Ford FMX transmission
| Ford "X" Transmission | |
|---|---|
| Overview | |
| Manufacturer | Ford Motor Company |
| Also called | Ford-O-Matic Cruise-O-Matic Merc-O-Matic |
| Production | 1958-1981 |
| Body and chassis | |
| Class | 3-speed automatic transmission |
| Related |
C-4/C-5 C-6 C-3 |
| Chronology | |
| Successor | AOD |
Ford-O-Matic was the first automatic transmission widely used by Ford Motor Company. It was designed by the Warner Gear division of Borg Warner Corporation and introduced in 1951 model year cars. In contrast to Detroit Gear Division's three band automatic originally designed for Studebaker which became superseded by this unit, a variation of Warner Gear's three-speed unit named Ford-O-Matic continued to evolve later into Cruise-O-Matic named transmissions in 1958 and finally the FMX named transmissions in 1968. This line continued in production until 1980, when the AOD was introduced. Like Ford, variations of this same Borg Warner design were used by other automobile manufacturers as well, such as AMC, International Harvester, Studebaker, Volvo and Jaguar, each of them having the necessary unique adaptations required for the individual applications.
In 1948, Ford realized it was late in introducing a fully automatic transmission to its automobile lineup. Ford Engineering Vice President Harold Youngren, recently hired away from Borg-Warner, recommended that Ford license and build a transmission using a design he was working on at his previous employer. Ford and Borg-Warner signed a contract in 1948 which entered B-W into a supply agreement wherein they would build half of Ford's transmissions for five years, with the other half either being built by Ford or by a different supplier. Because of this agreement, Ford licensed the design themselves and broke ground immediately on an assembly plant to build the remaining transmissions. The new plant, called Fairfax Transmission Plant, was dedicated in 1950. The original Ford-O-Matic accomplished two things that Ford's two previous automatic transmissions failed to do. Through the use of an integrated torque converter and planetary gearset, Ford's automatic shifted smoothly without an interruption in torque from the engine. The other was the shifting pattern, revised from PNDLR to PRNDL, which served to reduce "shift shock" when changing gears and reduce "torque shock" when trying to rock a stuck car back and forth. The original Ford-O-Matic, while capable of three forward speeds, started out in second and shifted to third, with first only being used when selecting L on the gear shift column. However, if floored from a standing start, it would immediately shift from second to low then shift back to second and then third as the vehicle accelerated. The Ford-O-Matic was manufactured from 1951 until it was replaced by the C4 in 1964.
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