the transmission on the old Harley 45 cubic inch flatheads. There was a 3-speed version for the 2 wheelers and a 3-speed with reverse for the three wheel versions; a.k.a. meter maid trikes.
The transmissions looked identical and are direct swaps with the pattern being 3-2-1-R.
Sometimes the rider, through miscalculation or not knowing the 2 wheeled bike had a reverse, would grab the reverse gear by accident. let out the foot clutch, and promptly go backwards. That usually meant smacking the grille of any car in trail or a lot of embarassment due to falling over…
A friend spent an entire winter building a slick 45 custom 2-wheeler and discovered within 5 minutes at the first stop sign that the trans he used had a reverse inside of it Probably should have checked the operation before installing it or rigged a stop to lock out reverse…
So much for PRNDL standardization…BMW has a different setup now, just because…Lincoln’s going with push buttons…Jaguar has a rotary knob. Not that they’re ‘better’, just 'different.
Chrysler and Rambler had push buttons once upon a time.
^
So did Edsel, and theirs were in the center of the steering wheel hub.
I think that Mercury might have also used push buttons for a couple of years.
You’d think that if they wanted to do something that hasn’t been done before, put the buttons on the touch screen.