Automatic shifter in a 2013 Toyota Corolla LE
Have you ever wondered why modern automatic transmissions all have shift patterns beginning “PRND”? It wasn’t always so — if you’ve driven older cars, you may have noticed that they often placed reverse at the other end of the shift quadrant, next to Low. Why that changed is a complicated story involving the early GM Hydra-Matic transmission and an inventor named Oscar Banker, who nursed a decades-long grudge against General Motors.
Today, automatic transmission shift patterns on most U.S.-market cars, trucks, and buses are governed by Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 102 (49 CFR § 571.102), which requires (among other things):
- A neutral position shall be located between forward drive and reverse drive positions.
- If a steering-column-mounted transmission shift lever is used, movement from neutral position to forward drive position shall be clockwise.
- If the transmission shift lever sequence includes a park position, it shall be located at the end, adjacent to the reverse drive position.
The original version of this regulation was established back in February 1967 as the part of the first batch of federal safety standards. It was adapted from an earlier General Services Administration (GSA) regulation, Federal Standard No. 515/11, which applied to federal fleet cars beginning July 1, 1966.
By 1966, the domestic auto industry had already grudgingly standardized the PRNDL shift pattern, but it had been a slow process. Until the early 1960s, many U.S. automatic transmissions, beginning with the first Hydra-Matic Drive of 1940, used shift patterns that placed Reverse at the opposite end of the quadrant, adjacent to Low.
Hydra-Matic shifter in a 1940 Oldsmobile / Barrett-Jackson
Why? Transmission designers of the ’40s and ’50s were preoccupied with ensuring that automatic transmissions still provided for a number of functions that may now seem rather quaint, including push-starting of stalled cars and the ability to “rock” a car’s drive wheels free of mud or snow by shifting rapidly between forward and reverse. To allow push-starting, the designers of Hydra-Matic included a separate rear oil pump; to facilitate rocking, they placed Reverse next to Low. Early Hydra-Matic transmissions had no separate park position, so their shift pattern was NDLR.
Although early Hydra-Matic cars labeled the shift pattern as N Hi Lo R, it was changed early on to N Dr Lo R
Many other early automatics also adopted these functions, and the NDLR or PNDLR shift pattern. Prominent examples included Buick Dynaflow (1948), Packard Ultramatic (1949), Chevrolet Powerglide (1950), and Studebaker Automatic Drive (aka Borg-Warner DG, also 1950).
Dynaflow shifter in a 1948 Buick Roadmaster convertible / Fast Lane Classic Cars
Since GM’s Detroit Transmission Division also sold Hydra-Matic to various non-GM customers, including Lincoln, Nash, Kaiser-Frazer, and Hudson, this shift pattern became by far the most common on automatic transmissions of the early ’50s.
1951 Ford Victoria with Ford-O-Matic Drive / Mecum Auctions
The first new automatic transmissions to depart from that pattern were the 1951 Ford-O-Matic and Merc-O-Matic, also developed with Borg-Warner, which adopted a PRNDL pattern “after considerable study.” They were followed in mid-1953 by Chrysler, which adopted an RNDL shift pattern (with no Park position) for the two-speed PowerFlite. However, the ability to rock the car between forward and reverse was considered so important that both companies took pains to explain that their arrangement was still adequate for that purpose, and most manufacturers that used the NDLR/PNDLR pattern continued to do so.
1951 Mercury four-door sedan with Merc-O-Matic Drive / Mercum Auctions
After a while, there were various different shift patterns for different automatic transmissions, which placed Reverse in different parts of the pattern and required different selector motions (e.g., pulling up or back) to access certain ranges. This was potentially confusing for drivers, not helped by the fact that shift quadrants weren’t always well-lighted, and their selectors didn’t always clearly (or accurately) indicate which range was selected.
During their 1954 PowerFlite Rodger and Syrovy offered this chart of different common shift patterns — PowerFlite originally used an RNDL pattern
So far as I know, the first prominent Detroit engineers to publicly suggest that placing Reverse next to Low was categorically less safe (rather than just potentially confusing) were Chrysler’s William R. Rodger and A.J. Syrovy, during their presentation on the new PowerFlite transmission at the January 1954 SAE meeting in Detroit. Rodger and Syrovy argued that placing Reverse next to Neutral was safer because a “shift from neutral to reverse does not require going through a forward gear, with the danger of the car leaping forward when idling fast.” (When Ford had introduced Ford-O-Matic and Merc-O-Matic two years earlier, they had merely suggested that going from Reverse to Neutral to Drive was more convenient; at the time, Ford was still buying Hydra-Matic transmissions for Lincoln, so they don’t appear to have been too concerned about any safety implications of its NDLR shift pattern.)
1954 Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe with PowerFlite / Mecum Auctions
Rodger and Syrovy called for standardization of automatic transmission shift patterns. While that was a reasonable request, the problem was that there wasn’t any clear consensus on what the standard should be, so most manufacturers just continued doing what they were already doing, arguing that a change would confuse their existing customers.
1954 Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe convertible with PowerFlite / Laguna Classic Cars & Automotive Art
The SAE Hydrodynamic Drive and Transmission Committee briefly considered pushing for standardization, but dropped the idea when the industry became fascinated with pushbutton controls in 1955, arguing that “with the introduction of push-button shifting devices, the shift selector may eventually be replaced.”
1956 Imperial Southampton hardtop with pushbutton PowerFlite controls / Motorcar Studios – RM Sotheby’s
The result was that by the latter half of the ’50s, getting into an unfamiliar car required looking carefully for Reverse. Even brand-loyal customers might be confounded — for example, Chevrolet and Buick used different shift patterns for their triple-turbine torque converter automatics, Chevrolet Turboglide and Buick Flight Pitch Dynaflow, than for the more common Powerglide and Variable Pitch Dynaflow transmissions. Chevrolet addressed this for 1958 by switching Powerglide to a PRNDL pattern, but Buick didn’t bother.
1957 Chevrolet Bel Air with fuel injection and Turboglide, the first Chevrolet automatic with a PRND shift pattern / Mecum Auctions
By that time, the contention that the GM NDLR/PNDLR shift pattern was unsafe had been taken up by a different and much louder voice: a Detroit outsider named Oscar Banker.
The Agonies of Oscar Banker
Armenian immigrant Oscar H. Banker, born Asadoor Sarafian, was a mostly self-taught machinist, engineer, and inventor who received an astounding number of patents during the course of his life (more than 150), in fields ranging from band saw sharpening to medical tools. Sadly, as becomes immediately clear if you read his 1982 memoir, Dreams and Wars of an American Inventor, published three years after his death, Banker was also a bitter, cantankerous, self-promoting fabulist with a capacity for grudges that would have shamed even the notoriously unforgiving Frank Sinatra.
Asadoor Sarafian in 1914, shortly after he came to America, but before he changed his name to Oscar Banker
In the automotive realm, Banker is best known for his often-repeated, demonstrably false claim that he developed the first practical automatic transmission and created “the first car with no clutch pedal nor gearshift [sic].” It is true that beginning around 1926, Banker designed an automatic transmission, later called Mono-Drive (or Monodrive), variations of which were used in some railcars and several hundred city buses in the mid-to-late 1930s. However, Mono-Drive was definitely not the first automatic transmission in any sense (the Sturtevant brothers of Boston patented the first iteration of theirs when Banker was still a young boy), and its commercial and technological impact was minimal. Banker’s was just one of many early attempts at self-shifting transmissions, now mostly forgotten.
The 1904–1907 Sturtevant automatic preceded Oscar Banker’s Mono-Drive transmission by more than 20 years / The Horseless Age, Feb. 14, 1906
This inconvenient fact didn’t stop Banker from continuing to insist, to the end of his life and posthumously afterwards, that he was the “father of automatic transmission” and suggesting that his transmission was the wellspring from which all later practical automatic transmissions came. In particular, he claimed that GM’s Hydra-Matic Drive was developed to “duplicate the principles of my transmission, but with adequate differences, so they wouldn’t be forced to use my unit.” There was no more truth to that than Banker’s assertion that he was the first to develop a car with no clutch pedal, but Banker apparently believed it, and he was still angry about it decades later.
The 1932–1933 iteration of Mono-Drive, shown in section view (left) overlaid on a photo of the actual transmission (right) / Automotive Industries, February 18, 1933
How he came to think that is convoluted: According to Banker’s account (which has to be taken with a grain of salt), he first demonstrated his Mono-Drive prototype to auto industry officials in 1930. Despite the considerable derision his prototype received from some GM engineers — including Earl A. Thompson, then a Cadillac engineer — Banker claimed that General Motors had been prepared to license the design. Negotiations collapsed because Banker’s then-business partner demanded too much money, but in 1934, Banker and his backers managed to interest the Omnibus Corporation, and through them, Yellow Coach & Truck Co., a GM subsidiary, which licensed Mono-Drive for use in city buses, despite Banker and his partners once again demanding what Yellow Coach considered an unreasonable amount of money. Yellow Coach built approximately 600 buses with the Mono-Drive transmission through late 1938.
Like the Sturtevant transmission, Mono-Drive was controlled mechanically by centrifugal and overrunning clutches, but it used a planetary gearset with no ring gears / Automotive Industries, February 18, 1933
In December 1935, Yellow Coach development engineer Howard Broadus told Banker that Earl Thompson was now leading a GM Engineering Staff project to develop an automatic transmission (which eventually yielded the semiautomatic Automatic Safety Transmission and the 1940 Hydra-Matic). Broadus allegedly told Banker that the Thompson project was intended as an in-house substitute for Banker’s design. If Broadus actually said that, he was wrong: The Thompson automatic transmission project was intended primarily for passenger cars, not buses, and while Yellow Coach did abandon Banker’s Mono-Drive in 1938 in favor of another transmission, it was a torque converter unit made by Spicer, which was not in any way related to the work of Thompson’s group.
Earl A. Thompson circa 1963, when he and his former team received the Sperry Award and citations for their work on Hydra-Matic
Nonetheless, Banker became convinced that every conflict he had with Yellow Coach was really because GM was double-crossing him in order to steal his ideas. He saw the 1936 transfer of Yellow Coach engineer Oliver K. Kelley to Thompson’s group as further evidence of GM’s treachery and “deception,” and later claimed that the 1940 Hydra-Matic transmission was “openly defying our patents.” There was nothing in that — Hydra-Matic was so different from Mono-Drive in operation and principles that it’s highly unlikely that Banker and his partners could have proved infringement even if they had tried, which they didn’t. Judging by Banker’s account, he would probably have regarded ANY GM automatic transmission developed during that time as an attempt to sabotage and rob him, regardless of its actual design.
Hydra-Matic Drive was hydraulically controlled with a fluid coupling, bore no resemblance at all to Mono-Drive in layout or operation / Automotive Industries, November 15, 1939
If you read Banker’s memoir, this pattern is repeated again and again: In Banker’s anecdotes, people he admires always lavish him with praise for his brilliance; people he dislikes or regards as rivals always lash out childishly in their pride and envy; and deals that should have made him a wealthy industrial tycoon always fell through or fell apart due to someone else’s petty jealousy and nefarious sabotage. Those slights, real or imagined, seem to have occupied a much bigger place in Banker’s mind than the deals that didn’t fall apart. For instance, so far as I’m aware, Borg-Warner, which licensed Banker’s Mono-Drive patents in 1936 for non-coach applications, never did anything with the design except sit on it, but that point gets far less ink in Banker’s memoir than his feud with GM.
The “Booby Trap” Pattern
For all his hostility towards Hydra-Matic, Banker doesn’t seem to have been terribly familiar with the GM transmission, and he didn’t follow its subsequent developments very closely. However, he eventually became fixated on its NDLR shift pattern, which he came to insist was a deadly “booby trap” because a driver might inadvertently select a forward gear when trying to shift into reverse.
Oscar Banker insisted the NDLR shift pattern was especially dangerous to women drivers because they would “become panicked, jump curbs, push through garage walls, etc.” upon inadvertently selecting the wrong gear
A reality check is in order here: I don’t doubt that there were some accidents resulting from the confusing array of different automatic transmission shift patterns, and some of them were probably caused by drivers getting Drive or Low when they wanted Reverse (which can happen even with standardized shift patterns). However, Banker wasn’t content to just say that — he asserted over and over again that the Hydra-Matic shift pattern had caused “countless accidents” and that “thousands of persons lost their lives through this defective design.”
Packard Ultramatic, seen here in a 23rd Series (1950) Packard DeLuxe Eight, used a PNHLR shift pattern / RM Sotheby’s
This was an extraordinarily bold claim, and the only evidence Banker ever offered for it was a handful of newspaper clippings about individual car accidents and his very dubious contention that, based on “the Gallup principle of sampling,” each incident that made the news must have represented dozens if not hundreds more unreported disasters. Without belaboring the point, that’s not how sampling works, and the suggestion that automatic shift patterns were responsible for a vast death toll that no one other than Oscar Banker had ever bothered to notice was preposterous.
1951 Studebaker Champion with Automatic Drive / Fast Lane Classic Cars
Furthermore, Banker laid most of the blame for this alleged death toll specifically on Hydra-Matic, which is interesting given how widespread the NDLR/PNDLR shift pattern was by the mid-’50s. To the extent Banker acknowledged that other automakers used the same shift pattern, he implied that they had blindly followed GM’s lead, even though they had no good reason to. (Banker had a distorted idea of why Hydra-Matic adopted the NDLR shift pattern — because the explanation is technically involved, I’m not going to get into it here except to say that Banker’s contention that the early Hydra-Matic used the NDLR shift pattern because the transmission otherwise wouldn’t go into reverse was off-base, and it exposed his limited understanding of how Hydra-Matic actually worked.)
Studebaker Automatic Drive was built by Borg-Warner and shared the Hydra-Matic shift pattern, although the transmission was very different in layout and design / Fast Lane Classic Cars
Notably, Banker’s criticisms seldom seemed to land on Borg-Warner, although Borg-Warner also used the PNDLR pattern extensively in the ’50s and early ’60s. But, then, Borg-Warner was still paying Banker license fees on his Mono-Drive patents through 1957, while the money he had received from Yellow Coach in the ’30s had long since been spent. In Banker’s mind, Borg-Warner had properly respected his genius and GM had not, which made Hydra-Matic morally suspect on its face.
Banker’s “Little War” Against GM
At the SAE meeting in Detroit in January 1956, Banker attended a presentation by Kenneth Gage and P.J. Rhoads of Detroit Transmission Division about the new second-generation Controlled Coupling Hydra-Matic. During the Q&A segment, Banker stood up and proceeded to harangue Gage and Rhoads about why they had retained the familiar Hydra-Matic “booby trap” shift pattern for the new transmission.
Despite Oldsmobile marketing claims, the second-generation Hydra-Matic transmission (which Olds called Jetaway) was developed by Detroit Transmission Division, which made Hydra-Matic
Like nearly all of Banker’s statements on this subject, his question was prefaced by a lengthy diatribe about how he had developed the first practical automatic transmission. I don’t think this went over well at all: He was ranting at a room full of powertrain engineers, some of them veterans of long standing, about how he was really the originator of their work — a boast he then punctuated with unsubstantiated claims about the many fatalities allegedly caused by the NDLR/PNDLR shift pattern (which many of the other attendees were also using).
Since 1952, Hydra-Matic transmission had used two Drive ranges (which Oldsmobile labeled “Dr” and “S”); with the new model’s Park position, the Olds pattern was now PNDSLR
Gage and Rhoads replied that the new Hydra-Matic retained the existing shift pattern (although it now had a separate Park position, located to the left of Neutral) “to enable the vehicle to be rocked between low and reverse.” They added that with more than 7 million Hydra-Matic cars already on the road, Detroit Transmission Division felt it made little sense to change the now-familiar Hydra-Matic shift pattern.
Banker’s 1956 diatribe was prompted in part by his mistaken assumption that the second-generation Hydra-Matic transmission’s reverse cone clutch (pictured above right) was a new feature; it had actually been adopted in 1951
Banker repeated this performance at other presentations at the 1957 and 1958 SAE Detroit meetings, delivering a similar combination of boasts, accusations, and hyperbole. When Chevrolet adopted the PRNDL shift pattern for the 1958 Powerglide transmission, Banker took credit for the change, insisting that it was his impassioned speeches that had led Chevrolet engineers to finally do the right thing, rather than that they had wanted to make the Powerglide pattern more consistent with Turboglide, the stated rationale.
The Chevrolet Turboglide transmission had no low range; since its Grade Retarder (Gr) position couldn’t be used for rocking the car, Chevrolet separated it from Reverse on the shift quadrant / Bring a Trailer
This “little war,” as Banker characterized it, quickly made Banker an unpopular figure in Detroit. He lamented that people began to treat him like a leper, and his calls were no longer returned. At least two of Banker’s friends in the industry tried gently to convince him to give it a rest, but Banker took this to mean that many people secretly agreed with him and were just afraid to admit it, so he dug in his heels.
1957 Powerglide transmissions still had a PNDLR shift pattern, but Chevrolet adopted a PRNDL pattern for 1958 to limit confusion for driver switching between Powerglide and Turboglide cars / Bring a Trailer
When Detroit Transmission chief engineer Walter B. Herndon made his presentation about the third-generation Hydra-Matic at the SAE Detroit meeting in January 1961, Banker was there again, delivering his now-familiar diatribe and demanding to know why the latest Hydra-Matic still had the same shift pattern.
The third-generation Hydra-Matic was simplified and lighter than before, now with only three forward speeds (although some users misleadingly described it as a “four-stage” transmission)
Herndon gave him the same answers as always: The shift pattern facilitated rocking; it was familiar to Hydra-Matic customers; and after building over 10 million Hydra-Matic cars, Detroit Transmission had no intention of changing it.
1961 Oldsmobile Super 88 with third-generation Hydra-Matic, still with the familiar PNDSLR shift pattern / Bring a Trailer
Banker took this very badly, perhaps in part because it came from Walter Herndon — as Banker probably knew, Herndon had been part of Thompson’s transmission group back in the ’30s, and had been one of the architects of the original Hydra-Matic. In May 1961, Banker wrote an impassioned letter to GM president John F. Gordon, again claiming that he was “known among automotive engineers as the ‘father’ of automatic transmissions,” and ranting about the “very stubborn” GM engineers who refused to change the “unsafe” shift pattern out of what Banker insisted was nothing more than foolish pride. A week later Gordon replied, with bland patience:
The matter of the transmission shift sequence has been discussed on several occasions and we can assure you that the proponents of the two sequences currently used on our cars are equally vehement in their support of what they are now using. Both groups bring forth equally valid reasons for continuing their present practice and I use the term “equally valid” after discounting for such influences as “fatherly interest,” “engineering necessity,” etc.
After each review of the situation, our conclusion has been and very probably will continue to be that we will make no change in our present practice.
Oscar Banker, New York, and Ralph Nader
Outraged by Gordon’s response, Banker began a letter-writing campaign, reaching out to TV news producers and the editors of Reader’s Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, and various newspapers in hopes of drumming up a public scandal about the issue. The replies were dismissive, which he later insisted was because everyone was too terrified of offending GM. (He may have been at least half-right; I don’t imagine many magazine or newspaper editors were keen to risk clashing with General Motors over the rantings of an obvious crank.)
Nearly all (99.3 percent) of 1961 full-size Oldsmobiles used the new three-speed automatic / Bring a Trailer
However, Banker made enough noise that he was invited to come to Albany, New York, to testify before the New York Joint Legislative Committee on Motor Vehicles & Traffic Safety. (He later asserted, with customary modesty, “I was invited to express my views on shift pattern dangers out of respect to me as father of the automatic transmission.”) Afterwards, he made 300 copies of his testimony and mailed them to dozens of auto industry executives.
Oscar Banker testifying before the New York Joint Legislative Committee on Motor Vehicles & Traffic Safety, October 25, 1961
The committee then asked Banker to create a questionnaire to be distributed to New York City and state police to help identify accidents related to automatic transmission shift patterns. This questionnaire became perhaps the single most dishonest tactic of Banker’s one-man war on GM: He advised New York law enforcement officials that “if anyone stated that his accelerator froze while exiting a parking lot or trying to park, it simply was not true” and was in fact another incident of “the endlessly repeated pattern of the [transmission shift pattern] booby trap deadly accident.” It was incredibly specious, and it made any actual data gathered using his questionnaire of very little value. Nonetheless, the New York committee seemed to accept Banker’s advice and purported expertise at face value; I can only assume that their relationship with the auto industry was so adversarial that they weren’t deterred by his negative reputation in Detroit.
Ralph Nader testifying at U.S. Senate hearings on auto safety, 1966
In 1963, Banker also came to the attention of a young attorney named Ralph Nader, who was already becoming a public figure in the campaign for auto safety. Although Banker and Nader apparently never met in person, Nader wrote to him in early 1963, asking for more information about Banker’s complaints about GM transmissions, which Banker enthusiastically supplied. They corresponded again in 1965, and Nader included a condensation of Banker’s customary diatribe in his book Unsafe at Any Speed.
Grossman hardcover edition of Ralph Nader’s 1965 book
Ironically, although Unsafe at Any Speed greatly increased Banker’s visibility, Banker quickly regretted being associated with Nader. When he learned of Nader’s condemnation of the early Chevrolet Corvair, Banker became outraged, insisting that Nader’s charges were “a hoax” (they weren’t) and later lamenting (inaccurately), “I am known to many engineers and industrialists yet today as ‘the man who made Ralph Nader.’ I can never live down that charge, true or not. I will take it to my grave.”
GM Switches Gears — and Shift Patterns
In the late summer of 1963, Detroit Transmission Division (which was renamed Hydra-Matic Division on October 1) launched the new Turbo Hydra-Matic transmission, which would shortly replace the older second- and third-generation Hydra-Matic transmissions. Turbo Hydra-Matic finally abandoned the traditional Hydra-Matic shift pattern for a PRNDL/PRNDSL pattern. The older Hydra-Matic transmissions, which retained the PNDLR and PNDSLR patterns, remained in use through 1964, but they were on their way out.
The Riviera was one of the Buick and Cadillac models to switch to Turbo Hydra-Matic (which Buick called Super Turbine 400) for 1964 / Bring a Trailer
Inevitably, Banker insisted that this change was due to his efforts. (His memoir describes an alleged encounter with Chevrolet chief engineer Harry Barr at the 1963 SAE convention in Detroit in which Barr supposedly told him that Banker’s testimony to the New York traffic safety committee had made all the difference, but that anecdote was so improbable, and so factually and chronologically dubious, that I seriously doubt its veracity.) In a letter to Banker on December 28, 1963, Henry H. Wakeland, the automotive consultant for the New York committee, also credited Banker for GM having “apparently abandoned the Hydra-matic shift pattern.”
Console shifter on a 1964 Buick Riviera shows off the PRNDL shift pattern of the new Super Turbine 400 (Turbo Hydra-Matic) transmission / Bring a Trailer
I suspect the bigger concern for Detroit Transmission Division was that they were now in real danger of becoming the odd one out. By mid-1963, virtually all the low-priced makes had adopted PRND shift patterns, as had Lincoln; Buick would drop its PNDLR Turbine Drive and Dual Path Turbine Drive transmissions at the end of the 1963 model year. Detroit Transmission was probably still concerned about the collapse of their previous non-GM Hydra-Matic sales — the second-generation Hydra-Matic had proved too expensive, and the lighter, cheaper third-generation transmission hadn’t made any headway against Borg-Warner — and while returning customers might be familiar with the existing shift pattern, there was some risk of alienating new ones more accustomed to the PRNDL shift patterns used by other manufacturers.
Full-size Oldsmobile and Pontiac cars didn’t adopt Turbo Hydra-Matic until 1965 — this 1964 Grand Prix has the third-generation three-speed Hydra-Matic, sometimes called Roto Hydra-Matic / Bring a Trailer
It was a similar story at Chrysler, which also dropped its signature pushbutton transmission controls after 1964. As Car Life explained (January 1965), “Chrysler market analysts discovered that prospective buyers were shying away from the buttons, apparently due to a combination of their unfamiliarity and the difficulty of accepting the button as a power symbol.”
With Hydra-Matic, 1964 full-size Pontiac and Oldsmobile cars retained the PNDSLR shift pattern / Bring a Trailer
Contrary to popular belief, neither change had anything to do with the GSA federal fleet car regulations. The law that authorized the GSA to establish such rules wasn’t signed until August 30, 1964, by which time production of pushbutton Chrysler TorqueFlite and older GM Hydra-Matic transmissions had already wound down. The GSA didn’t issue the first draft of its regulations until January 26, 1965; they weren’t finalized until June 30, 1965, and they didn’t take effect until a year after that. By that time, the last PNDLR pattern in the domestic industry (on the Borg-Warner Flight-O-Matic offered on late Studebaker cars) had left the market anyway.
1964 was the last year for Chrysler pushbutton transmission controls, seen here in a 1964 Imperial LeBaron / Bring a Trailer
However, I think the GSA regulations were likely influenced by Banker’s testimony to the New York traffic safety committee. The requirements for automatic transmissions under Federal Standard No. 515/11 read like this:
- 53. Standard characteristics. The propressive [sic] sequence of the manual control mechanism shall be reverse drive position, neutral position, and forward drive position. Drive positions may have more than one, selector designation or position. Neutral shall be positioned between forward drive and reverse drive positions. In no case shall any forward drive be adjacent to any reverse drive position.
- 53.1 Low forward drive braking effect. When selected and engaged, the lowest forward drive position shall provide a braking effect upon deceleration and the transmission shall be so designed that automatic upshift through the transmission range is blocked effectively for all speeds and loads within the speed range up to and including 25 miles per hour.
- 53.2 Park position. The transmission manual control sequence mechanism may be provided with a park position. When so provided and engaged, it shall initiate a positive lock for the purpose of preventing the drive wheels of the vehicle from moving. Within the quadrant, the park position shall be located at the end of the sequence, adjacent to the reverse drive position.
Those rules only applied to cars (and trucks up to 10,000 lb GVW) purchased by the federal government for federal government use. However, the motor vehicle safety standards created under the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 — which applied to all cars and light trucks beginning January 1, 1968 — adopted basically the same requirements with slightly different wording.
Ford and Mercury automatics had used PRNDL (or PRND21) shift patterns since 1951, but those patterns became mandatory in 1968, just three months before this 1968 Mercury Cougar was built / Bring a Trailer
Given Banker’s supposed concern for the many innocent victims of the “booby trap” shift pattern, you’d think he would have been overjoyed at this outcome: From 1968 on, the “safe” shift pattern he’d advocated was actually required by federal law. However, Banker’s memoir barely mentions the federal regulations, and then only to complain that “today we are designing automobiles in Washington.”
1949 Cadillac Series 62 club coupe with Hydra-Matic / Bring a Trailer
Banker could have taken credit (reasonably, for once) for his role in bringing those regulations about, which might even have saved a few lives, but all he really seemed to care about was what he saw as his personal victory over the hated designers of Hydra-Matic, and over GM for their slights, real or imagined, of 30 years earlier.
Hydra-Matic quadrant on a 1949 Cadillac Series 62 / Bring a Trailer
I’m not at all convinced that the old NDLR/PNDLR shift pattern was ever as much of a hazard as Banker insisted, but there was no real downside to standardization, which was long overdue. Banker didn’t exactly bring that about, but the regulatory response he helped to provoke made sure the change stuck, which I suppose was a positive outcome.
Hydra-Matic was enormously popular with buyers despite its high cost ($200 on a 1949 Cadillac) — Detroit Transmission Division built more than 600,000 of them in 1949 alone / Old Car Manual Brochure Collection
However, given Banker’s endless hyperbole and relentless self-aggrandizement, I find it difficult to applaud him for it. It’s telling that today, Banker is far better known for his various false and misleading claims than for his actual accomplishments.
Related Reading
The World’s First Automatic Transmission – The 1904-1907 Sturtevant Automatic Automobile (by me)
Early Hydra-Matic Users: Many Non-GM Automakers Bought This Pioneering Automatic Transmission (by me)
Automotive History: The Mysterious Disappearance of the Chrysler Pushbutton Automatic – A Government Conspiracy? (by J P Cavanaugh)
Holy crap..I just googled this less than an hour ago. I was prompted by watching the latest episode of Vice Grip Garage on YouTube . He revived a dead 57 Chevy and I noticed it was P N D L R.
Turns out that was the final year for that pattern.
Noticed that Roger, didnt see the end tho NASCAR at Chicago interupted.
Noticed that too. Derek could of used the rocking motion in the soggy grass but I think he was low on transmission fluid.
I’m having trouble finding the (P)RNDL sequence to be any safer than (P)NDLR; if having to move through a forward gear to get to reverse constitutes an unsafe “booby trap”, then PRNDL just trades one booby-trap for another by forcing shift levers to move through reverse to get to a forward gear. If Banker was so worried about all those crazy women drivers panicking and jumping curves when unexpectedly landing in a forward gear when trying to back up, wouldn’t unexpectedly going backwards where you’re not looking send those ladies into an even greater panic? (Using buttons avoids both issues no matter how they’re laid out, though they’re nonetheless subject to FMVSS 102 today; the ’56 Imperial layout would be compliant as would the Edsel Teletouch, not sure about the later Chrysler or AMC pushbutton automatics since the separate Park control could be construed as not being at the end next to reverse. The Packard and Mercury pushbuttons would not comply as the N button isn’t between R and a forward drive, nor P at the end next to R). I find it curious that steering-column levers have to move clockwise through the sequence, but a lever on the dash or center console evidently would still be compliant if were arranged in opposite of the norm, effectively LDNRP.
I did not know the early Hydra-Matic could be push started/roll started. I still like having that option, which I’ve used a few times on my manual-transmission cars when the battery died. I recently looked into whether modern cars with dual-clutch automatic transmissions could be push-started since they operate similarly to manual transmissions, but it seems they cannot. I’ve also used rocking to free a car stuck in snow with both stick shifts and PRNDL automatics, and didn’t find having to move through neutral complicates things much. There is no need to move between forward and reverse quickly; the tires will generally not slide back into the center of the “pit” in the snow once you apply the brakes on the sloped surfaces on either side of the pit. It is crucial, however, to move your foot quickly to the brake before the car rolls back into the center of the pit so you preserve the progress you’ve made moving the car slightly forward and backward.
Yeah, that was what Ford and Chrysler concluded when they introduced Ford-O-Matic and PowerFlite in the early ’50s. Hydra-Matic was quite different from those transmissions in how it got neutral and reverse, but in 1951 and later four-speed units, the hydraulic controls would actually drop briefly into neutral when you selected reverse to help the cone clutch seat properly. It wouldn’t pass muster with FMVSS 102, but the transmission DID effectively put neutral between Low and Reverse, in sequence of operation if not in shift quadrant markings.
Most early automatics allowed push-starting, through about 1960 and sometimes beyond that. It comes down to whether or not the transmission has a rear oil pump or not; if not, it probably can’t be push-started because there’s no pressure to any of the transmission hydraulics.
We seem to be regressing in the area of control standardization. I rented a Jeep where you moved up and down in the gear sequence by moving a toggle switch, which always returns to the same (middle) place. I find this introduces some uncertainty, since the position of the lever therefore doesn’t signify any particular gear position. And then there are cars with knobs that rotate. Why all the different approaches?
The FMVSS 102 standard hasn’t been updated since 2004, so there are a bunch of modern additions that weren’t anticipated at the time. I agree that it’s potentially very confusing, and I’m leery of layouts where there’s no tactile feedback or easy way to tell what gear range you’ve got.
Many stipulations in FMVSS 102 that don’t seem to have anticipated various modern technologies involve hybrids or EVs – there are several mentions of how transmissions, ignition, starters, and engines must behave even though some new cars have none of the above. A car with two or more forward speeds must have a selectable shifter position that applies engine braking. I’m not sure how the Porsche Taycon (which is a 2-speed) handles that.
The lighting specifications are getting obsolete too. When an EV is set for max-regeneration one pedal driving, if you lift your foot off the accelerator the car will instantly slow down considerably. But the brake lights may not turn on to warn the driver behind you, because you’re not stepping on the brake pedal which is the only time the brake lights are legally required to illuminate.
This comment got me curious, as your point of “quickly Decelerating” DID sound dangerous. However, when I looked it up “briefly”, they DO indeed have the brake light come on during “Quick Decel”. Not sure if they ALL do, but it does seem like ‘someone’ thought about it. I wonder if there is a standard for “Brake light requirement for EV Rapid deceleration”.
Now, THAT makes me think, it would be safer than someone in a “Normal Car” just downshifting (decelerating Rapidly), you KNOW there’s no brake lights coming on “to warn driver behind you” (unless brake pedal is activated, obviously).
There are some who blame the death of Anton Yelchin, Chekov in the Star Trek reboots, on this arrangement. His Jeep backed over him and pinned him against a wall while he was at his mailbox,
I concur, I don’t like these setups either. The conventional lever gives you a visual reference if it’s not in Park. Also, when I was sentenced to a year in Canada during Covid, I had a brief stint at Enterprise Rent-a-Car. I went to park one of our BMW SUVs, and for the life of me couldn’t figure out how to get it in gear. Made me feel very old.
I grew up watching reruns of Green Acres. My brothers and I had a long-running joke about the PRNDL on our dad’s car, inspired by Lisa Douglas (played by Eva Gabor). I found a short clip of it here:
Incidentally, even as a kid I recall recognizing that nearly all of the cars featured on the show were products of Ford Motor Co, from the Douglas’ Continental to Mr. Kimball’s Bronco.
What a great tale, and it may be that the inventor’s surname is rhyming slang in relation to that which he claimed.
That said, there is an ordure that lingers somewhere about this story, which wouldn’t hang about except for the monolithic GM’s actual attempts to destroy Nader in the ’60’s.
I’m sure I’ll not be the only reader who has come across some wild and disbelieved story that has later been proved to be resolutely true (and in my case, for shame, it was in my professional capacity). I also had an engineer friend who, before Dieselgate, insisted their very sprightly Golf Tdi was “no way” clean….
Whatever the prindle virtues (or otherwise), we’ve surely got to peak can’t-concentrate-must-constantly-change teenage-mentality fuckwittery with the wholesale variations now sold, not one of which improve things, and any one of which raises the level of risk.
Rhyming slang……..wanker?
Just a side note:
When renting cars in Europe, I have noted the shift pattern is PRNDL or something similar. However, the letters translate to the English language; not Polish, not Czech, not German.
Noted the same with air bags. Either the imprint on the steering wheel or passenger bag is either “Air Bag” or “SRS” for Supplemental Restraint System.
Does any one know if it’s similar in Russia or Asia?
I have a feeling it follows the Euro pattern which follows the English language.
Outside North America, stuff like that is typically covered by the UN ECE regulations, which cover type approval for motor vehicles. (The ECE regulations were originally for Europe, but a lot of other countries have since accepted them.) I am not terribly familiar with those, but the English lettering is probably stipulated. Japan also usually uses English, with romaji characters, for major controls, although secondary or optional equipment like navigation systems doesn’t necessarily, which can make for a fun time if you can’t read a lot of Japanese.
It’s not absolutely clear that it originated with him, but Winston Churchill is supposed to have defined a fanatic as “one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/01/fanatic/
I like the design of that 1940 Oldsmobile steering wheel hub.
Thank you for this detailed history – for some reason I’d assumed that standardizing automatic shift patters happened more through a gentleman’s agreement among carmakers after a relative of an industry executive chose the wrong gear once and had a minor accident. Turns out it was much more involved than that, and Oscar Banker’s role in this long ordeal is truly fascinating.
This got me thinking, though: I wonder if there was similar drama in standardizing the “H” pattern for standard transmissions? I’d assume in the early years, there were many varieties of shift patterns, but eventually they largely became standardized (i.e., the H pattern, and moving the gear selector in a specific dimension). I’d never thought about that before.
The argument that forward gear should be right next to reverse to allow “rocking” out of snow or mud is kind of ridiculous when you think of it. Heretofore if one wanted to “rock” a manual transmission car, one *had* to go through neutral in between – that’s just how manual transmissions work!
From my recollection, most owners’ manuals implore the driver to come to a complete stop before switching directions. I believe not doing so is bad for the durability of the transmission.
General Motors was a very arrogant company. It wouldn’t be difficult to believe that someone employed there would have said “we invented the automatic transmission, and NDLR is what we decided was the correct order, and therefore it IS the correct order”.
It really depends on how the transmission is designed. GM WANTED to facilitate rocking, and went to a fair bit of trouble to do so. Also, the Hydra-Matic family doesn’t work like a THM or TorqueFlite, and how it gets reverse and neutral is quite a bit different.
Sure, but there’s also a reasonable argument that changing a control layout millions of customers are already familiar with is troublesome. Look at the reaction when a popular software program like Microsoft Word moves the controls around.
My early automatic experience was all on PRNDL cars, so the first time I drove a H-M it was a bit odd.
The early Corvette used a reverse version of the early PG pattern, with an RLPND pattern on its floor shifter.
I can’t recall which models, but I’m pretty sure some of the early Mercedes-Benz automatic transmissions used this reverse shift pattern as well, but Neutral was between Forward and Reverse.
Here’s a 230SL
Old “Simpsons” reference: “Put it in ‘H’ !’.
As I recall, early powerglides could be push started. I believe you had to get them up to 35 mph before dropping into gear. Now thats some fast pushing! It was an exciting process. Studebaker hung on to the old PNDLR arrangement until their demise in 1966. Must have been the last user of it – but technically was an import then.
Another outstanding piece, by far the most pleasant read of the day, if not the week.
Seems to be a Banker in every generation to deal with.
At last a very thorough and interesting article on this subject – thank you.
In the October 1958 issue of Motor Trend, road testers of the new 1959 Buick cautioned: “The shift indicator has vertical markings this year, and for goodness sake be careful if you change from a Twin Turbine to a Triple Turbine and back again. The patterns are almost backward, and on Triple jobs you pass through REVERSE after leaving PARK. Check your indicator before flooring the throttle or you could just find yourself backing, when you expected to make a flashy departure.” If there were two differently equipped Buicks in the garage I imagine the more likely problem would be pulling the shifter all the way down expecting to reverse and ending up driving forward.
As a kid during this era, I was always fascinated by the different automatic shift quadrant designs – and methods of starting the car: For example, our 1950 Nash Ambassador with Hydra-Matic was started by turning the key to ON and pulling back on the shift lever to engage the starter. On our 1953 Nash Statesman with manual you turned the key to ON and pushed on the clutch pedal that had a little metal extension attached to it that engaged the starter button on the floor. There was so much difference in controls among different makes, models, and options that drivers really had to pay attention. No wonder there was a movement for standardization. It seems like now we’ve come full circle again.
Rocking is important in snow. I’ve done it with both patterns, and it’s just as easy both ways. R to N to D is fine; it doesn’t need L.
Many good inventors waste their money and lives on suing and revenge. Edwin Armstrong, who invented FM and superhet radio, turned to suing in later years and messed up his previously spendid reputation.
Generally not, no, but on an early Hydra-Matic, it was convenient to place R next to Lo because of the way Hydra-Matic got reverse. When you moved the lever back and forth from Lo to R, the front band remained engaged, so you were basically alternating between the rear band (in Lo) and the reverse anchor (in R), and it didn’t cut off power to the fluid coupling. (In a Hydra-Matic, the fluid coupling is no longer driven in neutral except by a bit of frictional drag torque, so at normal idle/fast-idle speed, it more or less stops rotating; it’s not like later automatics where the converter pump keeps turning at engine speed regardless.)
Fascinating article, thanks Aaron. Didn’t know market research was the reason behind Chrysler dropping their push-button shifter, though it’s interesting to note Dodge dropped the push buttons on the pickup trucks some years earlier. Perhaps having a shift lever was more ‘rugged’. Early TorqueFlites also had a rear pump, in addition to providing a means to push-start the vehicle the rear pump also acted as a hydraulic governor to control upshifts.
Yes, most if not all early U.S. automatics had both front and rear pumps, with the rear typically integrated in some way with the governor. Starting in the early ’60s, the rear pumps began to disappear in the interests of reducing the weight and external size of the transmission (and of course cost), I think with the assumption that people were now more likely to deal with a stalled car by getting a jump start than by push-starting.
Very interesting, but sadly, modern cars have all sorts of silly ideas as to automatic transmission controls.
The old PRNDL may or may not have been ideal, but it became ingrained in several generations of drivers.
When we lend my wife’s Infiniti to someone, we have to teach them how to get into Reverse and Drive, how to hit Park, and how to shift up/down manually (we live much of the year in the Rockies, transmission braking is important). Prior cars were easy… everyone knew PRNDL, controlled intuitively by one lever instead of three (I’m counting shift paddles… ridiculous on a CUV). Heck, I couldn’t get it into Neutral in a car wash; now I’ve read the owner’s manual on how to do so… the first time required in fifty years of driving!
I risk picking on Infiniti alone, it’s just the most familiar. I’ve driven similar silliness in Audis and Bimmers, GM cars with pushbutton in strange places, and knobs in various cars. Inanity abounds!
I miss the easy availability of manual transmissions in new cars, but cringe at what craziness in shift patterns might result if monkeyed with by the same knotheads handling automatic interfaces.
One of many reasons I keep driving my 2010 Infiniti G37 (bought new 15 years ago next month – best car I’ve ever owned) is the simplicity of the controls, especially the shifter. Note the simple knobs for the seat heaters. My late friend who bought a new Audi A4 a a few years later did not know she had seat heaters for over a year because the controls were hidden inside layers of menu choices in the touch screen’s control system.
That’s a great car… I had an ’07 G35S, the first year of that generation, and later a ’17 QX50, which was a slightly updated wagon version. Both great. Sadly, the QX was totaled when a 92-year old guy in a Town Car ran a red light and t-boned me.
The QX was my first (and so far only) daily driver with an automatic, and it was a good one. Is yours the 7-speed as well?
I had a 61 Austin A110 Westminster automatic with the push start feature it had a BW DG trans 2nd gear startoff unless D1 was selected, seemed work ok it also had a variable shift pattern with 2nd useable up to 80mph instead of the normal 48mph 2nd-3rd shift at WOT, I owned a 63 Holden with hydramatic 3 speed auto that had the old shift pattern the pattern changed to PRDL in 65 on those when powerglides became the auto trans for those cars, current car has a Japanese transmission with a now normal pattern, works great.
I fairly recently heard that the early Hydramatics had a de facto Park position when the shift lever was placed in reverse with the engine off. Our family had a 1953 Pontiac with Hydramatic for seven years and my parents never knew of this. In fact, they admired a neighbors Buick because it had a Park position. I don’t think this was ever addressed in the owner’s manual or advertised at all. Wonder why.
I think this instruction was in some GM manuals. My aunt bought a new 55 Oldsmobile Holiday hardtop with Hydra-Matic. I remember riding in it many times. When she parked she always pulled the shift lever all the way down to Reverse and then turned off the ignition. She also engaged the parking brake that had a red indicator ‘on light.’ Good driver, the aunt.
Yes, up till 1955 you could effectively lock the transmission by putting it in R, which engaged the pawl as long as the car was stopped. (How this was used differed depending on the year; prior to 1951, it was the same anchor used for reverse, from 1951 to 1955 it was strictly a parking lock.) This WAS mentioned in the owner’s manual, but that presupposed people read the owner’s manual, which was a risky assumption. The 1956 second-generation Hydra-Matic had basically the same parking lock mechanism as the 1951–1955 transmission, but it got its own position on the quadrant.
My parents drove strictly Ford products before my dad bought his first Cadillac in 1968. If I recall correctly, the drive positions for the Ford C-6 in 1965 and 1966 were different from those used on the GM THM-400.
Didn’t the first drive position after neutral start in 2nd gear and shift to 3rd gear, completely bypassing 1st gear altogether? I think the rationale was less spinning of the wheels in snow and ice. The “normal” position on the Ford Cruise-O-Matic, if one wanted to utilize all 3 forward speeds was the second drive position after neutral, which had a larger indicator circle on the column shift selector.
My parents drove a 1965 Thunderbird and a 1966 Thunderbird before dad made the big switch to GM. I recall my mom having difficulty distinguishing between the shift patterns for the Thunderbird and when she drove the Cadillac (on rare occasions) she drove it with the indicator in what was the normal Ford “drive” position. On those occasions I remember the 1-2 shift on the THM to be very harsh compared to the 1-2 shift in the normal “3-speed Drive” position, which was a silky-smooth shift. There was never the 2-3 shift, for obvious reasons, and the engine was obviously running at a higher RPM than when dad drove the car.
The 66 T-bird was traded-in 1970, six months before I got my driver’s license, so this is going back through cobwebs dating back 57 to 60 years. Does anybody else remember the Ford transmission shift pattern from this era or have the cobwebs clouded-over my thinking?
My Dad had a 1966 Galaxy 500 as a company car and the automatic transmission came with two (2) “Drive” positions, “Drive” and “Drive 1”, besides the “2” and “1” lower gear positions. “Drive 1”, IIRC, would engage an overdrive gear in cruise, while Drive would prevent the car from engaging the overdrive once it shifted into third gear. Drive 1 was selected by a green dot on the shift quadrant, while Drive used a white dot, as did Park, Reverse, 2 and 1. One time my Dad had Mom drive the car home for some reason, and there was an issue with the transmission. He told her not to use “Drive 1” but only the Drive position, until he could get the car back to the dealer for repair, as apparently, the car wouldn’t shift at all while in “Drive 1”. It was a good thing, because Mom always selected the green dot “Drive 1” position whenever she drove the car, because she had no idea about the two (2) separate drive modes until Dad showed them to her on the shift quadrant!
No automatic of the ’60s had overdrive. Smudgepot’s recollection is correct: The dual drive ranges in a Cruise-O-Matic of that vintage determined whether the car would start in first (D1) or second (D2). The idea of starting in second was that it gave a gentler launch and was less likely to spin the wheels on slippery surfaces.
On a TH400, starting in 2 would either delay or prevent an upshift to third, and it would engage the brake bands in first and second, whereas in D, all shifts were between an overrunning clutch and a multi-disc clutch, which was close to seamless.
Now perhaps most people today driving autos just leave it in D. But what about going down steep hills? I’ve been known to crank it down 2 or 3 notches at times. Seems having reverse at the very bottom is not a good idea, just ergonomically speaking, I mean on a super steep hill are you really counting what gear you’re in? Probably not great for safety, but not a huge issue I suspect.
I did have some friends, long, long ago, who accidentally shifted into reverse at speed on the highway. A Chevy II IIRC. Like I said, long ago. Powerglide? Did it have R at the bottom? Who knows. I was told the tranny was undamaged, but they broke a piston. Seemed crazy to me, they were not car people so who really knows, but they were very sure that’s what happened. Or at least what they were told, as I said, they were not car people.
Only for a few years, but I have lived in snow country. I did get stuck 3 times, a total of ~30 feet, but rocking would have done no good at all. It was a 3 pedal car, but I can go pretty fast between 1 and R. But it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. I’m sure it’s happened, but rarely I suspect that it would have done any good. Today especially as few can even change a flat, how many are going to be able to rock a car back and forth?
With Dual-Range and Controlled Coupling Hydra-Matic transmissions, the transmission wouldn’t allow the selection of reverse if you were moving faster than rock-the-car-out-of-snow speed: Governor pressure would block the selector motion, so there was little chance of getting reverse instead of D3 or L.
Don’t know exactly how they hit reverse, just that they said they did. And this was a long time ago, early ’70’s, so even my details may be weak, let alone theirs at the time since they were not car people.
I came across a shift quadrant on an old Chrysler that I’d never seen before. Unfortunately, I was pressed for time and didn’t get further details on the car. I can’t tell you what year or model of Chrysler other than I remember it as a pre-55 model. Maybe someone else can identify the transmission.
I believe that Studebaker was the last US-branded car that used PNDLR, which they kept through the bitter end in mid 1966. Of course, they were all manufactured in Canada by then.
I got to experience the confusion between different quadrants. In the late 70s I owned an old Cadillac with the Jetaway HM (and R at the bottom). One day I was driving a newer car at work and had to quickly back out of a parking spot to avoid traffic. My reflexes chose L instead of the intended R. Fortunately I didn’t hit anything.
Oscar Banker tells you all you need to know about “experts” in legal proceedings. Guys like him are in the minority, but they are plentiful enough to be found when one of their opinions is what you need.
That’s pretty interesting. Baker seems like. a brilliant man who just let his pride get the best of him when things didn’t go his way – instead of letting it go and working on a new project. The lack of standardization definitely seems like more of an issue to me than any real problem with a (P)NDLR pattern. It’s pretty amazing how much, and for how long, Baker played the issue up. That said, we seem to be going backwards again with some of the oddball shifters and patterns – most in more upscale or sports cars, but not only those (I’m looking at you, Prius).
The thing about rocking in the snow made me think: there’s not a huge difference in the time to select a gear, but if I’m understanding this, some of the older designs allowed for immediate engagement. Also, I wonder if that minimized the potential for transmission damage; a lot of transmissions have been damaged or destroyed because of revving the engine before the transmission is actually engaged (especially if done repeatedly). I do have to deal with snow a lot, and I’m pretty careful about not abusing the transmission. Sometimes using the brakes to hold while you shift helps too.
I also have to note Mercedes contribution (I think it originated with them) of the gated zig-zag shifter in the center. I’ve always liked it over the console shifter with a push-button lock or especially column shift, and it was copied extensively for a while. Also Mercedes was one of the last to abandon the ability to pull-start – I think ’89 was the last year of that. I’m not sure why they held onto it so long. It does give old Mercedes diesels the rare ability to be started with no electrical power whatsoever.
I really appreciated this story, was unaware of Banker and the story behind the shift patterns. Having drove early Hydramatics as well as newer one’s, I never felt like there was any safety issue with either pattern. Some comments, Banker accused Nader of a hoax, regarding the Corvair, I wouldn’t call it a hoax, but I would say Nader was largely mistaken. When the NHTSA completed their extensive testing of the early Corvair as well as it’s contemporaries, the conclusion was that the Corvair was as safe as any other car in that era. Chevrolet improved the suspension as time went on, but that didn’t mean the first Corvair was the death trap as Nader conjectured. To continue on safety issues, I have some major problems, one is that when the manufacturer’s removed the left hand threads for lug nuts on vehicles, this did in fact cause many wheels to come off and many fatalities were the result. Check out “Fatalites from Wheels Coming Off” Take a look at U Tube video’s of wheels coming off, it’s almost always the left side. The other issue is the mandate of Ethanol blend gas, many fatalities are from vehicle fires, and many of these fires result from ethanol blends degrading the fuel lines to cause leaks. RV’s are a big problem, running the generators during night time sleeping, the hoses can leak and the RV burns up. Check out the statistics. In my opinion thousands of lives lost because of ethanol in fuel, and RH lug nuts on the left causing the wheels to come off.
I rarely drive automatics and have never driven a column shift, I find floor shift automatics counter intuitive, why is reverse the first gear after park, and why pull back to go forwards?
Eric 703 is there really a standardised pattern for manual transmissions? With anything from 3-6 forward gears and reverse being one any of the 4 corners. With a Citroen 2CV or the ZF gearbox favoured by certain makers first and reverse were opposite each other supposedly to make parking easier, not rocking in snow. Some Fords and VWs had reverse top left next to first and with linkages so imprecise that you only knew which direction you were going when you let the clutch out – gingerly.
Thanks Aaron! A great read, and much appreciated.