Independently-developed early automatic transmissions

Today I want to talk about a bona fide American original: the automatic transmission in passenger automobiles. Those who are disdainful of American automakers, please check your prejudice at the door and you might learn something.

Hydramatic was genesis. It was the product of laborious and costly research by Oldsmobile and Cadillac divisions of General Motors throughout the 1930s. Amazingly, they succeeded in getting a four-speed automatic operational by 1940, with installations in over 200,000 vehicles before production halted for World War II. It was not as smooth as a chauffeur quietly changing gear himself, but for wealthy Americans who had never quite mastered the manual transmission of the day (just recently synchronized in all forward gears), it was a massive improvement in driving comfort.  Buick Division actually found Hydramatic insufficiently smooth and set out to develop their own independent design.

All civilian automotive pursuits were laid aside to meet production demands for the war, with civilian auto production re-commencing before the end of 1945. My next posting will discuss why Detroit, Michigan was singly referred to as the "Arsenal of Democracy". Thus, after the war, the world's other automakers were no closer to this milestone than before, leaving GM with a monopoly.

Buick's engineering bore fruit and in 1948, they released the Dynaflow. It was extremely smooth at the expense of poor fuel economy and diminished power. By contrast, the Hydramatic's Achilles heel was its harshness. Buick fanboys decried "Hydra-Jerk", while the Dynaflow was known as "Dynaslush" to the other GM divisions.

Unbelievably, the next independently-invented automatic was from a small independent automaker, Packard. Although Packard doubtless had the engineering heritage to create an automatic, it was astonishing that they managed to implement and test it to production capacity in such a short time, with such a limited supply of money. The Ultramatic came out in 1949, and was soon sold to other automakers as well, including Nash. But this chapter would be closed in 1957, with the bankruptcy of the Packard Motor Car Company.

GM lashed out again in 1950 with vastly expanded availability in the form of Powerglide, which was derived from the principles of both Dynaflow and Hydramatic. Thus at a time when both Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation were unable to develop an automatic for even their top models, a buyer of a GM car could get an automatic in every price range: Powerglide in Chevrolet or Pontiac, a Hydramatic in Oldsmobile or Cadillac (or higher-end Pontiac), or a Dynaflow in Buick. At the time, GM was the world's largest industrial corporation and it was an acceptable indulgence to have so much redundant engineering if it preserved the popularity of the individual marques. Since Dynaflow and Powerglide are long since abandoned, and all GM automatics since the 1970s have been outgrowths of the Hydramatic technology, what was once three has consolidated into one.

It can be said that Ford never really did catch up. Their Ford-O-Matic later in 1950 was not an independent creation, but a co-design with BorgWarner, who already had completed some work on an automatic transmission. The BorgWarner design for Ford was a milestone, and was carried on to many other automakers, including Studebaker, Volvo, Jaguar, and AMC. The widespread proliferation of the BorgWarner design is easy to understand, since that company doesn't make cars and has no reason to keep its design proprietary. The more widespread this design, the more money they make.

In the meantime, Chrysler proceeded in 1953 with the development of PowerFlite (later to be TorqueFlite), the last of the early automatic transmissions. These were more efficient than Buick's Dynaflow and smoother than Oldsmobile's Hydramatic. It was also a very robust design with the fewest initial teething problems of all the original designs. 1960s reviewers commonly described the TorqueFlite as the "best automatic in the world".

Elsewhere in the world, demand for automatic shifting was less than in the United States, and so the scale of investment required to create an independent design simply wasn't present. Particularly in Europe, the demand for automatics among the lower classes was nonexistent, and where rich buyers in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, or Italy wanted an automatic, the choice was always something American. Ferrari, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, and Jaguar simply bought American transmissions and made them fit. Mercedes-Benz built its own through parts company Steyr-Daimler-Puch starting in 1962, but if the label is peeled back, it's still another BorgWarner design.

Honda, with probably the strongest heritage of independent engineering of all the Japanese companies, independently developed its Hondamatic as a response to the multitude of patents held by the American companies, particularly BorgWarner and GM. This magnificent little transmission is the only in-house automatic by any Japanese manufacturer, and should stand as evidence of the stubborn independent spirit of Soichiro Honda, the founder and guiding spirit of the company until his death in 1991.

Ironically, the current world's largest automaker, Toyota, does not make its own automatics. The production is carried out by an outside supplier called Aisin. Aisin has been around since 1949, but did not develop an automatic until a joint venture with BorgWarner, lasting between 1969 and 1987, was affected. Aisin also currently equips Volvos, Nissans, Daihatsus, Mazdas, Jeeps, Fiats, and Porsches. All can be said to be equipped with an evolved descendant of the original (ahem, American) BorgWarner design.

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