Photo: Volkswagen
It must have been over a decade ago that this automotive writer watched Fifth Gear's Jason Plato drive the Mk5 Volkswagen Golf GTI. At the time, he said the optional DSG gearbox was a "beautiful system and definitely the future of changing gears."
Plato even went as far as to say that manufacturers like Ferrari and Aston Martin should stop making F1-style cog smashers and instead develop their own DSG. Fast forward to 2015 and Ferrari supercars do indeed have two sets of clutches. However, the system pioneered by the Volkswagen Group on production cars is no longer viewed as the way of the future.
Automotive News has recently published a long study detailing how the once-promising dual-clutch transmissions are losing favor in America. While consumers in Europe are used to the way a manual works, U.S. buyers don't like the inertia changes and prefer to have normal automatics with torque converters.
Dual-clutch automatic transmissions work in a similar way to manual ones; only they have two packs of concentric clutches that engage oddly and evenly numbered gears. Ford, Honda and the Fiat-Chrysler Alliance have all dipped their toes into the pool of double clutches, but their use is way lower than expected.
In 2007, Chrysler announced plans to build a transmission plant with Getrag in India. The deal was worth half a billion but fell through after the auto giant started having financial problems. Right now, only the Dodge Dart, Fiat 500L and a few Alfa Romeo models use this type of automatic gearbox.
Fiat-Chrysler's powertrain strategy will now focus on 8- and 9-speed autos in America, and you can already see that with the 500X crossover and the Jeep Cherokee.
After Volkswagen experienced a major scandal due to the DQ200 7-speed DSG and had to carry out a massive recall, Honda had similar problems with its version that was mainly sold in Asia (on the Fit/Jazz and Viziv/HR-V). Of course, very few people know about that in America, since the DQ200 isn't offered and Honda uses CVTs instead.
But Americans have experienced their fair share of problems, as the Fiat 500L equipped with the "European Dual Clutch" gearbox is prone to all sorts of problems.
Automotive News has recently published a long study detailing how the once-promising dual-clutch transmissions are losing favor in America. While consumers in Europe are used to the way a manual works, U.S. buyers don't like the inertia changes and prefer to have normal automatics with torque converters.
Dual-clutch automatic transmissions work in a similar way to manual ones; only they have two packs of concentric clutches that engage oddly and evenly numbered gears. Ford, Honda and the Fiat-Chrysler Alliance have all dipped their toes into the pool of double clutches, but their use is way lower than expected.
In 2007, Chrysler announced plans to build a transmission plant with Getrag in India. The deal was worth half a billion but fell through after the auto giant started having financial problems. Right now, only the Dodge Dart, Fiat 500L and a few Alfa Romeo models use this type of automatic gearbox.
Fiat-Chrysler's powertrain strategy will now focus on 8- and 9-speed autos in America, and you can already see that with the 500X crossover and the Jeep Cherokee.
After Volkswagen experienced a major scandal due to the DQ200 7-speed DSG and had to carry out a massive recall, Honda had similar problems with its version that was mainly sold in Asia (on the Fit/Jazz and Viziv/HR-V). Of course, very few people know about that in America, since the DQ200 isn't offered and Honda uses CVTs instead.
But Americans have experienced their fair share of problems, as the Fiat 500L equipped with the "European Dual Clutch" gearbox is prone to all sorts of problems.
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