From their archive; Car and Driver Magazine of that era was more irreverent then the other pubs of the day . . .
1968 Porsche 911 Sportomatic
Like the car itself, Porsche's "automatic" transmission takes a bit of getting used to.
From the March 1968 Issue of Car and Driver
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.
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.
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.
In explaining how all this works, Porsche encourages you to engage D when and if you choose to move forward. Use L when ascending or descending steep grades. Cope with ice and ennui as best you can—a problem that Porsche has never had before.
D was dutifully selected and a moderate depression of the throttle opened all six Weber throttles in absolutely normal fashion. The result was a healthy roar from the engine compartment with a sadly dispro*portionate amount of forward progress. Any major throttle opening with the transmission in any of the D positions causes the tach to zoom up to about 3000 rpm and hang there until the car catches up. As a matter of fact, one of our biggest objections to the Sportomatic was trying to distinguish any one D from any other D. They all seemed the same. The engine sounded the same, the performance seemed about equal and we just didn’t know what to make of it.
Happily, once you get the thing over 3000 rpm, the system acts much more like a manual transmission. A little experimenting with the not-recommended L position resulted in an engine roar much more in keeping with the car’s speed and, better still, it reduced quarter-mile times by a half a second. Not bad. Don't be alarmed, Porsche lovers, L is simply first gear in the manual transmission, so there is no reason why it shouldn't be used for acceleration as well as braking.
One more moment of carping: you will remember we said that the clutch is automatically disengaged with even imperceptible movements of the shift lever. We weren’t kidding. The driver had better remember precisely where the shift lever is, because if he so much as rests his hand on it before he is ready to shift, the clutch will disengage and the tach will whirl out of sight before you can say “holy broken motor.” Porsche claims to have an automatic ignition cut-out, but who wants to see if it works?
With all this, it’s about time to make it clear that there’s absolutely no trouble in shifting. Just grab the lever and move it. No matter how fast you do it, it's impossible to beat the clutch or the synchronizers. And that’s a real pay raise if you want a Porsche and your wife doesn’t because she doesn't think she’ll be able to drive it. She will, and easily, too. And maybe that’s one of our objections. You may find yourself a little embarrassed when you’re trying to make a quick shift because the sound put out for the world to hear is a pretty strong implication that the driver doesn’t know when it’s safe to let the clutch out.
So you’re driving the Sportomatic with your hand poised, hawk-like, in mid-air, waiting the proper time to swoop down on the lever. But it might be well to remember that the hawk-like hand isn’t the only thing ever to hit that lever. You can do it with your knee under hard cornering—and who wants a Porsche if he isn’t going to bend it in a corner now and then—and if you go for the fast idle or heater controls located between the seats, and miss, you might find yourself in D3.
So we’re unhappy. And we’re unhappy because the 911 is still something of a standard for judging roadholding and ultimate cornering ability. We were pleasantly sur*prised to learn that those unfashionable 4.5-inch wide wheels used on Porsches almost since day one have been replaced by wheels an inch wider. Racing seems to have improved the breed here, and Porsche, which stormed off with the under 2-liter championship in the ‘67 Trans-Am series, has obviously paid attention to how they accomplished that. Ride harshness suffers, but what the hell, it‘s a Porsche, and Porsches are cars.
Porsche handling has usually generated debate among the oversteer-understeer factions. We like it, it's got style and it works. Hang the tail out, put a wheel in the air and grab a handful of reverse lock, we say. On the other hand, we do recommend that a newcomer to the car approach it with great respect. The transition from initial understeer to mild oversteer can be disconcerting to the novice.
Another thing the 911 does well is stop. The truly sophisticated internally vented disc brakes on all four wheels pull the car down at a .91G deceleration rate in our 80 to 0 mph braking test. More than that, not a trace of fade was apparent after four stops. This kind of performance is vastly superior to what we’ve grown to expect from the more conventional disc front/drum rear systems on so many American and European cars.
continued . . .
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