There’s a very common tendency to assume that Chevys equipped with the two-speed Powerglide were uncompetitive because the main competition all had three-speed automatics. Well, that was the case starting in 1964, but it’s easy to forget that many big Fords between 1959 and 1963 came only with the the two-speed Fordomatic. And that prior to 1959, the previous-generation Fordomatic only used two gears unless one manually employed Low, which was not recommended for longevity.
Yes, the “new” Fordomatic was of course also used on the lighter Falcon, Fairlane and their Mercury counterparts. But the Fordomatic was the only automatic available on the big Fords with sixes during these years as well as the base V8 in 1959, and was the base automatic for all V8s from ’60-’63, except the top power option. A lot of big Ford sedans soldiered along with the Fordomatic during these years, as many buyers preferred not to spend the extra money on the three-speed Cruiseomatic.
Let’s clarify a key point here: there were two distinct and different automatics called “Fordomatic”. The original arrived in 1951, and was a Borg-Warner design. But it was not the automatic developed by B/W’s Detroit Gear (“DG”) division, which was developed for Studebaker (“Automatic Drive”) and was more sophisticated, with a lock-up top gear for better cruising efficiency. We covered that box here.
Studebaker wouldn’t share the rights to the DG with Ford, who was desperate for an automatic, as Chevy had their Powerglide since 1950. So Ford licensed another design by the Warner Gear Division of B/W. This unit, dubbed the Ford-O-Matic, was a simpler and cheaper unit, and was in essence the prototype of all future/eventual US automatics, by using a torque converter with a threes peed Ravigneaux planetary gearset. But it started in second gear, unless the shifter was dropped into Low, which was not recommended for regular use.
At some point after 1951, a full throttle start would also drop the transmission into Low from 2nd, but that feature is clearly absent in this description here. As is dropping it into Low for faster getaway.
Towards the end of the original Fordomatic’s life, its three-speed capability was marketed more as in this description from the 1957 brochure. But it was still a two speed for the most part.
The original Fordomatic was developed into the MX/FX automatics for 1958, the MX for the larger V8 cars and the FX for the smaller V8s. These were dubbed “Cruiseomatic”, and eventually were developed into the FMX, the XT-LOD, and overdrive unit first built in 1962, but not produced until 1979, and later called FIOD and then AOD. I’m not going to go into detail into these, but let’s just say that the 1951 Fordomatic begat a long line of offspring. And was essentially the template for Chrysler’s Torqueflite (1958) and eventually GM’s THM400/350, starting in 1964.
But for 1959, Ford introduced an essentially all-new smaller, lighter, simpler and cheaper two-speed Fordomatic, undoubtedly in advance of the 1960 Falcon and Comet. Note that the new two-speed Fordomatic was the only automatic available with the six and the base 292 V8 on the ’59 full-size cars. Also note that Chrysler’s two-speed Powerflite was also available on the large cars through 1961 (but not with the six starting in 1960).
The new Fordomatic had an aluminum case, and a simpler two-speed planetary gearset. Low (starting) gear had a 1.75:1 ratio, and the torque converter had a maximum stall ratio of 2.6, meaning that the maximum effective starting gear ratio was 4.55:1. That was almost as good as the Powerglide’s 4.73:1 max gear ratio at start. Note that both of these are well below the typical manual first gear ratios of the times.
The new Cruisomatic had a 2.4:1 Low gear ratio and a 2.1;1 torque converter ratio, resulting in a maximum starting gear ratio of 5.04, a bit better than the new Fordomatic. Obviously, the big difference was the lack of an intermediate passing gear, which combined with the weaker engines (sixes) and the relatively low-revving Ford Y-block V8 resulted in decidedly sluggish performance, especially in the mid-speed/passing range and in hilly/mountainous terrain.
I say this with direct experience, as my father’s 1962 Fairlane, although equipped with a V8, was anything but brisk. Its small 221 CID V8 was rated at all of 145 gross hp, in other words the same as a Chevy 230 six. teamed with the two-speed Fordomatic, performance was leisurely. My sister would pick me and a friend up on Tuesdays to take us to orchestra, and I’d goad her to floor it. Which she would do, to very little effect. This is a V8?
I’m not going to go into technical details about these transmissions, but as far as I know they were fairly bulletproof. The six cylinder version was apparently air-cooled, and the V8 version was water-cooled.
In 1964, the three-speed C4 automatic went into production to replace and supplant the Fordomatic. It was also a light-weight unit designed to be used with sixes and small-block V8s, although a few were used behind the 351M and even the 390FE.
The Fordomatic was still the only automatic available on the 1964 Falcon. The C4 Cruiseomatic was available in addition to the Fordomatic on the 1964 Fairlane. And wisely, it was the only automatic available on the new 1965 Mustang, introduced in April of 1964.
The two-speed Fordomatic had a fairly short life, and Ford made the right call to replace it with the light three-speed C4. Chevrolet offered the excellent three-speed THM-400 starting in mid-year 1965, but only with the large-block 396. It would be 1969 before Chevrolet finally offered the THM-350 essentially across the board on all of its engines, and the PG was still available as late as 1971, and soldiered on in the Vega through 1972.
I had to look up Ravigneaux. It was worth the trouble! There are some neat animations on Youtube.
Thanks for the interesting article. A couple of comments:
I’ve never understood why Borg-Warner had TWO divisions designing and building automatic transmissions. Seems like a huge waste of resources.
Second, based on what I’ve read at Ate Up With Motor, my impression was that the Chrysler Torque-Flite of 1956, while also having a three-speed planetary gearset with torque converter, was a bit more of the prototype of the (for lack of a better term) American standard automatic, because it employed the Simpson planetary gearset rather than the Ravigneaux gearset of the three-speed Ford-O-Matic.
As Aaron Severson puts it: “Use of a common sun gear immediately distinguishes a Simpson gearset from the rival Ravigneaux gearset, which has two sun gears of different sizes, using short and long planet gears on a common planet carrier to mesh with a single ring gear.”
https://ateupwithmotor.com/terms-technology-definitions/simpson-gearset/?cookie-state-change=1563291613793
The Simpson gearset was used in the THM 400 and Ford’s C-4 and C-6 in the Sixties.
Don’t mean to split hairs. It’s an interesting subject.
In that specific regard, you’re right. I meant more generally, in terms of the basic configuration of TC and a three gear planetary gearset.
This is something of a “quickie” post, and not intended to delve deeply into the details.
While the Simpson gearset became much more common in the ’60s after Ford and GM introduced the C4/C6 and Turbo Hydra-Matic, Ravigneaux gearsets continued to be used concurrently for quite a long time, for instance in Ford’s FMX series, which spawned the later four-speed AOD. So, it wasn’t really that one replaced the other, although THM, TorqueFlite, and the C4/C6 family became so ubiquitous that they were probably more common in numerical terms.
I think Paul’s more general characterization is right, that the point was less the internal gear layout and more the move to three geared speeds plus torque converter. It wasn’t until the fuel crises prompted the move to adding an overdrive fourth gear that that arrangement was no longer seen as adequate for general use.
(Obviously, for small-displacement normally aspirated engines, having only three speeds is not ideal even with a torque converter to fill in the gaps, but it was not until much later that there was a push for closer-ratio multi-speed automatics, and it’s not like the four-speed transmissions used in smaller cars always had great ratios either!)
How could I not become thoroughly enmeshed in this story, with its excellent lead-in picture? 😉
Pretty decent write up, even if it was a quickie.
It is easy to see how you would be fully engaged.
I wonder if Automatic transmissions with 2 or 3 gears were more reliable than later ones with 5 or More gears?
An excellent question, as the Powerglide, the 350THM’s and Torqueflites all had high reputation for toughness. Once things moved to four speeds, boxes seemed to become more prone to failure, and it seems to me that the long-term reliability of multi-speed boxes is poor.
Thank you for this informative article. I was long confused because Fordomatic referred to two different transmissions, an early three speed–with low gear not typically used–and a later two speed. The continuing use of two speed automatics puzzles me: were fewer shifts considered desirable for some reason? This approach had many unfortunate (IMO) outcomes: In addition to Ford’s step backwards, they include Powerflite Hemis in the 50s, Chevrolet and GM musclecars through the 60s, and many years of Buick.
I owned a 1965 Rambler Ambassador 990H with a Flashomatic (Borg-Warner) transmission that routinely started off in second gear. It was a waste of that 327, causing me to label it an “old man’s car”. I’ve now grown into that phrase/phase, and the Ambassador has morphed into an Avalon.
True two-speeds were done to save money (lower option price=higher take rate), and to a lesser extent weight. The two-speed auto is the equivalent to a three-speed manual since the technical requirement of a very low starting gear to minimize clutch slipping goes away with a torque converter.
No, it was more that the two-speed (or 2+1) automatic was considered a workable compromise between the complexity of Hydra-Matic (which had four speeds) and the smooth but slushy performance of “pure” torque converter automatics. (Powerglide actually started as the latter, but asking the old Stovebolt Six to make do without gears in normal driving didn’t prove tenable.) Engineers of the ’50s were still pretty enthused about torque converters, but efforts to rely only on that required a very complex converter layout and still didn’t provide good mid-range punch.
Thanks. Good to see you here.
According to Consumer Reports, Ford transmission reliability (which was excellent) took a dive after the new 2-speed automatic was introduced in ’59. However, I had a ’62 Comet with the 2-speed which ran to 125,000 miles and never had transmission problems.
My present ’58 Ford Custom 300 six has the older 3-speed Fordomatic (PRNDL). It starts in 2 and upshifts to 3. You have to select “L” to get 1. 1 is so low that it’s kind of useless. I would trade 1 for an overdrive gear to be happier on the highway.
I also had a ’62 Monterey 390 V-8 with Cruise-O-Matic (PRN D2 D1 L). I always drove in D2 (2-3). D1 gave you 1-2-3, but unless you were drag racing, 1 wasn’t really necessary.
How did the 2-speed do in CR’s records in the Falcon rather than the full-size cars especially the V8? I suspect it was designed for the former and underbuilt for the latter.
The Falcon record was pretty good. Comet results were similar. (Top row refers to transmission). No circle means above average reliability; light shaded circle, average; dark circle, worse than average.
I don’t know if the transmissions were the same for the full-size Fords and Falcon/Comet, or if the compacts used a scaled-down version.
An interesting topic. Why Ford felt the need to use the same name for two completely different units is interesting. Maybe the same reason they decided to offer two (or is it three) completely different 351 V8s in later years. Or perhaps they were trying to hide the fact that owners of new low-end 59s were getting a downgrade?
That 3 speed 50s FordOMatic was basically the unit that Studebaker had to resort to in 1956 (as the Flight O Matic) after it could no longer afford the DG/Automatic Drive which B-W could not price reasonably due to plummeting volumes. Like the Ford design it started in 2nd. My understanding was that the 2nd gear start was not so much about durability as it was about smoothness, as the 1-2 shift was not as pleasant as the 2-3.
I have concluded that the reason Chevy kept the PG around so long was that it could. Chevy’s high-revving V8 didn’t mind the lack of an intermediate gear nearly as much as the more sluggish engines of others. The 1959 Ford O Matic was the last of the low-priced 3 to have a genuine 2 speed auto, and I wonder if Ford was playing Follow The Leader in an attempt to get more aggressive on price from the cheaper unit.
In the article Paul said “Studebaker wouldn’t share the rights to the DG with Ford, who was desperate for an automatic,”
and here JPC says ” (Studebaker) could no longer afford the DG/Automatic Drive which B-W could not price reasonably due to plummeting volumes.”
If Studebaker had shared the rights to the DG, it may have led to significant price savings down the road, as they probably got a better deal on the Borg Warner unit, versus their later deal with Ford.
Of course, there’s no guarantee Ford would have continued to buy the Borg Warner automatic, but they bought manual units from Borg-Warner until BW sold off that business in the seventies.
Should have, could have, would have…
“If Studebaker had shared the rights to the DG . . . .
This has been a topic among Studephiles for years. They froze Ford out of their proprietary design around 1949-50 and in a few years were forced to buy a generic version of what Ford had settled for in 51 because Studebaker couldn’t afford the DG anymore. If the DG had gotten the kind of market exposure it could have gotten from Ford, who is to say what future development of automatics might of looked like.
To be honest, the DG-series automatic’s lockup top gear might well have been abandoned around the point it was anyway, just for performance reasons.
The important thing to understand about the DG is that it did not allow the torque converter to function in top gear, which most other early TC automatics did. With two-speed units like Powerglide and the two-speed Fordomatic, it was an essential function for climbing grades or what have you at speeds too great to kick down to low. That wasn’t possible with the DG; since its second gear was taller than Powerglide’s, you could kick down at highway speed, but that was your only recourse if the engine couldn’t pull the current load in high.
The reason there was a lock-up top gear was that there was no second-gear engine braking available. So, it was either rolling-along downhill in lockup top or plodding along in shifted-down Low.
With the British Ford DG sixes you didn’t miss a ‘slippery’ top gear when driving in hilly country as the diff ratio was 3.9 to 1 with smaller wheels, and as well as full kickdown there was part-throttle kickdown to 2nd at lower speeds.
“… MX/FX automatics for 1958, the MX for the larger V8 cars and the FX for the smaller V8s. These were dubbed “Cruiseomatic”, and eventually were developed into the FMX (“C6”), the XT-LOD, and overdrive unit first built in 1962, but not produced until 1979, and later called FIOD and then AOD.”
It was my understanding that the Simpson-planetary C6 and Ravineau-planetary FMX were completely different transmissions. Ford had four different V8 engine families in production in ’69 (FE, Windsor, Cleveland, 385-series), so why not three automatic transmissions (and probably four or five manuals)?
http://www.mustangandfords.com/how-to/drivetrain/mump-1203-understanding-automatic-transmissions/
Yup, the C4/C6 is not related to the FMX or to the AOD (which was a derivative of the FMX). The internal layout is quite different.
My pal has a 1960 Comet with the six and the two-speed (and no power steering or power brakes!). I drive it once in a while – and I’ve been surprised at how well it handles the hills of SF.
My XP Ford Fairmont only had two functioning forward gears and a super pursuit 170 stirring it, acceleration was leisurely at best, slower than the rustbucket EH Holden I’d just got rid of though that was a manual so that may have helped.
Quite fascinating article Paul, thank you. I knew about GM’s PG, had no idea Ford (or Chrysler) had done anything similar.
The Ravigneaux planetary set has made a comeback in recent years on modern 6+ speed automatics:
http://www.atraonline.com/gears/2007/2007-09/2007_09_04.pdf
I’m glad that the 1957 brochure writer was explicit about the Fordomatic Drive having just 1 reverse gear. Wouldn’t want any confusion. By the way, decades before the Internet, I was very aware of the 2 speed Powerglide (I’ve driven at least one), and later, the 2 speed Hondamatic. But as an avid Road & Track and Car and Driver reader starting in the mid-60’s, the Fordomatic was completely off my radar until I discovered CC.
“The six cylinder version was apparently air-cooled, and the V8 version was water-cooled.”
Was the water-cooled version plumbed into the engine’s cooling system or was it a separate cooling sytem?
Fluid-to-coolant heat exchanger in the bottom tank of the radiator.
I wonder if this might have been the progenitor of Ford’s longstanding (well into the 1980s and quite possibly later) philosophy regarding the “2” position on their more-than-2-speed automatics: it meant the transmission started and stayed in 2nd. In an automatic Chrysler or GM car, in “2” the transmission started in 1st as usual, but would not shift above 2nd. The Ford method is considerably more useful; it allows the driver to reduce torque to the drive wheels, which can help against wheelspin on slippery surfaces.
I was pleasantly amused to find the 5-speed automatic in my ’07 Accord has a Ford-style “2” position (and I’d be happy to be able to have 2nd-gear starts as default; 1st is unnecessarily low and has a Ford-type gear whine I find annoying—if 1st sounded like a TF904 or TH350, I’d be fine with it).
Of course, Ford have done some screwy things with their automatic shifts, too. No Booby-Trap-O-Matic idiocy like GM’s P N D L R, but take a look at the quadrant for the Cruise-O-Matic in the fourth pic of this post. P R N D2 D3 L. In modern parlance that would be P R N 2 D 1. What? Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you go D3, D2, L (D, 2, 1)? And I still recall the dumb babble on the subject in the owner’s manual of my folks’ ’80 Stinkoln Clown Car, first year for the AOD 4-speed automatic: “There is no ‘2’ position because the quadrant has only six positions. Therefore, the second-gear starts described elsewhere in this manual are not available.” Uh…thanks? Meanwhile, those showoffs over at GM, in a very well financed skunkworks R&D program, somehow managed to figure out how to pull off the amazing feat of—wait for it—adding a seventh position (I know, right?) to arrive at P R N D 3 2 1 for the TH700R4 and TH200R4.
For the pre green dot indicators the D2 meant it used 2 gears while the D3 meant it used all 3.
Yes the ability to start out in second is a great feature for slippery conditions. The AOD is the one break in that tradition at Ford, but the AOD-E and 4R7x successors returned that function.
I’m pretty sure the reason that they did the P R N OD D 1 shift pattern at the begining was so that they could use the same shift mechanisms they already had and if the customer wanted to step up to the OD trans the only thing that needed to be changed was the lens.
By the time the 5R55 came around the added another position so not only can you do a 2nd gear start you can do a 3rd gear (2nd over) start.
I think the reason the AOD lacked the “2” position was that the AOD used what had been the intermediate band in the FMX as the overdrive band. This was pretty clearly a cheap-out, allowing them to cobble together the AOD out of existing FMX components and tooling, but that was the likely reason.
(That said, I can’t see any particular reason why they couldn’t have redesigned the valve body to also allow manual selection of intermediate, other than just cheapskate-itis. Given Ford’s precarious financial position when the AOD was introduced, that was maybe understandable at launch, but they stuck with that dumb layout for an awfully long time.)
I don’t think so, the AOD has a different valve body than the FMX.
While it can’t start out in 2 if you put it in 1 and as soon as the wheels start turning shift to D and then back to 1 you’ll be in 2nd and it will hold that. Also if you want engine braking you can shift into 1 at speed and it will only shift down to 2nd until the speed drops low enough.
RE Daniel Stern, a few posts above:
“… take a look at the quadrant for the Cruise-O-Matic in the fourth pic of this post. P R N D2 D3 L. In modern parlance that would be P R N 2 D 1. What? Why would you do that? ”
———–
“Green Dot” transmissions were the same way, with “normal” Drive (Green Dot) position located to the right of 2nd-Gear-Start.
My hunch is that the R-N-D2 arrangement was more favorable when “rocking” to free a stuck car. Also, possibly the transmission’s power-flow was such that a shift from R-N-D2 was less punishing to components (or faster to make?) than R-ND1?
Finally, per the old standard trans trick, possibly it was thought that even in normal driving, by first engaging “2” after passing through Neutral it would give a softer initial engagement?
The automatic transaxle in my ’07 Accord V6, once shifted into any forward-drive position, first engages 3rd gear and then 1st. Some dillweed(s) at Honda deliberately programmed it this way to provide what they thought of as a softer engagement—with zero regard for what should have had priority, which is a prompt engagement. This was a thoughtless, stupid decision. It adds a few hours to the time it takes for the car to be ready to move forward once the selector is placed into gear. At least, it feels like a couple of hours when one is in the middle of a 3-point turn or parallel-park manœuvre in a busy street. “Eek! My poor, delicate heiny cannot withstand these awfully jarring engagements into ‘Drive’!”, said nobody ever about any properly-functioning automatic made in the last 55 years or so that just goes ahead and promptly engages when shifted into Drive.
Most of the modern computer-controlled automatics seem to have slower initial engagement than most of the hydromechanical automatics, but this Honda box is especially slow, and they did it on purpose. »snarl«
I think it’s a fairly safe bet that this dumb 3rd-then-1st engagement is partly responsible for this transaxle’s unspectacular durability reputation; there are probably plenty of drivers who nail the accelerator as soon as they feel the first engagement (into 3rd), thus putting the trans under load when it engages 1st.
Some post for a quickie! An overdrive complete with marketing material in 1961 – just amazing. My biggest avoidance of automatics years ago was the great irritation of revvy noises at speed (like having no 5th, or 4th from 3-speed usualness) and here was someone nearly answering this all that time ago. Wonder why it didn’t launch?
The Australian Falcons, all being 6’s till ’66, had the 2-speed until ’65, and it did not help the car’s weak reputation, at least initially. Too hot here without water cooling, which came a bit later. They burnt out, even though Detroit insisted they couldn’t.
Our 1960 Falcon’s transmission never burnt out, but then again we never towed boats with it…
“No {Ford} Booby-Trap-O-Matic idiocy like GM’s P N D L R”
Sorry Daniel – Booby-Trap-O-Matic idiocy: Ford Mark 2 Zephyr automatic 1956 to 1962, delightfully enhanced by the feature of no positive lockout between Low and Reverse. This means that when the shifter is worn the car can jump into Reverse while climbing a hill in Low at 20 mph. Ouch. (The rear pump that prevented lockup was sometimes removed to prevent it disintegrating, lol)
I learned to drive on a Ford O Matic with a 289 in a ’63 Galaxie. Now I had riden Motorcycles for several years, so I was familiar with transmissions and what they did. But jeez, what a slug. Being the impatient 16 year old I was, my usual MO was to floor it off the line, which resulted in distinctly modest acceleration until at least 40 or so where it changed to moderate, only to downgrade once it upshifted at 60. Woo Hoo, V8 power. But that thing was so slow off the line… A half a dozen years or so later my Dad gave me a ’61 Ford with a 292 and Ford O Matic. Divorce, living in another country, etc. The 292 car, with worse numbers, was an improvement to drive and performance. Not huge, from terrible to lousy, but hey, better is better. In retrospect, it appears the crude old Y block, while rated less, had a better torque curve with similar HP. I’m not sure how Ford explained that to their customers, but I’m sure they had something, that’s what at least some, salesmen do.
But it still instilled in me a lifelong dislike (OK, hatred is closer) of automatics in me. OK, might have just been me, modern autos are light years ahead of the old 2 speed autos, unlike modern manuals which are only better then 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, but for my car, a daily driver, it’s got to have 3 pedals.
Now I’m distinctly an enthusiast of imported cars, usually German, but in domestics I’m more of a Ford fan than Chevy. But I have to admit the Powerglide cars I’ve driven have been profoundly better than the 2 speed Fords. Chevy 327s vs 289/292 Fords surely plays some role, but they didn’t seen nearly as bad. Not good, not like something I’d want, but not screaming at every red light when I push the loud pedal and nothing happens.
In the caption with the cutaway view of the Fordomatic 2-speed, it states that the front servo cover has 6 bolts. That was only on the Y-block application; all others had 4. Also states that the trans had no modulator; incorrect on later models; they started I believe in 61.
I have a 1963 Ford Fairlane sport coupe 500. 260 cu inch V8 with the two speed transmission. It will not upshift, drives fine in low and reverse. The centrifugal valve that runs off the output shaft is working as it should. Could the rear pump be the problem or something else? It has 52000.0,original miles on it.