Dr. Ferdinand Porsche commenced the engineering development of his Volkswagen car in 1937, during Germany’s National Socialist Period. The tight financial goals of the Volkswagen design brief lead to the creation of the simple and unique Porsche Split Ring gear synchronizer design. Patented by Porsche in 1947, the Porsche synchronizer has a distinct feel due to its unique mechanical operation.

The ‘feel” of the Porsche synchronizer during gear shifts is one of the tactile signatures of driving any air-cooled Porsche transmission built before 1987. The Porsche Split Ring Synchronizer “feel” will be familiar to all 356 drivers, and is well understood by technicians accomplished in the service and rebuilding of Porsche transmissions.

So at WEVO, the use of a Porsche synchronizer for the 356 5-Speed was one of the early technical decisions.

Using components from a donor Porsche transmission equipped with these original Porsche components allows the greatest access to donor and spare parts, assembly experience, know-how and logical, initial market confidence. So the decision to use a donor transmission for internal components was another critical technical way point.

The convergence of these two decisions lead WEVO to the use of an existing Porsche transmission to source the internal components for its 356 5-Speed kit.