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Bentley was reported to be developing a new 4.0 liter V8 engine with sibling brand Audi that will be introduced in the 2012 Continental GT model. Now, Autocar is reporting that the next Continental GT with the new V8 engine will also feature the S Tronic gearbox from Audi. The coupling of the two technologies will deliver a sporty GT that will show improvement in fuel economy and CO2 emissions over the current W12-powered one. "The V8 will find a new audience for us. There are sports car enthusiasts out there, particularly in the US, who won't buy a sports car unless it's powered by a V8," said Alasdair Stewart, sales and marketing chief at Bentley, in the Autocar story. But the luxury British automaker will need to conduct some re-engineering of the GT's undercarriage and running gear in order to fit the 7-speed S Tronic. The W12-engined GT currently has a 6-speed gearbox from ZF. Bentley hopes the new power train on the next Continental GT will help the model achieve the same sales level of 5,000 units a year that the current GT did at its peak.

The Audi TT RS is finally getting the VW Group's S tronic, 7-speed DSG gearbox. Audi has announced that the dual-clutch transmission will be available in the TT RS, both in the coupe and roadster variants, as of this month. The DSG gearbox promises to deliver improved fuel economy as the seventh gear comes with a long ratio to reduce engine speed with offers tons of torque on hand to keep the TT RS moving. The TT RS comes with a direct-injection, 2.5 liter, 5-cylinder turbocharged engine, which won the International Engine of the Year award for its category just this past June. The TFSI engine produces 340 PS and achieves a maximum torque of 450 Nm . Coupled to the S tronic, the TT RS now has a fuel economy rating of 8.5 liters/100 km with CO2 emissions of 197 g/km in the coupe variant. The century sprint for the DSG equipped TT RS coupe is 4.3 seconds as compared to 4.6 seconds for the 6-speed manual version. Top speed is an electronically limited 250 km/h, which can be optionally removed in certain markets.

We have witnessed a tremendous rise in applications of twin clutch transmission in recent years. Manufacturers may call such technology by different names such as DSG (VW), Powershift (Ford), S Tronic (Audi), PDK (Porsche). I won't be surprised if torque converter equipped transmission makes it to the museum in 10 years' time. Let's take a detailed look at the future of automatic transmission. Twin-clutch gearbox was first put into production by BorgWarner, which calls it "DualTronic". It was first used in Audi TT 3.2 in the name "DSG" (Direct-Shift Gearbox). Like automated manual gearbox, BorgWarner