The latest craze
07/24/2020
For the 1968 model year of the VW Beetle, the Volkswagen people introduced the "Automatic". It only had two pedals (brake, accelerator), but a gearshift that hardly looked any different from the others. And it was also used to change gear ratios, but without foot-controlled clutch actuation. Even the gearshift scheme hardly looked any different from other Beetles.
Nevertheless, a great deal of technology was required to teach the Beetle to shift gears semi-automatically. The design was reminiscent of the Sachsomat and similar semi-automatic gearboxes, but with the addition of a torque converter upstream, which enabled sensitive driving and smooth gear changes.
Today, when every new car will soon come with a torque converter automatic or direct-shift gearbox and automatic function, we can only smile at such features, but back then it was all the rage ...
We will soon be publishing a comprehensive driving report on the VW Beetle 1500 Automatic to let our readers experience what it feels like to drive a Beetle without a clutch pedal.
