GM has built new transmission production in Ohio and is slated to put more production in St. Catherines. Buzz was busy playing the fiddle when all the jobs left.

“Taxpayer gift.” I love it.

Call me Santa Claus.

Although the 4 speed auto has been a good soldier for many years, its time to retire it in most applications.

GM hardly requires 4-speed transmissions with sales falling off a cliff. Nonetheless the NDP expects GM to build them. Even socialist East Germany eventually abandoned the Trabant!

General Motors keeps cutting jobs after getting $235 million in taxpayers’ money to boost Ontario operations. The McGuinty government caved into CAW union boss Buzz Hargrove’s histrionics and intimidation and gave away the farm without broad employment guarantees.

Ford pulled a similar recent stunt. It closed a Windsor plant then announced for a $60-million taxpayer gift it will reopen. So far McGuinty has delivered $30-million.

GM may also be putting a shot across the CAW’s bow. Be reasonable in the current contract negotiations, a strange concept for Hargrove, and the closing may be softened or rescinded.

I wish when left-leaning political types say this that I had a good suggestion on how to do it. Perhaps the Ontario government should get into manufacturing unneeded transmissions?

High reving motors and small engines need more gears to utilize their efficient narrow power bands. It’s not a mark of technical inability to make 3 or 4 speeds, it is a reaction to the shrinking market for v-8 engines and the like.

I ran a 2 speed auto in a hot rod for years. Bulletproof and the single shift got me into high gear where the torque could take over. Better mileage around town than the 3 speed I replaced it with too.

I know all too-well about the Hydra-matic (drove an Olds F-85), but it lacked overdrive and a modern torque converter. It wasn’t terribly smooth, but it was reasonably efficient, durable, and a groundbreaking design. Thanks for the correction.

During the war the Hydra-Matic found its way into a variety of military vehicles, including the M5 Stuart tank (where 2 of them were mated to twin Cadillac V8 engines) and the M24 Chaffee light tank. The extensive wartime service greatly improved the postwar engineering of the transmission, which was subsequently advertised as “battle-tested.”

Starting in 1948 Hydramatic became optional for Pontiacs (but not Buicks or Chevrolets which chose todevelop their own automatic transmissions). One million Hydramatics had been sold by 1949. In the early 1950s various manufacturers that did not have the resources to develop an automatic transmissions on their own bought Hydra-Matics from GM. Users included:

* 1950-1956 Hudson
* 1950-1956 Nash
* 1951 Frazer
* 1951-1955 Kaiser
* 1954-1955 Willys
* 1949-1954 Lincoln

In 1952 Rolls-Royce acquired a license to produce the Hydra-Matic under license for Rolls-Royce and Bentley automobiles. It continued production through 1967.

The Hydramatic underwent several revisions through 1955, before being replaced by the substantially redesigned Controlled Coupling Hydramatic (also called Jetaway) in 1956. The new four-speed transmission incorporated a secondary fluid coupling and a pair of sprag clutches in place of the former friction clutch and brake bands, shifting in part by alternately draining and filling the secondary coupling. It allowed the driver to hold the transmission in second gear or third gear until the maximum allowable upshift points, for improved performance in traffic or in mountain driving, and incorporated a separate Park position. The Jetaway was substantially smoother than the original Hydramatic, but also more complex and expensive to produce.

In 1961, a somewhat less complex, but also far less reliable three-speed Roto-Hydramatic also dubbed the “Slim Jim” Hydramatic (in which the “dump and fill” shifting principle was retained) was adopted for all Oldsmobiles as well as Pontiac’s full-sized Catalina, Ventura and Grand Prix models, while all Cadillacs and Pontiac’s Bonneville and Star Chief models retained the older four-speed “Jetaway” unit (not to be confused with the two-speed Jetaway automatic used in various Buick, Olds and Pontiac intermediate cars from 1964 to 1969).

Both of those Hydramatic transmissions were ultimately replaced by a new three-speed torque converter automatic transmission called Turbo-Hydramatic in 1964 and 1965, whose design was more similar in principle to the Chrysler TorqueFlite and Ford’s Cruise-O-Matic than the fluid coupling Hydramatic the “Turbo” replaced.

The original Hydramatic continued to be used in light trucks and other commercial vehicles well into the 1960’s. It was subsequently replaced in that role by the Turbo Hydramatic, whose simplified design was much less costly to manufacture. Despite the name, the Turbo-Hydramatic (THM) has no mechanical relationship to the original Hydramatic.

The Hydramatic was a complex design that was expensive to mass produce. Nevertheless, despite some early teething problems, it was very reliable and was so rugged that it was widely used in drag racing for decades later. It was not as smooth as some competitor’s transmissions (notably Buick’s Dynaflow), but made up for it in much greater efficiency, especially at highway speeds. The Hydramatic paved the way for the widespread acceptance of automatic shifting.

Hydramatic is now a trade name for GM’s automatic transmission division, which produces a variety of later transmissions, the most notable of which is the Turbo-Hydramatic from the 1960s to the 1990s.

I think GM needs to be careful. The more it withdraws from Canadian manufacturing, the less “domestic” it becomes here. A Canadian-built Honda, Hyundai or Toyota (pets his Corolla nicely) is more of a Canadian car, after all, than a US-built GM.

A college friend, long, long ago, claimed he had a late ’50’s / early ’60’s GM with X-frame and a four-speed auto. I was surprised (Dad had PowerGlides) but he stuck to his story.

Keep your eyes and ears on the news Samir,things might change real fast.

Text amended.

A four-speed is actually quite adequate for small cheap cars. Many a corrola from the 90’s had three-speeds with no converter lockup, and most of them are still moving people back and forth quite fine.