![]() Oldsmobile offered the AST from 1937-1939, while Buick offered it only in 1938. The AST was a semi-automatic transmission using planetary gears and conventional friction clutch, requiring the driver to use the clutch to shift into or out of gear, but not between the two forward gears. The Automatic Safety Transmission (AST) was a tangent outgrowth of this work. This same group of engineers was then moved into the General Motors Research Laboratory, building pilot transmission units during 1935-36 which were then handed to Oldsmobile for testing. During 1934, the Cadillac transmission group had developed a step-ratio gearbox that would shift automatically under full torque. ![]() Ĭadillac, under Thompson, began working on a 'shiftless' transmission in 1932, and a new department within Cadillac Engineering was created, headed by Thompson and including engineers Ernest Seaholm, Ed Cole, Owen Nacker, and Oliver Kelley. ![]() Thompson and introduced in the Autumn of 1928. The exception here was Cadillac's break-through synchromesh fully synchronized manual transmission, designed by Cadillac engineer Earl A. At the time, synchronized gear shifting was still a novelty (and confined to higher gears in most cases), and shifting a manual gearbox required more effort than most drivers cared to exert. Introduced in 1939 for the 1940 model year vehicles, the Hydramatic was the first mass-produced fully-automatic transmission developed for passenger automobile use.ĭuring the 1930s, automakers sought to reduce or eliminate the need to shift gears. Hydramatic (also known as Hydra-Matic) is an automatic transmission developed by both General Motors' Cadillac and Oldsmobile divisions. JSTOR ( April 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Ī Hydra-Matic Drive transmission, produced between 19, on display at the Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum.Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification.
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