![]() Somehow, they didn’t just manage it but the men in suits agreed that it would be a brilliant idea to sell it to the public. Not all that long ago the cheeky engineers at Abarth knocked back a few Peronis and wondered what it would be like to put a racing gearbox into one of their potent but dinky city cars. They crack open a few beers and spend a few late nights at the office, conjuring up plans for fun but more than likely unfeasible ideas that will never see the light of day. Every now and then auto makers do something a little bit silly. This is a very, very specific example, but we like it a lot. Mate also used some of the money from his early sales to fund his hypercar project, creating the Rimac Concept_One and the C_Two.ĭog ring gearbox – from Abarth race car to Abarth hot hatchback Now Rimac builds batteries, drivetrains, driver-assistance systems, connectivity solutions, infotainment systems and other electronics for numerous car brands, and 10 per cent of the company is owned by Porsche. ![]() From then on he started to build other electric components, and not long after he’d started doing that some big car brands started sniffing around to see what Mate could do for them. Once the electric racer was up and running, as Mate explained to GRR at the beginning of 2020, through trial and error the car became faster and faster until “in 2011 I broke five FIA and Guinness World records in that car”. Rather than simply bolting another internal combustion engine into the E30, however, he scoured the internet for parts to build an electric powertrain, and with the bit between his teeth he wanted to prove battery powered cars could be just as fast if not faster than those with petrol or diesel power. The then 18-year-old Rimac was enjoying a nice weekend on circuit with his BMW E30 M3 when the pistons made a break for the heavens, dumping oil, metal and Mate’s dreams of a good race all over the asphalt. And it all started because company founder Mate Rimac blew the engine in his race car. Rimac has grown from a one-man-band in a garage in Croatia to one of the big, global electric powertrain and battery players, even if you might not realise it. Rimac Electric powertrain tech – from electric BMW M3 to global EV brandĪlthough many car companies around the world are developing electric technologies, the Rimac story is a tremendous one, it really is. At the other end of the scale you can find a double-clutch in a Volkswagen Polo, Kia Ceed and Ford Fiesta, as well as the Volkswagen Golf, and with six, seven, eight, nine and even ten speeds. ![]() Just two years later a Porsche 962 C won the Monza 360km race with a PDK gearbox.įast forward nearly two decades and it was the Volkswagen Golf R32 that became the first road car to use a double-clutch, and since then it has sprung up in supercars like the Ferrari 458 Italia, Porsche 911 GT3 RS, and Bugatti Veyron. Porsche first used a dual-clutch gearbox in the 1980s, dropping a ‘Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe’ or PDK ‘box into a Porsche 956 in 1984. ![]() But Hillman can’t be credited for the now widespread use of dual-clutch gearboxes, but Porsche. It was to be used in the Citroën Traction Avant, but, sadly, Kégresse’s money dried up and the double-clutch wasn’t seen again until the Hillman Minx of the 1960s. The concept of a dual-clutch gearbox dates back to the late 1930s and an engineer called Adolphe Kégresse. The trade-off is often low-speed smoothness – which torque converters have in spades – for shift speed, something double-clutch boxes are renowned for. To simplify things vastly, where an old school torque converter automatic uses fluid to transmit the power and torque of the engine to the driven wheels, a double-clutch automatic is a type of automated manual ‘box in which, as the name suggests, there are two clutches, allowing you to drive in one gear with the next gear ready to rumble. ![]() Those days are mostly had long gone, and lower down the automotive food chain conventional automatics are becoming less and less common too – usurped by the double-clutch automatic. Take the original Honda NSX, for example, which came with a five-speed and later a six-speed manual, and a truly, truly awful four-speed automatic as the alternative. There was a time when a fast car had either a manual gearbox or an optional, and usually terrible, automatic. Dual-clutch gearboxes – from the Porsche 956 to the Kia Ceed ![]()
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