A multi-speed transmission having drive and output shafts, front-mounted planetary gearsets, rear-mounted planetary gearsets and six shift elements. Selective engagement of shift elements selectively renders a drive shaft speed and speeds generated in the front gearsets for achieving a reverse gear and twelve forward gears via the rear gearsets transmissible as an output speed to the output shaft. Four shift elements are assigned to the front gearsets and two are assigned to the rear gearsets. At least one front gearset is rigidly connected to an element of the rear gearsets, resulting in six different output speeds of the front gearsets being transmissible to the rear gearsets. If normalized to the drive shaft input speed, one output speed is smaller than 0, three output speeds are between 0 and 1, one output speed is equal to 1 and one output speed is greater than 1.