Road & Track : April 1971, February 1968 , Comparison Test: FOUR LUXURY GTs (reprints)
Porsche Excellence: December 2002 (reprints 415.382.0580 or fax 415.382.0587)
911 and Porsche World: February 2003, May 1999 (wreprints)
“… car that not aimed solely at the sporting world, so
not unnaturally various rather ‘ordinary’ facets crept into the development
of the 911. One of these was a
contraption called the ‘Sportomatic’, which made the use of the clutch
unnecessary.”
“…the ‘Sportomatic’ gearbox. By the late 1960’s, traffic congestion and the chaos in cities was getting out of control, and Porsche thought that their customer would need something in the way of an automatic transmission to ease the chore of traffic driving. Rather than go to a straightforward automatic three-step transmission, such as they had developed for Daimler-Benz, they chose to keep their splendid gearbox and adapt a sort of automatic clutch to it.
The whole thing was a step sideways. First of all, the gearbox had only four speeds to it, against the normal five speeds, and between the engine and the gearbox was an hydraulic torque-converter as well as the normal plate clutch. A vacuum-servo mechanism operated the clutch, the servo being energized by an electrical contact on the gear selector mechanism. As you pushed the lever into first gear, for example, the lever did two things. First it triggered off the servo to withdraw the clutch, and then it pushed the gear into engagement. When fully home, the lever actuated another electrical contact which cut out the servo and allowed the clutch to engage, but the torque converter kept everything at rest until the engine speed was increased, whereupon the hydraulic coupling took up the drive and car moved forwards. At 3,500rpm the torque converter went ‘solid’ and you had a normal 4-speed Porsche 911, but with no clutch pedal. To change gear, you merely moved the gear lever, the electrical contacts doing the clutch operation for you. Although the car was tolerable if driven in the upper regions of the rev-counter, then the torque converter did not function, it was not a patch on the normal Porsche 5-speed gearbox. I was not enamored by ‘Sportomatic’ and I suspect true Porsche owners were not either, for it dies a quiet death after a brief life.
I had borrowed the ‘Sportomatic” car from AFN Ltd.
They were still looking after Porsche interested in the UK, so much so
that they had by now formed a subsidiary company called Porsche Cars Great
Britain Ltd, though they were still operating from the famous old Falcon Works
in Isleworth where the Frazer Nash cars used to be made.
When I returned the car to W. H. (Bill) Aldington, who looked after all
the road tests and publicity activity for the firm, I had to confess that I was
not impressed by it, although it was admittedly an interesting technical
exercise. I still felt the 911 was
one of the world’s great GT cars, the ‘Sportomatic’ did nothing for it.”
After introducing the ‘R’ series in 1967 “It was a dynamite combination and notable successes ensued, including a victorious debut outing in the Marathon del la Route (an eighty-four-hour high-speed trial around the Nurburgring). Shrewdly, the winning car was equipped with Porsche’s controversial four-speed, semi-automatic Sportomatic transmission and, thus, performed a valuable PR exercise for Porsche.”
“911s with the unhappy
Sportomatic semi-automatic transmission are to be regarded with suspicion.
Definitely an acquired taste, conversion to five-speed manual can cost
anything up to £3,000. If it
isn’t yours though Sportomatics tend to be cheaper in the first place so the
cost can be partially offset.”
“Shiftless in Stuttgart: The Sportomatic Transmission”
“One of the few oddities in the 911’s history was the addition of a new transmission in 1967 known as the Sportomatic. Devised by Fitchel & Sachs (which manufactured clutches for Porsche) the system was a clutchless shifter, a revival of sorts of the old semi-automatic transmissions Detroit automakers dreamed up in the 1950s. Only they didn’t work. Sportomatic did, unless one had a penchant for fingering the shifter while driving. You couldn’t because touching the shifter activated the vacuum servo unit that disengaged the clutch. To change up of down through the four-speed synchro, one simply touched the shifter and moved it into the next gear. The only caution was to make certain your foot was off the gas before you activated the servo, otherwise the engine would immediately over-rev. It was half the process of shifting with a clutch, but required more concentration to coordinate the shift and gas pedal movement timing.
While the Sportomatic worked, and received favorable reviews from most of
the automotive magazines (Car and Driver hated it), the idea never really
caught on, especially in the United States.
The car was actually much more popular in Europe.
Sports Car Graphic probably summed up the opinion of most
Americans on the Sportomatic by writing, “Give me stick shift or give me
death.” The Sportomatic
worked better than most gave it credit for, however.
In August 1967 a 911R Sportomatic driven by Vic Elford, Hans Hermann, and
Jochen Neerpasch, won the grueling 84-hour Marathon de la Route – 350 trips
around the 17.58-mile Nurburging course, proving the durability of the design.
At around the same time, a semi automatic transmission of similar design
was being used in Can-Am racing by Jim Hall and Chaparrel.
Still, there were not many takers and the Sportomatic became something of
an unmentionable in Porsche circles. It
remained a special order through May 1979.
A restored Sportomatic is a rare find these days.
“The 905 was the Sportomatic transmission, launched in August 1967. This was a semi-automatic four-speed, giving manual operation but clutchless gearchanging. The two-pedal cars had a hard time from those reared on the macho image of the sports car driver rowing up through the gears, but the cars proved popular, especially in the US where up to 25 per cent of the 911s were Sportomatics. Developed with Fitchel & Sachs, the transmission comprised an hydraulic torque converter, a singe vacuum-operated diaphram clutch and a conventional four speed gearbox. The system used a lower crown wheel and pinion ratio of 7:27, instead of the 7:31. The automatic clutch was only used for changing ratios and not for starting and stopping, which were the function of the torque converter. Microswitches at the base of the gear lever actuated the clutch as soon as the lever was moved by the driver: the switches operated a solenoid controlling a vacuum servo (connected to a vacuum reservoir purged by the engine intake), which in turn actuated the clutch release mechanism. It was a relatively simple but novel form of gear selection, not a full automatic, and it could ease the fatigue of town driving.
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