Ford introduced the Fordomatic automatic transmission in 1951, and its sound basic design served the company well for years.
You’ll notice we dropped a qualifier into the title of this story: first successful automatic transmission. In 1942, the Ford Motor Company had introduced Liquamatic for the Mercury and Lincoln brands, but it proved to be a failure and was quickly withdrawn from the market. (See our feature here.) In 1949, the Lincoln division offered an automatic transmission, but this was a Hydra-Matic supplied by General Motors. Not until 1951 did Ford offer an automatic of its own design and manufacture—sort of, as Borg-Warner had a lot to do with it.
Ford director of engineering Harold Youngren was an auto industry veteran who’d served as chief engineer at Borg-Warner before Ernie Breech, Henry Ford II’s second in command, brought him to Ford in 1946. Quickly recognizing that Ford’s pending automatic design, the Livermore ALT developed by the Detroit Gear division of B-W, was already obsolete, Youngren urged the company to acquire a more modern transmission from Detroit Gear.
However, Studebaker already held the rights to the rather sophisticated unit, so Ford contracted B-W’s Warner division to create a more streamlined design, and this became the 1951 Fordomatic (also rendered as Ford-O-Matic). Under their original agreement, Borg-Warner was to produce 50 percent of the units, while Ford produced the other half, constructing a giant plant in Fairfax, Ohio for the purpose.
Unlike the Studebaker/Detroit Gear automatic, Fordomatic was simplicity itself. While Studebaker used two planetary gearsets and the GM Hydra-Matic had three, Fordomatic incorporated a unified compound gearset with one carrier and two sun gears, one inside the other. This Ravigneaux gearset (patented by French engineer Pol Ravigneaux) could supply three forward gears by alternately holding the two sun gears.
The simple three-element torque converter dispensed with the lockup feature of the Detroit Gear unit, and the electro-hydraulic anti-creep function was eliminated as well. Additionally, the six-cylinder version of the Fordomatic was air-cooled. There was no vacuum modulator as with the Chevrolet Powerglide—hydraulic control pressure was regulated by the throttle valve and linkage.
Fordomatic introduced another familiar feature to the automotive world: the PRNDL. Previous automatic gear selectors had no integrated Park selection, or reverse was at the bottom of the pattern. Here Ford established the industry standard. While Fordomatic had three forward gears, it started in second gear in normal operation. To use first gear, the driver selected L for low on the “Semaphore Drive Selector,” as Ford called it, on the steering column. A throttle kickdown feature forced a third-to-second downshift when the gas pedal was mashed at speeds below 50 mph.
Simultaneously with Fordomatic in 1951, the Mercury division introduced Merc-O-Matic (same transmission, different branding). For 1955, Lincoln dropped the GM Hydra-Matic and adopted a beefed-up Fordomatic marketed as Turbo-Drive. Meanwhile, in 1956 Studebaker dropped its version of the B-W automatic in favor of the less expensive Ford/B-W design, labeled Flight-o-Matic. In 1958, Ford introduced a refined, dual-range version of the Fordomatic called Cruise-O-Matic, with a green dot on the selector to indicate the normal range. Through steady evolution, Cruise-O-Matic begat Ford’s FX, which begat the MX, FMX, and AOD transmissions, remaining in production through 1993.
I never knew Ford initiated the “Park” feature. I have to disagree, our 1950 Packard Ultramatic had a “Park” feature, that came out in 1949. I believe “Park” on a Hydra-Matic was reverse when not running(?) The Ultramatic rarely gets any accolades, and was the 2nd fully automatic offered in the US behind the Hyrda-Matic. Regardless, it and power steering dramatically changed the automotive scene, namely, for the ladies. Car makers knew that after the war, they were missing a huge segment of car buyers, and the automatic transmission changed all that. In fact, following classic car sales today, sellers can’t give away wonderful cars with manual transmissions. A stick to a potential buyer today, is an instant turnoff, 4 speed Chevelles, the exception.
Operative word here is or. On the Ultramatic, reverse was at the bottom of the selector. I agree it’s an underrated transmission. Thanks as always, Howard. -McG
The “2 speed illusion”- Harold T. Youngren served as Chief Engineer for Oldsmobile division from 1933 to 1944. When other GM divisions passed on Hydramatic, Mr. Youngren volunteered Oldsmobile.
In 1944 Borg-Warner poached Mr. Youngren from GM specifically for his Hydramatic expertise. Earnest Breech then poached Mr. Youngren from BW in 1946. Ford tried to develope it’s own postwar fluid drive (code name 7000?) but realized it would never be ready by 1950-51, so Ford and BW built the Ford-O-Matic together to save time…
Things never change, when Ford realized the fluid drive project was a multi-million dollar disaster that would miss the 1949 product deadline, they swallowed their pride forming a desperate partnership deal with B-W, the supplier they were originally trying to cut out.
Breech poaching Youngren to save Ford from losing millions of customers to GM’s automatic is the historical equivalent of modern tech giants buying out entire startups just to acquire three engineers before a product launch window closes.
Indeed, documenting the Detroit automatic transmission patent wars would be a fascinating lifelong study. While the layman might think of a patent as a tool to protect a brilliant invention, the 1940s American automotive industry used a legal strategy called “patent crowding,” or defensive patenting to you prelaw students. The goal was not just to build their own automatic transmission, but to blanket every mathematical and mechanical variation of a fluid torque converter and gear set with patents so that any competitor attempting to design their own would inevitably commit patent infringements…
GM filed hundreds of micro-patents on stator blade angles, curvature geometry, hydraulic pressure valve paths, one-way overrunning rollers, servos, etc., back then. GM’s wall of patents forced a financial choice for postwar Ford behind 3 curtains:
Curtain #1: Spend years and years and millions in legal fees trying to prove your transmission did not breach any GM patent.
Curtain #2: Slink over to GM and pay them massive licensing royalties to use their tech.
Curtain #3: Abandon your failed fluid drive project entirely and pay a third party like Borg-Warner to take on all patent liability for you.
Ford selected Curtain #3.
GM sued Packard for Ultramatic and lost.
GM didn’t need to waste a single penny on transmission patent litigation with Packard. Trying to avoid those GM patents with Ultramatic, and it’s stratospheric warranty costs effectively bankrupted Packard anyway…
Oops, forgot the links-
Source: Packard Proving Grounds Historic Site https://share.google/pfifBFCOZtTWYAhbN
https://over-drive-magazine.com/2022/12/20/packards-ultramatic-transmission/
I’ve heard when racing you could start in low shift to drive for 2nd put back to low again and go back to drive for 3rd.
That is correct. You start out in low, shift to D to get to second and pull shifter back to low. That holds the transmission in second for as long as you want. You shift to third by simply moving selector back to D.
You can shift to low from D to move the transmission back to second, to slow the car for example on a hill.
Be careful about leaving it in low when the speed drops below 30 as the transmission will automatically downshift to low with an abrupt jolt at 15 to 20 mph.
You forgot the AOD & 4R70W. Both are descendants from the original B/W-Ford unit. The 4R70W was around until the mid 2000’s.
I included the AOD but not the 4R70 because the latter is full electronic shifting via PCM, and that was pushing the matter too far.
I meant AOD-E….my mistake.
Yes, the AOD-E and 4R70W are electronic shifting via the PCM. I guess my point was that the updated design actually made it into the 2000’s. Fairly impressive for a design put into service 50 plus years prior.
Final words….thanks for all you do here. Big fan.