BMW's New Slushbox: Eight is Enough

Justin Berkowitz
by Justin Berkowitz

Rumors of BMW's Lexus-rivaling eight-speed automatic transmission surfaced over a year ago. Since then, the electronic grapevines have been quiet, leading some to suspect the octo-cog-swapper was merely vaporware. But rest assured, it's the real deal; it's in testing now. The blokes over at AutoExpress [UK] snagged some serious seat time in BMW's upcoming X6. The German automaker's crossover coupe thingamajig does, in fact, feature an eight gear slushbox. It's not totally clear why BMW is developing both this eight-speed auto AND a 7-speed dual clutch gearbox (soon to be slotted into the new M3), especially when the DSG transmission has "wave of the future" written all over it. Still, we'll never complain about more choice in transmissions. Or gears. But it's strange to think of downshifting into seventh.

Justin Berkowitz
Justin Berkowitz

Immensely bored law student. I've also got 3 dogs.

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  • Maxspivak Maxspivak on Nov 28, 2007
    People own BMWs out of warranty? Um... YA
  • NICKNICK NICKNICK on Nov 28, 2007

    jkross22: we're up to 27 speeds on mountain bikes and 30 on touring bikes. i like lots of gears because my legs have a narrow power band. i can't see modern cars needing a whole bunch of gears with the engines we've got today. V8s and 4-speeds would be fine. if you have a 6 liter V8, you can get a pretty flat 350ish ftlb torque plateau. if you made 2 liter V8s, would you get a 120ish ftlb *flat* torque curve? are small engines always peaky, or is that just a function of 4-cyl engines?

  • Yankinwaoz Yankinwaoz on Nov 29, 2007

    Why? What happened to CVT's?

  • Akitadog Akitadog on Nov 29, 2007

    Justin, The only BMWs owned are out of warranty. All those still under warranty are of the long-term rent variety.

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