Any one remember the Chrysler Fluid Drive transmissions made back in the 1950's ? It had a clutch pedal but you didn't have to use it if you didn't want to. You could shift through the 3 gears using the column mounted shifter and clutch like a regular stick shift, or, just leave it in third and not shift at all. But man was it a dog.

The car that I learned to drive in was my dad's 1957 Chevy Bel Air convertible. It was all black with a red and silver interior. Boy do I wish he would have kept and stored that one. It would be worth a mint today. Anyway it had a funky automatic transmission that Chevy called Turbo Glide, anyone remember it? It seemed that no matter how fast you went, the engine had the same rpm. You would floor it from a stop and the engine would race and keep the same droneing sound and not shift all the way to top end. Another dog.

And who can remember the shifter on the column? What a piece of crap they were. I couldn't wait to remove it and go to a Hurst floor shifter on my mid 50's Chevy V8's.