Re: Ultramatic by Borg-Warner?

Posted by 58L8134 On 2015/1/1 16:19:04

Hi Steve203

My read of the situation with Borg-Warner offering to take over the Ultramatic tooling, becoming their transmission supplier was the second prong of a two-tier approach for S-P business. Detroit Gear produced the Automatic Drive for Studebaker only, concurrent to the Warner Gear Ford-O-Matic production. Without actual sales numbers to compare, its still easy enough to conclude Borg-Warner was trying to consolidate all their production on the higher volume units.

From Studebaker's highest calendar year 1950 of 268,099 cars, by the time of these negotiation after the dismal 85,660 1954's, B-W was justified trying to get S-P to consolidate on the higher volume/lower unit cost transmission. Studebaker did just that for 1956, substituted the Warner Gear Flight-O-Matic for Automatic Drive. Functionally, it probably was inferior to Automatic Drive but for most buyers the difference was transparent. The price hike was simply an inducement to get them to accept the more popular unit. B-W then shipped the Automatic Drive tooling off to England where their operation manufactured it for use in Jaguars.

The same gambit was being tried on the Packard-Clipper Division, B-W had developed a heavier duty version of the basic Ford-O-Matic, named Turbo-Drive which took the place of Hydramatic in the 1955 Lincoln. After some initial teething problems, it developed into a serviceable unit used in Lincolns into the 1960's. As Lincoln's volume ranged around 25K-30K units annually, the addition of Packard and Clippers business would have made it a more cost-affective propositon. The logic ran that a transmission capable of handling the torque of a Lincoln 341/368 would also be adequate for a Packard 320/352/374.

Whether Packard was making any money producing its Ultramatic transmission is debatable. To sell cars in that segment, it had to have an automatic but whether it had to be of their own manufacture is the question. Most buyers had no idea who made the automatic transmission in their car, only cared if it worked properly and dependably.

Nance may well have been wary of getting into the same situation for automatic tranmissions as they had been for bodies. But, unlike the dependence on Briggs-Chryslers which had developed into a less-than-desirable situation, B-W as an industry transmission supplier had no valid reason to cut off supplies capriciously. They gladly built all there was demand for by Ford and AMC.....and Studebaker......and Packard if they could have.

I'll let others debate the relative operational merits of each transmission. But will say that none was perfect.

Steve