TESTED
You really don’t suppose that the Herren Doktoren at Porsche really believe all that FIA stuff about the 911 being a Group II sedan?
On the other hand, how do you explain Stuttgart’s new Sportomatic transmission? If the 911 was a legitimate 4-passenger sedan, instead of a precise, responsive Gran Turismo, the Sportomatic might be a nifty option. But despite what the FIA has said, the 911 is a GT, and we can’t reconcile ourselves to the fact that Porsche would sacrifice so much to develop a new market. Say it isn’t so.
It is. Sportomatic, which is nothing more than the time-honored Porsche 4-speed transmission connected to the engine with an automatic clutch and a torque converter, is now available on all 911s. And we don’t like it. We understand the reasons for it, but we disagree and we don’t like it.
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Follow the reasoning of Porsche’s product planners. The traffic situation in metropolitan areas gets worse by the day and there’s no relief in sight. People are here to stay, and people drive cars, and more and more of them, and those cars clog the highways. Even die-hard sports car buffs have been known to grow weak after continued exposure to rush-hour traffic if only in half-hour, morning and evening increments. There is the purist stuck on the Bayshore Freeway or the East Side Drive and it takes him an hour to drive five miles—bumper to bumper—and his left leg begins to tie up and he’s got a charley horse that would put a pentathlon star to shame and he begins to wonder if there isn’t something better.
Porsche did some wondering too, and Porsche’s answer was the Sportomatic. Trouble is, Porsche should have held out. Porsche is the enthusiast’s car. It’s not cheap, but it’s not up there with Lamborghini either. It’s comfortable, it handles, and it goes—even as a Group 2 sedan, maybe especially as a Group 2 sedan. It would be easier to discover your wife was unfaithful than Porsche—but that’s not the way Porsche thought of it.
Porsche thought it had a perfect car for the enthusiast and non-enthusiast alike. Maybe the car’s bumper protection really isn’t up to the task of defending the 911 against onslaughts from arrogant buses and taxis, but with Porsche’s agility and modest size that kind of defense shouldn’t really be necessary. Just give us an automatic transmission—Porsche thought—and we’ll have an everyman’s car, everyman who can afford over $6300 that is.
Well, it doesn’t work. Not only is Sportomatic a funny name, but the transmission is a funny transmission—though there is little humor in the added $280 tacked on because they’ve taken away the clutch. The whole thing puts you to mind of Detroit’s bizarre efforts at clutchless shifting that died a merciful death in the middle Fifties. The great unlamented Gyromatic, for instance. If the Gyromatic didn’t put Chrysler Corporation out of business, it hurt—and hurt badly; and we’re sad to see Porsche repeat the experiment.
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Porsche begins by calling its Sportomatic an automatic transmission, and you’d think, if you didn’t know any better, that the transmission would change gears by itself. No chance. And in this day of computers and automation, being required to shift an automatic is a hard fault to overlook. It’s unlikely Porsche is trying to deceive anyone except themselves, but the fact remains that they’ve labeled the gear shift knob L-D-D3 and D4 in the Sportomatic. Save your stamps if you’re interested in finding where D2 went. We haven’t a clue. A thorough search uncovered not a single trace of it, and we looked hard. Its whereabouts will forever remain one of the mysteries of the Sportomatic.
But P is a good lick. Everyone should have a parking lock, even if it’s only so you can concentrate at the drive-in.
So Porsche wanted to sell more cars—wanted to have a broader market base—and decided the time-honored automatic clutch was the answer. As we said, it’s nothing new. There’s a whole untapped market out there made up of people whose level of coordination won’t allow them to put any kind of sequence at all to the movements of a clutch pedal and gear shift lever. And it’s obvious Porsche had them very much in mind. Even near imperceptible movements of the shift lever actuates a microswitch which, through a solenoid, activates a vacuum system. A single plate dry clutch, inspired by a vacuum cylinder, interrupts torque flow so the manual transmission can be shifted. The purpose of the torque converter is clear: it allows the 911 to be stopped with the brake without declutching or engaging neutral. Moreover, it multiplies engine torque in the lower speed ranges to reduce the need for selecting a lower gear when greater acceleration is required.
All of which is to say that driving a Sportomatic is not difficult, but enjoying it would require concentrated effort and no previous exposure to the delights of the manual car—a lovely, exciting, satisfying device.
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