<VV>Economy in 1959 NO CORVAIR

[Jim Burkhard]

Dad (& VV) -

You should be psyched to see the big wave of GM (some co-developed 
with Ford) 6-speed slushboxes headed your way soon. Sadly, I don't 
think there are any announced plans for a dual-clutch robotized 
standard transmission -- the *real* way to do an automagic for 
performance oriented folks.

http://www.gm.com/company/gmability/adv_tech/100_news/hybrid_092004.html
http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2005/08/25/141299.html
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3165/is_3_39/ai_99101951

Pretty shifty, but I'm not secure enough to let something do my 
shifting for me. Continue making mine a manual....

Jim


FrankCB at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 4/26/2006 9:28:39 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
> pp2 at 6007.us writes:
> 
>     Ford had had the three speed cruise-o-matic since
>     the early fifties (small cars got the 2-speed Ford-o-matic) and
>     Chysler was
>     just changing over from the Power-Flyte 2 speed to the three speed
>     Torque-Flyte (1957 into)- 
> 
>     One of the main reasons I bought a 1958 Plymouth with 3 spd 
> Torqueflite over an equivalent Chevy was the 3 speed automatic.  GM 
> always was one speed behind in their automatics compared to the 
> competition!  The Chevy Beretta my wife got in 1988 had only 3 speeds 
> while the competition had 4 speeds.  That's one reason why my 4 speed 
> TranSport MINIVAN gets better highway mileage than the much smaller 
> engine/body Beretta--1800 rpm at 60 mph.
>     Frank "likes big engines cruising at LOW rpm" Burkhard