My 240 has a really weird way of starting up in the morning, which today progressed to taking 15 minutes to start, then needing several hard kicks in the behind to keep running, and another 15 minutes of playing with revs versus transmission to convince the thing to back out of my driveway.

What happens(when it's not as bad as today) is that it starts and idles OK, even if it under-revs a little, but on any throttle pressure either in-gear or in neutral/park, it sputters and seems to have a hell of a time gaining revs. Has absolutely zero power until at least 3000rpm, at which point it happily whirrs away. Today, it wouldn't run for even a few seconds the first few times I cranked it, at which point I started playing with the throttle while cranking, which eventually caused it to start up. Stalled, re-started it, stalled, re-started and held it at about 3500rpm until it warmed up, then had trouble moving off to get out of the driveway(had to pile on the revs before I shifted into reverse- made for a very violent exit, and was probably very very bad for the transmission).

Basically, it usually starts, but seems to have severe problems getting the revs up or any power to the wheels. Once it's moved 30 metres or so, it goes fine; when I get back into the car after work, 8-10 hours later, it starts fine first time. So it seems to be a morning-only thing...could it have something to do with the ambient temperature? But once the engine's warmed up to a normal level, it can still do it. Transmission maybe? Somehow? I don't know how automatics(or even manuals, really) work, so I don't know if the gearbox can affect the engine in this way.

Really need help on this one.