Volkswagen passes one million DSG sales

Volkswagen reached a new milestone today, the carmaker announcing that it has sold one million vehicles fitted with a Direct-Shift Gearbox (DSG). The first VW model to be fitted with the dual-clutch gearbox was the Golf R32 hot hatch, which back in 2003 was one of the first production cars in the world to feature the efficient gearbox design. Today close to a quarter of every new VW is built with a DSG and this proportion is only set to rise with the release of a new low cost six-speed unit and an all new seven-speeder.

Last year alone VW sold more than 400,000 DSG units and demand is increasing so much that production at VW’s Kassel plant in Germany had to be increased to 1,750 units per day.

The benefits of the design include extremely fast shift times, in some cases taking only 8 milliseconds, barely any power less because of the lack of a torque converter, faster acceleration because there’s barely any dip in power when the gears are changed, and better fuel economy than both conventional and automatic transmissions. Little wonder other carmakers are rushing to install dual-clutch ‘boxes in their own lineups. Earlier this week Renault announced its own plans to launch vehicles with dual-clutch gearboxes and before that Fiat confirmed it would have the transmission in its cars by September of next year.