can you tell me about the 3 speed transmission with the electronic clutch in the 1971 vw super beetle

Don't really know a whole lot about it. I know that the automatic clutch wasn't a hit with drivers. It automatically engages the clutch for the first 3 gears when pressure was put on the shifter. VW didn't keep in the cars for very long. Car and Driver had called it "revolutionary" but it ended up being a dud. Kind of a cool part of automotive history though!

Nothing like answering a question posted 11 years ago, eh? Well, here it goes... I bought a 1971 convertible in 1990 with the 3 speed transmission with the electric clutch shifter. There was no clutch petal - just gas and brake. When you applied pressure to the shifter, the clutch disengaged. If it was in gear and you released the shifter, the clutch engaged. There was no gradual engaging of the clutch like you do with a standard manual transmission. When it engaged, you could feel a "thud." However, the car would not stall even if you applied no gas. Interestingly, you could engage the clutch in any of the 3 gears while at a dead stop and the engine would continue to run. In fact, if you were on level ground (or pointed down hill) you could take off in any of the 3 gears. Obviously, it would take you a while longer to get up to speed in a higher gear, but it would still go. I don't know how this impacted the clutch itself. I had the car for about 10 years and never had to have the clutch worked on. (I did have to get it worked on due to valve seats constantly breaking and ending up in the oil pan.) If your generator belt broke, you could no longer shift gears. Whatever gear you were in at the time is the gear you were stuck. The most you could do is shift it into neutral, but you would never get it back into a gear again. You're not supposed to drive it without a generator belt anyway, due to other potential damage to the engine, so it wasn't that big of a deal. I did have a friend who asked me about my Beetle once. When I told him what transmission it had, his reply was simply, "I have a book that shows you how to swap it out for a regular manual transmission." I took it as his way of telling me he thought the one I had was crap. :)