(first posted 6/19/2013) I have long been fascinated with the many stops and starts that eventually led to the automatic transmission as we know it today. We are likely all familiar with the GM Hydra-Matic Drive of 1940, the first fully automatic transmission. Its major competitor for shiftless driving was Chrysler’s Fluid Drive, and the many variations of semi-automatic transmission that were attached to that fluid coupling. Not so well known is that the Ford Motor Company launched its own ill-fated semi-automatic transmission: Liquamatic Drive. This being Lincoln Week here at CC, now would seem like the time to take a look.
Henry Ford was, of course, a mechanical genius – in a self-taught, farmboy sort of way. However, his opinionated way was not conducive to a modern engineering department, as had taken shape to one degree or another at every other major automaker. Henry Ford’s way was Henry Ford’s way, with some skilled mechanics to take Henry’s ideas and fashion them into metal prototypes and further refinement under Henry Ford’s watchful eye. But by the late 1930s, Henry was getting on in years and his products were becoming a bit – ahem – conservative.
Still, it must have been clear that some sort of self-shifting mechanism was going to be part of the price of admission for medium and upper priced cars in the 1940s. And, with great fanfare, Liquamatic Drive was introduced to Mr. and Mrs. America with the 1942 Lincolns and Mercuries.
The Liquamatic was a fairly complicated unit that involved a conventional clutch, a fluid coupling, a three speed transmission and on Lincolns, an overdrive. In normal operation, the unit was to start in second gear, then shift into third at about 35 mph. The 2-3 shift was by an electrically controlled vacuum cylinder, while the shift into overdrive was by vacuum. Of course, the unit could be controlled manually through all gears as well. One feature of the design seemed to be a counter-rotating tailshaft that kept both second and third gears rotating at the same speed.
Liquamatic transmission on display at the Early Ford V8 Museum in Auburn, Indiana. This is believed to be the only extant example of this transmission.
The bottom line was a manual transmission that was made to shift automatically back and forth between constantly-synchronized second and third gears. A beautiful symphony of mechanical, hydraulic, electrical and vacuum systems to make life easier for the discerning motorist. What could possibly go wrong?
Alas, the new Liquamatic Drive was an utter failure, although the reasons are not completely clear today. The few units that made it into service were almost immediately replaced by Ford with standard manual transmissions, virtually all within the first few thousand miles. The only identification of Liquamatic cars was a dash logo that was replaced as well. Was it a defective design? A design that was too complex for reliable service in the field? Or did Henry Ford step in and pull the plug on the design before it had a chance to get the bugs sorted out? Nobody seems to know, as there were few built and none seems to have survived, at least not installed in a car. Would this make Ford an early pioneer of the automotive recall?
Lincoln would be limited to a 3 speed manual through the 1948 models, and would finally join the ranks of the self-shifting when they began purchasing HydraMatics from GM for the new ’49s. Lincoln would not have a proprietary automatic until the 1955 TurboDrive. But now you know – pre-war Ford engineering, such as it was, at least gave self shifting a good try.
Wow; never heard of it. And liquidated before its time, too. Thanks for shedding light on this little wet spot of Ford history.
Curiosity require me to ask: was it supposed to downshift automatically as well?
A very good question. There is very little out there about it. From what I can tell, the idea of second and third gears rotating at the same speed would permit shifts both up and down. First gear definitely required moving the gear lever and using the clutch. It appears that putting the lever in second started the car in second but prevented the upshift. Normal operation involved the lever in third gear position. I would guess that if it could shift up, it could also shift down too. But perhaps not. Or maybe the downshift happened at a stop.
I found online a book written by some Ford engineers about the history of Ford automatics. This unit is, unsurprisingly, almost completely ignored. For the record, their explanation of the unit’s disappearance was wartime materials shortages.
I’d heard of Liquimatic through one of those Consumer Guide car compilation books I’d bought back in the 1980s. They reported that very few Liquimatics hit the streets and those that did, were replaced immediately with standard shift transmissions. I’d have to suspect that if some DID survive in a operating car, it probably would’ve had to have been replaced as parts would’ve been very few and far between . . . which may account for none surviving in a Mercury of Lincoln today. On the other hand, there’s tons of 1942 Lincoln and Mercury ads heralding Liquimatic.
Buggy springs would continue through 1948 . . . . guess old Henry had the last laugh (and rode to his grave in a Packard!)
The Liquimatic transmission is described and diagramed in era Motor Manuals.
It did indeed downshift automatically. Liquamatic included overdrive (at least on Lincolns — I’m not sure about the Mercury version), and depending on your speed, it would kick down either from third-overdrive to second-overdrive to second or from third-overdrive to third-direct.
As I have thought about this, the Liquamatic must have been a pretty ambitious design. Chrysler’s semi-auto never attempted a shift of gears within the transmission, but only shifted into and out of an underdrive. Any actual change of transmission gears was done with the clutch. The Lincoln/Mercury approach actually accomplished shifting within the transmission between conventional second and third gears. I guess this all makes sense. GM engineered the most technologically adventurous approach (Hydra Matic). Chrysler engineered the simplest and most elegant approach (Fluid Drive). Ford engineering took the blunt instrument approach and tried to slap around a conventional manual to make it shift itself.
Chevrolet was recalling cars two decades earlier, theSeries M Copper Cooled.
That is correct. The 1924 “Copper Cooled” Chevy was such an utter failure the entire run was recalled and the cars were dumped in Lake Erie. One survives today – in the Henry Ford Museum.
There is an example of a copper-cooled Chevrolet OHV 4 in the GM Heritage Museum in Warren, MI.
My Dad’s early 50’s DeSoto had a flathead 6 and a Tip-Toe two speed automatic, that required letting off the gas for the upshift.
That first ad reminds me a bit of Lincoln’s current campaign, which is also emphasizing a sort of design-from-nature theme (of course, the relative newness of streamlining and makes the 1942 ad more convincing).
The advertisement makes it look like the car has a “thought bubble” above it like a cartoon.
I thought the same thing. “Oooh – I wonder if they will notice that I am still riding on Model T suspension.”
“I hope those pesky Germans and Japanese dont escalate the war and cause this to be a short model ye…..”
That’s funny! The old Ford buggy springs. Eventually, old Henry acquiesced to some semblance of style, and even juice brakes (much later than everyone else) but, by cracky . . . . “no newfangled knee-action coil springs. Nope! Transverse buckboard springs were good enough for the Connestoga and a Michigan farm, then there good enough for me. Edsel put you up to this, didn’t he? – Harry . . . . go throw that Zion-loving bum out of here!”
Jp, why don’t you go over to Auburn and visit the Early Ford V8 Museum. They have a complete Liquimatic on display with technical information.
A picture of it can be seen below:
http://www.earlyfordv8.org/forum/fileattachments/Liquamatic.jpg
The US is amazing, who would have thought it would be viable to have an entire museum based on such a narrow topic.
Although I see they’re branching out – they also have a display of gear knobs: http://www.fordv8foundation.org/gearshiftt1.html
You would be surprised, in the latest Self-Starter from Cadillac devotes several pages to an article about a discussion between several people debating the correct restoration of a heater box available by dealer installed accessory. As far as museums go, a lot depends on funding, a lot of space and items are donated by interested parties so often that’s how these seemingly obscure venues get started.
That Liquimatic seems so tiny . . . . if it wasn’t for that soup-can solenoid, I would’ve had trouble telling it apart from a conventional standard 3-speed manual trans . . . .
Nice article Jim, I never heard of a Liquamatic either. I’m surprised Aaron didn’t mention it in his authoritative history of automatics at Ate Up With Motor.
Hydra-Matic in 1940 cars, no proper Lincoln automatic until 1955….did Ford just wait for GM’s patents to expire? Patents had a 17-year term back then, did GM’s fundamental patents issue in 1938?
As I understand it, Ford was terribly behind the eight ball on automatics after WWII. They tried to buy rights to use the Studebaker DG. Studebaker said no, and as it turned out, could no longer afford to build it after 1955 because of plummeting volume. Ford’s plan B was to have Borg-Warner design one – the 1951 Ford O Matic. However, nothing but the HydraMatic could handle the torque of the big Lincoln engine. The Lincoln Turbo Drive was, as I understand it, a beefed-up Ford O Matic, still basically a Borg-Warner design. The FMX/Cruise O Matic was essentially still the BW unit with a Simpson gearset. Ford’s automatics did not really eradicate BW’s fingerprints until the C4 and C6. I think automatic transmissions was one area where Ford engineering lagged behind GM and Chrysler until the 60s.
Well, kind of. I haven’t ever tried to make sense of the distinctions between the DG and Fordomatic, but the Fordomatic was basically designed by Borg-Warner and although its final production form was tailored for Ford, it actually preceded the involvement of either Ford or Studebaker.
The key point here is that Harold Youngren, whom Ernie Breech hired as chief engineer, had been head of R&D at Borg-Warner during the war (after many years as chief engineer of Oldsmobile) and had overseen the early development of that transmission. Initially, Ford was planning to use a different Borg-Warner transmission, the Livermore Automatic Layshaft Transmission, but the Breech administration (heavily populated by ex-GM people) decided it wasn’t a match for Hydra-Matic and canceled it. At that point, Youngren mentioned the unit he’d been working on at Borg-Warner and Ford decided to go that way instead. Although B-W had started developing the transmission during the war, the Fordomatic wasn’t ready for production until CY1950, perhaps because it was a significant departure from contemporary trends: It used both a torque converter and several geared ratios, where most contemporary automatics had one or the other.
As for Lincoln, I suspect it came down to limiting capital expenditures. In the late ’40s, there were some pretty fierce battles between the manufacturing and finance staffs (including Bob McNamara, then the controller) over plant development and upgrades. In fairness, the finance people were still trying to sort out the mess they’d inherited (a couple of years earlier, a lot of people assumed for good reason that Ford was doomed) and the company was already sinking a huge amount of money into new product development, followed by the construction of the Cincinnati transmission plant and the engine plant in Cleveland.
The difficulty presented by Lincoln was that not only would they have needed to develop a new transmission with the torque capacity to handle the big V-8s, there was also the question of where L-M would build such a transmission. Until the mid-50s, Ford was actually just buying about half its Fordomatic units directly from Borg-Warner because they didn’t yet have the plant capacity to produce enough in-house. If you compare the total volume of Ford and Mercury with that of Lincoln, you can see why Lincoln wasn’t the first priority…
At 18 mph a DG box in an Austin will roll start, not the toughest box in the shop my 3L twin carbed 6/110 destroyed one towing a boat
I had understood that the DG was engineered with heavy input from Studebaker engineering. I don’t think it was fully an in-house job, but Studebaker did a lot of the heavy lifting. Why it was Detroit Gear and not Borg Warner (which owned Detroit Gear) escapes me. BW’s Detroit Gear division did manufacture the things for Studebaker. The bigger tie-in was with the Flight O Matic that Studebaker started using in 1956, after the DG was discontinued due to ever-higher costs due to shrinking volume. The Flight O was pretty much a Ford O Matic, and was purchased from Borg Warner. They were essentially the same transmission, including the normal start in second gear. The biggest difference in operation was that the Ford O used a “PRNDL” quadrant, the Stude unit used a “PNDLR”. Although Ford moved to newer designs, Studebaker kept using this tranny up to the end.
The distinction in brand may have been political: an attempt to reassure Ford and Studebaker that the finer points of their individual designs weren’t benefiting a rival. That sort of branding was not uncommon: For example, when Ghia bought Frua in the mid-50s, Ghia would apply the Frua name to certain designs regardless of whether they’d actually been done by the Frua team or by Ghia stylists, just so existing Ghia clients wouldn’t squawk that Ghia was working for a competitor.
I don’t know the timeline for the development of Studebaker’s Automatic Drive, so beyond that I’m not sure.
And independent front suspension. And hydraulic brakes. And here in Australia, coil springs on the rear. And underdash handbrakes too.
In his AUWM article “Private Investigations: Oscar Banker, the Automatic Safety Transmission, and the Art of Research” Aaron wrote:
“We found a series of patents in Earl Thompson’s name for semi-automatic gearboxes, including some “preselector” transmissions, designed before he joined GM. In 1932, there was a transmission design combining a set of spur gears and an automatically controlled planetary overdrive. By 1934, there was another design using two planetary gearsets in series, one manually controlled by the driver, the other controlled automatically by a hydraulic governor. Thompson patented several variations on this design, filing the application for the last in 1937.”
That last patent would presumably have expired in 1954.
I am actually kind of gnashing my teeth a bit here (no disrespect to JP or Paul) because I have an article on the Zephyr/Continental (including some stuff about the Liquamatic) that I finished last week but still need to finish polishing and lay out…
I didn’t get into the whole litany of semiautomatic transmissions (except the Automatic Safety Transmission, which was a direct predecessor of the Hydra-Matic) because they’re really a topic in themselves. By ’42, nearly everyone had SOMETHING like this, usually involving some combination of plate clutch + fluid coupling (or occasionally just an automatically operated plate clutch), overdrive, and/or Bendix Electric Hand-style automated shifting for certain speeds. The Lincoln Liquamatic had all of the above, but there were a bunch of others, like the Hudson Drive-Master, Packard Electromatic, and Studebaker Turbo-matic Drive.
Of these, I think the only one that sold in any numbers was the DeSoto/Chrysler Simplimatic/Vacamatic with Fluid Drive (often conflated, which is actually incorrect — you could also get Fluid Drive with a conventional gearbox), and that only because it was standard on a lot of models. The public was willing to put up with the shortcomings of the early Hydra-Matic because with Hydra-Matic you really didn’t have to shift. The prospect of shifting less wasn’t usually enough to overcome the (usually well-founded) suspicion that the contraption was just going to break and be an expensive headache when it did.
I am coming to believe that the CC effect is a stronger force in the cosmos than any of us has realized. 🙂 I look forward to your article, which is sure to have a more in-depth treatment to this fascinating (at least to me) subject.
I have said before that at about the age of 13 I became a Lincoln-Geek of the first order, and read about the Liquamatic at that time. One of my 13-year-old car-fantasies was that I would find a Liquamatic-equipped ’42 Lincoln. After getting it home, I would find the great flaw and engineer a fix for it, which would then make me world-famous. None of this has actually happened in real life.
Good heavens Jim, you really are a born car nerd! “What do you want for Christmas Jimmy? I want a ’42 Lincoln with Liquamatic!”
What, me a born car nerd? I just wanted an Electrovair.
Have you written anything about the vacuum assisted shifting that was available on Chevrolets in the 1940’s? This wasn’t something to shift gears automatically but was instead intended to make manual gear changing easier. From what I understand these units were troublesome in the field and were often changed to the regular manual shift. My father owned a 1940 Chevy (purchased when he came back from WWII) and apparently had a lot of trouble with this feature. I remember him telling about how the transmission would not stay in third gear, but would instead move unexpectedly into neutral; disconcerting at best and not good for the old Stovebolt as well. I think he eventually rigged up a piece of wood that braced against the dash to keep the transmission in third gear.
The best of the lot of these, in my opinion, was the basic Fluid Drive mated to a three on the tree. The long stroke flathead made loads of torque which made second gear starts a breeze in city driving. You never really need to shift it in daily driving below like 30 mph, which was as fast as traffic moved circa 1949. This transmission had no problems with complexity all the half-assed attempts to make an automatic by adapting old systems.
Only GM had the resources to make a machine as complex as a Hydra-matic. During the war loads were put in tanks, which worked as proving ground and paid in lots of volume. When the war was over, GM had loads of excess capacity for the Hydra-matic.
Your point is a good one and highlights how GM and Chrysler were really the only two engineering powerhouses in the auto industry in, say, 1940. After the war, for virually every other automaker, you either went to GM and bought automatics from them, or you went without. The only two exceptions were Packard, which developed the Ultramatic, and Studebaker which developed (with BW/DG) the DG automatic. Both of those were out in either 1949 or 1950, certainly before Ford offered its “own” automatic. Chrysler certainly could have done it, but the people running the company at that time did not seem to sense the need to move beyond the semi-automatic. If they did, there was certainly no sense of urgency.
One of the few early Lincolns Ive seen had a huge plaque on the firewall proclaiming the fact Ford went to GM cap in hand for a transmission and that this car was fitted with a hydramatic so were Rolls royces but they didnt get the embarrasing signage with it.
Actually, quite a few companies bought Hydra Matics. Hudson, Nash and Kaiser-Fraser were among them. There was a fire at the Hydra Matic plant in 1953, which completely shut off production. The GM cars that normally used Hydra matics had to make due with either Dynaflows or Powerglides. Everyone else had to find another source. Some Hudsons used the Studebaker DG, but it evidently did not hold up well in the heavier, more powerful car.
An interesting side note is that the Hydra Matic Fire resulted in Kaiser selling the giant Willow Run factory to GM, which basically funded the Willys purchase, and all K-W production moved to Toledo. GM had the Hydra Matic back in production at the new plant fairly quickly, within about 3 months, in time for 1954 models.
Love it. Nothing like reminding Henry of his place in the pecking order.
Does anyone know where to adjust the “kick-down rod” running from the throttle linkage to the transmission on my 1954 Lincoln to prevent it from shifting too soon?
I think your 54 Lincoln was still using a GM HydraMatic. I would seek out someone with old-school HM experience.
I fell in love with the Lincoln Continental after seeing one on display at the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry while in high school. After seeing one at a friends father house while in college I was sold for life. The first chance for one was a 1942 Continental convertible while in the Navy. I learned about the Liquamatic while studying the wiring diagram. My car had connectors which were of no use for the overdrive transmission which made me assume that it which started life with the Liquamatic which wasn’t the only problem Lincoln had with the 1942 model. The engine was the 1941 V-12 upgraded from 120 to 130 bhp presumably to compensate for power loss with the Liquamatic . This engine had enough problems that shortly after production started after the war with 1946 model the 1942 engine was used until mid January 1946 when the 1941 engine was used through the end of the V-12 production in 1948. Whether the problem with engine was such as crank related (I had rear main oil seal and oil pressure issues) or no need for the higher bhp with the overdrive transmission is beyond me. I loved that car. Drove it as my for day-lie use since it was only 16 years old at the time. I grieved over selling that car for 50 years before finally buying a 1946 Continental convertible. Incidentally, per the 1946 Owner’s Manual you start off in 2nd unless you are laze and use 3rd.
The 1942 engine was the 305 V-12, which was the first attempt at thin wall casting techniques. Ford took the existing V- 12 block ( Bad enough to begin with ), and stretched the bores as far as they possibly could. With the lack of precision in casting techniques of the time to begin with, most of the 305 blocks never even made it out of the foundry. And, with all of the inherent problems of the Lincoln V – 12 , the ones that did get installed into cars didn’t last long. The cylinder walls were so thin that they couldn’t be bored at all, and often suffered from porosity.
The usual history misses one basic point. The T’s planetary transmission was semi-automatic by a strict definition. Originally it used a lever and no clutch pedal, which is functionally the same as Dynaslush or Powerglide. After the first thousand or so T’s, the control became pedals and no lever, which is still ‘semi’.
Supposedly Henry had a project to ‘fluidize’ the planetary and eliminate the pedal entirely, but there’s very little info on it.
Hey, neat! I love learning about engineering blind alleys and dead ends and false summits like this.
Have you read this book by this man?
I have not. Looks interesting.
Very much so. Highly recommended.
The 40’s were much like recent times. The concept of a luxury car keeps evolving. That’s luxury with an X, not a G.
It’s funny to think that Ford, the company that utilized the planetary gearbox to make the Model T suitable for first-time drivers, didn’t figure out that the planetary gearbox design lent itself to self-shifting.
Funny indeed. The Model T was a torque converter and a self-shifting mechanism away from becoming the Powerglide. I’ll bet every single engineer on the HydraMatic project had lots of Model T driving experience.
Today’s version of Hydromatic would be the Aisin, which was founded in part by Borg-Warner. They sell transmissions to a LOT of different companies, see the link for a list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Aisin_transmissions
For a truly obscure early self-shifting transmission by an independent automaker that actually made it into production, research the REO Self-Shifter transmission available in their cars from 1933 to 1936. It was developed with the hopes of not only a sales feature but also to license to other automakers. In the depths of the Depression, there were no takers.