CONTACT SPORT

Today, regardless of your preferred gearbox, it’s inconceivable there would be no availability of automatic transmission across the Porsche product range. Indeed, PDK significantly outsells its manual counterpart. Things were rather different sixty years ago, when Porsche was still a fledgling maker of two-door sports cars. Its strong image was built around the 356 and the early 911, but sales became relatively stagnant in the mid- 1960s and, with the demise of the 356 in 1965, Porsche embarked on a program to broaden appeal of the six-cylinder flagship. Given that the USA accounted for the largest proportion of Porsche’s sales, and considering drivers in North America had already moved en masse in the direction of automatic gearboxes, it made perfect business planning sense for Porsche to do likewise. Enter Sportomatic, unveiled in 1967, ahead of the 1968 model year.

Prior to the introduction of Sportomatic, there wasn’t an off-the-shelf transmission Porsche deemed suitable for the 911. In fact, Ferry Porsche once said, “if you make a sports car with an automatic gearbox, there’s a part of your clientele that says it’s not a sports car.” Somewhat contradicting that train of thought, several different automatic gearboxes were fitted to the 356 for research purposes, including a two- speed semi-automatic unit from German engineering firm, Voith. The