The History of PDK

Say ‘Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe’ to most people and they’ll probably hand you a lifetime Scrabble ban. Mention it to the casual Porsche fan and they might know the PDK double-clutch gearbox made its production debut in 2008, with the 997-generation 911’s mid-life facelift (where it replaced its predecessor’s Tiptronic automatic). The more knowledgeable might tell you that Porsche blooded PDK technology on its 956 Group C race car in the early to mid-1980s.

Both statements are true, of course, but they don’t tell the complete story. In fact, other engineers and manufacturers experimented with dual-clutch transmissions as early as the 1930s (the 1961 Hillman Minx’s Easidrive was first to reach production) and Porsche’s original PDK project (codenamed 919) dates to 1964, when Hungarian engineer Imre Szodfridt presented the idea of a dual-clutch transmission to Ferdinand Piëch, in the same year the 911 reached production.

“Szodfridt was a great, innovative engineer. He pushed the PDK project very much, and long before us he had already developed and built a dual-clutch transmission,” explains PDK development engineer Rainer Wüst, who took up the project in the late 1970s (and later worked as head of chassis development at Weissach until 2009). “His big challenge was there were no electronics [nor series-production electrohydraulic