Getrag 7DCT300

Getrag's transverse seven-speed dual-clutch — in the BMW X1 and MINI Clubman, the Nissan Qashqai and the Renault Espace.

It is a WET dual-clutch, which is the first thing to establish about any of these: the clutches run in oil, so the low-speed judder that defines the dry units — Ford's PowerShift, Fiat's DDCT, Hyundai's 7DCT — is not a characteristic of this gearbox. A shudder from rest here is a fault rather than the design meeting a driving habit.

It is not Hyundai's D7UF1, despite both being sold as a 7DCT. Hyundai's is dry and has the judder; this one is wet and does not. The generic name is what makes the confusion, and it is why this catalogue avoids routing a bare 7DCT anywhere.

Its faults present electrically rather than mechanically. The mechatronic unit is the expensive failure — a gear refused, a limp mode, a code naming a solenoid or a clutch position sensor — and nothing slips first, which distinguishes it from clutch wear.

Fluid is a control question rather than a maintenance one. A wet dual-clutch shares its oil between the clutches and the hydraulics that move them, so worn fluid makes the gearbox change badly long before it makes anything fail — and the interval is much shorter than the word lifetime implies.