To seduce the United States, Porsche had to offer an automatic transmission on the 911. The heavy and slow automatic transmissions of the time did not match the sporting spirit of Porsche, which is why the Sportomatic gearbox, a robot gearbox from before its time, was developed. It is actually an automatic clutch gearbox, where the driver himself shifts gears according to the classic H-shaped grid. The driving pleasure of this transmission and the extended wheelbase of the 69th vintage make this Porsche particularly pleasant to drive.
The reliability of the Sportomatic gearbox was brilliantly confirmed by the victory in 1967 of Vic Elford, Jochen Neerpasch and Hans Hermann at the Road Marathon: 9,129 km covered at the Nürburgring, with an average of 109 km/h!