For most of us, we tend to equate the word “turbine” with turbochargers, even though turbines can appear in other automotive contexts. There’s entire gas turbine engines, of course, and turbines are part of the torque converters in automatic transmissions. But Buick’s “Turbine Drive” cars I always thought were sort of deceptively named.
I think they’re deceptively named because in the context of these 1961 Buicks and most other Buicks that used the term, the “turbine drive” seems to imply the turbine is doing the motive job of driving and there’s an implication of speed, neither of which is really true.
So what is the “turbine drive” actually referring to? The transmission!
The “Turbine Drive” transmission is actually a name for the Buick Dynaflow transmission from 1961 to 1963 or so, but it was the same transmission. To understand this transmission, you have to understand who Buicks were for and how they were driven.
I say this because I’m pretty sure almost everyone reading this would hate the way Turbine Drive-equipped cars felt.
Here’s what was important to Buick, the same thing that’s important to the average Colt 45 consumer: smoothness. The GM automatic that was good enough for Chevys and Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs, the Hydra-Matic, was considered too harsh for the refined Buick driver. Hydramatic shifts were perceptible, even harsh, and that is not what Buick was about!
Buick drivers didn’t want their martinis and gimlets to slosh in their glasses as their cars did whatever their cars needed to do under the hood. That’s for garbage people. So, Buick designed an incredibly smoooooth transmission, one that didn’t even shift gears at all, instead relying on the torque converter to get things moving.
The Dynaflow/Turbine Drive was a two-speed transmission, but for the most part it just stayed in high gear, with a 1.8:1 low range available as well, though you’d have to specifically downshift into that. The result was a genuine slushbox, something that sort of acted like a CVT but with the opposite result, efficiency-wise.
These things were wildly inefficient, even by the incredibly lax standards of the time. They were slow and thirsty, and you could stomp on the gas and hear the engine rev, but speed only came at the Buick-mandated gradual smoothness that a refined Buick driver deserved.
It’s easy to mock these things from our modern standards, this essentially one-speed automatic that slipped and wasted gas like a huge, slovenly thing, but you have to keep in mind that this transmission had one specific job to do, and it did that job incredibly well: smooooooooottttth.
It was a successful design, because the design mandate was to not jolt anyone inside that Buick. It did that very well, and fuel consumption and speed were just not important, because a Buick driver was not in a hurry and would not be jostled.
These ’61 Buicks were handsome cars, too, so why whip them by everyone so quickly? Settle down, let the people enjoy! It had, as the brochure reminds us, the CLEAN Look of Action! They’re not wrong.
The way the brochure conveyed the interior color options is peculiar. What’s going on here?
So, green gets a parrot – sorry, two parrots, I missed the guy in the cage still, beige gets a suit of armor? Is there some symbolism there I’m missing? Are the armored sleeves and pants around somewhere, or is this a summer set of armor?
Anway, I hope your day is as smooooth as a Dynaflow/Turbine Drive.
Seems to me that for all the efforts of GM to eliminate any sense of an ICE engine or gear changes – Buick would have been better off just making it an EV….
The driving characteristics remind me of the Allison automatic in Fishbowl busses which had a single speed and locked out the torque converter in lieu of high gear.
It’s also way better than the Chevy Turbo-Glide which was a Powerglide that had to be manually shifted
The infamous Torque-Drive 2 speed. I always thought that was an odd idea, combining the worst parts of an automatic with worst of a manual.
I owned a Buick with one of those.
They were not wonderful but not much worse than a Powerglide.
I do feel the need to say that that transmission did not slip; it just had a very loose converter.
Jason asked “Is there some symbolism there I’m missing?” If you have to ask, you would not be granted membership in The Finer Things Club in “The Office”.
I, for one, have a Triumph with a Triomatic and a Volvo with a Variomatic so I imagine I’d find this Buick to be briskly unengaging.
I think that’s the Black Knight, having just done battle with King Arthur. “‘Tis but a scratch!”
“It’s only a flesh wound. Come back here and fight.”
I had a ’52 Buick. Straight 8,DynaFlow, seats nicer than most living room furniture. It was a wonderful ride.
I’m just old enough that when I was younger, there were still oldtimers that referred to types of transmission using the word “drive”. A car or truck with a manual transmission was referred to as having “straight drive”, for example.
“Straight Drive” is a phrase still commonly heard from older folks in the south.
I’ve heard older folks refer to a manual as a ‘standard’ transmission. 3-speed standard, for example.
You all should look into the “turboglide” if you want to learn about a REALLY weird GM transmission. All fluid driven! My great grandpa was head of the GM transmission division at the time, and my grandfather told me stories about how disastrous the whole project was.
The Hydramatic didn’t come to Chevy until the Turbo Hydramatic (TH350, 3 speed Simpson gearset) came out, starting for Chevy in 65, and even then only big block cars at first. Chevy’s 2-speed powerglide was pretty similar to the Dynaflow, but a little less slushy. That lasted all the way through the early Vega (71 I think)
The original (4-speed with fluid coupling) Hydramatic was developed by Olds, quickly adopted by Cadillac, and was used on Pontiacs
Yup. We used to refer to them as Slip ‘n Slide Powerglide.
The first GM auto was the Hydra-Matic in 1940. It was a 4-speed planetary gearbox.
So they cam well before the TH350.
Right, but Chevy never used the original Hydramatic
The 4-speed Hydramatic was stout…I remember them being used in drag racing classes like “Top Gas” with Stone Woods & Cook and “Big John” Mazmanian.
How about Mazda using “Skyactiv”? What the heck is that supposed to refer to, Satellite guided engine control? Marketing nonsense.
Bit of a side note- both Honda and Suzuki gave this same idea a go in motorcycles. At one point someone at Honda got the idea that well, their small easy to ride auto-clutch underbones/mopeds were massively popular around the world, and attracted non-rider Americans to give one a try. So why not do that with larger, “full size” motorcycles?
The Hondamatic (and Suzuki’s clone a couple years later, inventively called the Suzukimatic), worked more or less the same as the Turbine-Drive. Instead of a conventional multi-plate manual clutch, or centrifigual automatic (as in the small bore stuff), it used a tiny, donut sized torque converter/fluid coupler instead. It just used engine oil for fluid. Both versions only had two gears- “Low” and “Drive”. There was a foot shift, with a N-L-D shift pattern. The idea was, for most riding, you’d just click it right into Drive and leave it there, giving you a “big” motorcycle with the twist and go convenience of a scooter.
I owned a 1982 Suzuki GS450″A”- the a designating the “auto” transmission, as the same bike was available with a traditional manual also. Riding it as intended- just click it into Drive and forget- it was usable, but quite doggy off the line. The auto version also got shaft drive (the manual got chain), in a further bid to the ease of operation/low maintenance appeal of the bike, although that added more weight and driveline loss. Performance was notably improved if you set off in Low, and then shifted to Drive at 25-30mph or so. The shifter had an odd slightly mushy feel, like if you slowly pre-loaded it upward, you could feel the bike briefly go into “neutral”, before actually changing gears, so yeah, you could bang off a WOT upshift. There must have been some clever mechanism in there.
Suzuki’s version only lasted I think 2 years in production and was generally regarded as a flop. Honda made both a 450 and 750cc version for a few more years, but neither ever sold that well.
Honda gave the shiftless automatic another go in the 2000s with the quite obscure DN-01, which utilized a very odd hydraulic swashplate drive system. Through a variable displacement pump, it could effectively shift between high pressure/low flow for a low “gear”, then lower pressure and higher flow for high “gear”.
I’ve actually seen Hondamatic bikes in 400 and 750cc form but the Suzuki is new to me. Moto Guzzi also got into the act with the V1000 Convert that also used a 2 speed automatic
Green is to represent a birds feathers, and tan is to represent our outer fleshy bit.
I have an ancient copy of P.J. O’Rourke’s “Driving Like Crazy”, a compendium of auto-related stories; a great collection if you can find a copy. One of the best is “Sgt. Dynaflos Last Patrol”, funny as hell if you’re a car person and I was pleasantly surprised to find it on C&D’s website, including the pictures which I’d never seen before.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a39097176/roadmaster-reruns-sgt-dynaflos-last-patrol/
Why would be surprised that the ‘Sgt. Dynaflo’ story appeared on C/D’s website? The story was originally published in 1978 in Car and Driver magazine in the first place. They reprint classic stories for their website. He did a number of stories for C/D back then, before following DED Jr. and Lindamood to Automobile magazine in ’86, and becoming Rolling Stone’s ” Foreign Affairs” correspondent around the same time (check out the compilation book ‘Holidays in Hell’ for many of those stories).
Wow…I remember reading that article in C&D as a kid back in ’78.
Just read through it, it is a funny read. Love how everyone claims “had one just like it, those never die!”
My Grandpop had one of these back before my time but he was still complaining about it after I came along. His primary complaint was that people would honk at you after the light turned green because the Buick took so long to start moving.
Also, is the fern in the back seat of the LeSabre getting thrown out? It looks awfully brown.
could be two spiders mating
Great shot of the horrible X-Frame, which killed more people than airbags, ignition switches, the Chevrolet Corvair, and Ted Bundy combined.
That looks like it lacks torsional; or any, rigidity.
They actually had the same (or in some cases better) torsional rigidity than the more traditional ladder frames they replaced. That’s not to say they were good, because they weren’t. But the ones before them were shit too, when it comes to torsional rigidity. To achieve that though, it sometimes required strengthening the body as well, which they did.
Also, while the X-frame clearly looks unsafe, and Nader harped on it as being unsafe, there’s basically zero evidence showing it was any less safe than other frame times of the era.
Here’s a nice little piece on them… https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-an-x-ray-look-at-gms-x-frame-1957-1970/
Great article. Thanks.
Thank you.
Autopian readers/commenters remain a great, additional reason to read Autopian’s articles.
Well, yeah, because this was the era where if you got into a front-end collision, the steering wheel broke off and the steering column stabbed you in the heart.
Significant advances in modern car safety didn’t really get underway until the early 80s.
Collapsible steering columns were mandated in 1968.
Our ‘73 Chevy might have had head rests that were little more than suggestions of head rests, detachable shoulder belts that could be (and always were) used simply as lap belts and a gas tank filled underneath the license plate (which folded down)… but it _did_ have a collapsible steering column.
Yeah, I suppose I could have worded that better. There was some progress in the 70s – cars had to come with seat belts too, although drivers weren’t required to wear them until the 80s, but we were still dealing with cars that didn’t tend to deform much in frontal collisions, which people think means modern cars are weak by comparison but which really just meant the driver was the crumple zone.
“Turbine Drive” is just referring to the torque convertor, which uses a turbine in its normal function. That’s pretty accurate advertising for that point in American history. And the way you describe the transmission is literally how traditional automatics work… there is a lot of power loss inside the transmission and its related systems. The industry has spent decades improving them to where they are today but the Dynaflow was the very first mass produced automatic transmission so its not terribly surprising that it wasn’t a model of efficiency.
The Dynaflow dates back to the late ’40s. And if you thought the one talked about in the article was bad, look at the early ones. Each subsequent re-design (there was like five of them I think) was basically done to address the downsides you’ve stated above. The one in the article was like the last or second to last “version”. So imagine how bad they were before.
Yeah, by this point, there were two turbines for better torque multiplication and you could use low gear up to 40mph, world of difference from the ’40s originals in driving characteristics and economy, the average driver probably wasn’t noticing much of a difference vs any other 2 speed or even 3 speed automatic of the time in normal driving
There was also a triple turbine variant optional on the big cars
Owned 2 cars with 3 speed autos (a Ford FMX and a Ford C3). You never really felt them shift, unless it was an abrupt downshift (which you wanted). Both were brisk off the line in first, then glacial in the tall second. The torque convertor lockup OD auto was a game changer.
You can certainly feel my TH350 shift… that fucker will squeak the tires as it goes into second it shifts so hard, and my car doesn’t have bupkis for power.
Sounds like a rebuilt/aftermarket valvebody. The 4R70W in my ’96 V8 Thunderbird did that after I mod’ed it.
Sounds like somebody put a shift kit in your transmission.
The green interior is likely Naugahyde, it’s Amazonian jungle-dwelling naugas (the source of Naugahyde) is symbolized by the two parrots. The beige could be genuine leather, symbolized by the armored knight whose bottom was frequently supported by a leather saddle.
Or something like that…
I got a part-time job at my father’s carpet store
Laying tackless stripping and housewives by the score
I loaded up their furniture and took it to Spokane
Auctioned off every last Naugahyde divan
The Corvair, launched in 1960, had an engine named “Turbo-Air 6”. This engine had two carburetors and was not turbocharged. In 1961, an improved version called the “Super Turbo-Air” was introduced – still not turbocharged. In 1962 Chevrolet debuted the “Super Charged Spyder” engine which was the same as the normally aspirated “Turbo-Air 6” but with a turbocharger. Marketing.
Well “Super Charged Spyder” does have a better ring to it than “We actually turbocharged it this time, we swear guys Spyder”
“Super Charged Spyder” sounds like a nightmare for an arachnophobe.
Working on a 1962 Monza 700 “Super Turbo Air”. The carbs are giving me fits.
They are pretty simple to rebuild but can be finicky to set up. Here is the Rochester Carb Bible. https://a.co/d/g3AC5OR
The simple solution is to pack them up and send to Clarks Corvair for a full rebuild. Underneath the carb you should have gasket, plastic heat spacer, gasket. Also check the carb balancing connection tube and little rubber tubes to make sure they are not split and leaking vacuum. Good luck!
The tubes, choke diaphragms, etc… are good and I put in new gaskets. The heat spacers are there. I suspect the needle valve settings are all out of whack. I have the balancing tool but need it to RUN first. I have spark and a roughed in timing – so almost gotta be the carbs. I’m going to clean everything this winter and install new gaskets. Fuel pump works. It started coughing last go round.
I use Clarks and have a local shop (run by an old drag racer) i can turn to at worst. Wanna figure this out myself, its becoming a lost art.
Remove the idle screws. Blast some carb cleaner in the holes until is squirts out the top of the carbs. Insert the idle screw 1-1/2 turns. That usually cleans out any gunk in the idle circuits. Another thing to check is the accelerator pumps. Look down the carb throats while pressing throttle down once. You should see a strong stream of fuel. If not, your pump jets may need replacing.
Thanks for the tip!!! I set them about that initially but had to back out to get a sputter. I think the fuel may be bad… I can get to the accelerator pumps when I pull the tops off to look for any varnish.
I just saw that book on Amazon last night! I’m a late Gen-X Mech Engineer so more familiar with EFI, sensor problems, trouble codes, etc…
Yes old / bad fuel or sediment could be the culprit. You could try hooking up an external gas can feed to bypass the tank as a test. When I revive old cars I often end up draining the tank but then what do you do with the old gas? Sometimes I pour a half gallon at a time in my modern cars to burn it up.
My minibike is super sensitive to stale gas. Even a few weeks sitting in the tank (or gas can) can sometimes be enough to turn it into a choking, smoking mess. Stabilizer doesn’t help much. Drain everything and put fresh gas in and all is well again. I have a big old gas can that I put the stale gas in. When it’s full I take it to the hazardous waste disposal at the local dump to get rid of. I often contemplate using it in the truck but I just can’t fix the bike by draining the gas and then turn around and put it in the truck. Feels like I’d just be asking for something bad to happen.
Autopian…come for the automatic transmission talk, stay for the carburetion tutorial.
And the Oldsmobile F-85 Cutlass Jetfire, which required “Turbo-Rocket Fluid”, which was actually methanol and water, not hydrazine
Presciently anticipating the methalox rocket.
This must have been the inspiration for Paul Simon’s song, “Slip Sliding Away.”