If I ever graduate to something in the Cayman’s class, I don’t see why I wouldn’t enjoy a DSG there too.

Go drive the Evo X MR.

I’m sure the hardware is very similar to the BMW, VAG, etc–the box is a Getrag. The secret sauce to these transmissions isn’t the hardware, though–it’s the software.

And Mitsubishi just _nailed_ it in the Evo X MR’s TC-SST.

I swore that I would never buy one of those flappy-paddle transmissions. Until I drove the Evo.

I even chose the Evo over the E90 M3, and no, price wasn’t an issue. The Evo is quite simply just more fun to drive, and the SST is a big part of that. The M3 just felt like a big heavy luxury car next to the Evo.

I’ve had my GTI with DSG for just shy of a year, and I will never get another. Yeah, the shifts are lightning, and the downshift blip is cool, but the tranny still gets caught in situations where its doing the wrong thing, it still clunks around when putting around town (the 2-1 downshift in particular). It doesn’t like to actually kick into 1st until at a 100% complete stop, making stop signs a 2nd gear start, and incredibly mushy feeling. It still upshifts too quickly, and while downshifting like lightning, it often “thinks” you’re ready for an upshift and kinda trips over itself.

Bottom line, its great for 100%, balls-out driving, but in everyday applications, I’ve found traditional automatics from General Motors, BMW, and Infiniti to be far far smoother, particularly in city traffic, and only very very slightly less responsive in shift speed and downshifting vs the DSG. I’d gladly take a GM 6 speed auto over the DSG in my GTI.

At the end of the day, I’d driven nothing but manuals for 13 years. I didn’t like the clutch and shifter in the GTI, but loved everything else about the car. DSG was incredibly impressive during the test drive, and with the weak manual experience, I was sold. I shouldn’t have. I miss my manual dearly, only made worse when I drive my old man’s little Acura with a stick. Hell, I even had a blast recently driving my cousin’s Ford Fusion I4 with a stick. Its just simply more fun than mashing the pedal and holding on, no matter how fast a DSG shifts or how many 1/10’s of a second you take off your 0-60. A huge part of the feel of a car goes when the stick goes, even more so in a sporty car such as this Cayman.

Great for people who want a sporty car but aren’t sports car drivers. I’m sure Porsche will sell a million of them and make gazillions of dollars. But if you’re a true enthusiast, and you truly love your Porsche (or BMW or Miata or GTI or G35 or CTS, etc), don’t be wowed by the technology and the test drive. The wow factor wears off after awhile and you’ll go back to wishing you had the ultimate man-machine connection.

That’s how I feel. I will NEVER buy another automatic again (unless its a land-yacht meant only for highway cruising…and then I hope it will be a traditional automatic instead of a clunky, complicated, expensive to fix DSG-type thing).

DoppelkungerschnitzelKrokettewunderbarthing

But is it farfegnugen?

PDK uses two wet-plate clutches, one for the even gears, and one for the odd gears (which outnumber the even in the seven cog system).

They should have a special clutch for prime numbers and the clutch for non-prime even numbers.

Very nice review

That is the most delicious sounding name for a gearbox I’ve ever heard.

Can you site where you have found that the IMS has been changed?

The RS6 has a conventional slushbox.

in any case, the PDK tops the DSG IMO on the point that when shifting from Auto to full on sports mode the way the gearbox handles the shift is faster than DSG transforming from docile to wild in .006 of second. or it might of been the engine that made the difference, would like to try either gearboxes on the same car same engine configuration, but then i might be disappointed by the fact that they are the same with only PDK having a mouthful of a name.

in any case, the cayman is a hell of a car, i drove the S and it has won me over in terms of being a 911 fan. I’m now squarely a Cayman person…

It seems to work very well. i haven’t read a single review that said it doesn’t work, nor a reviewer who didn’t like it, even those who have heel & toed all their lives.

It should incur very little additional weight (if at all). The PDK/DCT/DSG all weigh in at approx. 20 kg. more than a manual.

Wouldn’t that be the nice compromise we die-hard manual box enthusiasts are looking for? I for one find heel & toe-ing in the 911 less easy than in some other cars, because of the way my legs & feet fit into it.

The spin is that old tip customers would find the buttons “easier to use”, but every PDK review I’ve ever read has bashed the hell out of them. Being Porsche though, I’m sure stubborness will prevail. We know better than you!

No problem, just move to Europe and get a Volkswagen Touran, Caddy, Sharan, Multivan or Caravelle a Toyota Verso, an Opel Zafira or Movano, a Citroen C4 Picasso, a Citroen C-Crosser, a Mitsubishi Outlander, a Peugeot 4008 or 5008, a Renault Grand Scenic or Espace, a Lancia Zeta, a Nissan Qashqai+2, a Dodge Journey, a Kia Carens or Carnival… and I’m sure I forgot a lot of other possibilities.

All of these seat 7 and are available with a manual.

My girlfriend actually prefers public transport over cars with automatic transmissions.

I am not seeing it on the site. BTW I have been pestering RF to do a piece on the IMS failures for months now.

This is a simply brilliant automobile, were it only 20,000 cheaper, I’d have to put one in the driveway. But, at $70,000 plus, it will remain a dream. Nonetheless, my unwillingness to part with that much money for a car doesn’t take away from the basic goodness of this car and what Mr. Farago accurately termed the best transmission on the planet.

Sounds like you need a new wife :) When we were last buying a new car for my better half, I tried to direct her towards an automatic as she’s a bit herky-jerky with gears, rides the clutch at stop lights and tends to rev past red-line because she’s more concentrating on singing along to the radio. “Automatics are for geriatrics”, was her reply. My mother just bought herself a new VW CC as a retirement gift … it’s a stick shift.

What happened to Stephan Wilkinson? I always enjoyed his comments

[By the way, my wife teased me by saying that I can buy a manual in our next vehicle, as long as it's a van or 7-person SUV. If one there is such an animal...sigh...]

The Mazda5 is essentially a small minivan, and you can get it with a manual…

I believe that the class leader in dual clutch trannies is BMW with the DCT in the M3. It does have its little idiosyncrasies, but most of the time it is very involving.

I have the SMG II in a bimmer, and having test driven a Cayman and 911 PDK, I prefer the single-clutch system in the bimmer more. I have also mastered the nuances of the SMG system (something one can’t do in a 15 minute test drive) so it doesn’t jerk or buck on me in traffic, and provides smooth and fast shifts all around. The paddle system – left downshift, right upshift, lever forward downshift, lever backward upshift – in the SMG is also much more intuitive than that of the Porsche. And the system is GREAT on the track.

Yet, you definitely lose that connectedness, man-machine oneness, etc. in these automated systems. So, after 4 years, if it’s a choice between an auto and one of these, then an automated manual for sure. But if it’s between these and a traditional stick, then I’d go old skool.

[By the way, my wife teased me by saying that I can buy a manual in our next vehicle, as long as it's a van or 7-person SUV. If only there is such an animal...sigh...]

An update on an earlier Boxster/Cayenne article: Stephan Wilkinson encouraged me to get these cars included in TrueDelta’s Car Reliability Survey, to measure how common the notorious IMS failures (in only the earlier cars?) actually are. Good progress–a few model years are now included in the survey, and others are close.

http://www.truedelta.com/reliability.php