When you think of a transmission and which one is best for your type of driving you may think we’re going to discuss the differences between a manual and an automatic, but that’s simply not the case. More and more high performance vehicles are being developed with automatic transmissions in them because these are more efficient than we could ever be by shifting gears on our own. This being the case the conversation turns instead to what form of automatic transmission is best for driving a high performance car and this has become a war between a traditional and a dual-clutch automatic transmission.

What we’re seeing is many automakers that produce high performance cars are looking for more gears rather than the dual clutch action. This is expected to create a much smoother shifting of the gears and a better overall drive. Because these cars are driven on the streets and may face stop and go traffic they need to be smooth not just at higher speeds, but at the lower ones as well. By offering transmissions that have more gears creates this smooth drive at the lower speeds in order to offer the ride that we want to enjoy every time we step into the car.

An example of this change to a higher number of gears is what we find with Audi. The Audi engineers have found that the dual clutch transmission works best when the torque is not above 295 lb.-ft. This means the S4 and S5 would need to use a different transmission because both of these cars have 369 lb.-ft. of torque and they are bout now being fitted with an eight-speed automatic transmission which is set up in a traditional format to be the perfect blend of performance on the low end and the high end of the speed spectrum.

Audi isn’t the only company that is changing back to a traditional form of transmission to make their vehicle more consistent and efficient, GM and Ford are both doing the same thing. Ford has developed a new nine-speed automatic and Chevrolet offers up a ten-speed version that is said to shifter faster and smoother than the Porsche PDK transmission which is a dual clutch model. With more gears to make the shifts sooner and more often these smooth operating traditional versions of the automatic transmissions seem to be able to get the job done better than transmissions that are more technologically advanced.

To argue on the other side of the discussion we do see the PDK from Porsche and the dual clutch that is part of the GT-R from Nissan as two transmissions that perform exceptionally for the cars they are used in. These transmissions make it easy to get up to the high speeds desired and allow us to drive how we want to with the shifting that is understandable and easy to admire. The dual clutch version of the automatic transmission is more advanced from a technology standpoint and does have a place in the market.

Even though brands like Audi, Ford and GM are reverting back to traditional automatic transmissions they aren’t doing so without adding several gears to the equation. When there isn’t enough space to have the numerous gears needed to replace the dual clutch versions, then a transmission that relies on a two cycle clutch is the right choice. Regardless of what transmissions are actually used for the cars on the market today we can all agree the older four and five speed transmissions are a thing of the past as nearly every car on the market today has at least six and many have even more than that.