If you have a choice, I can’t think of any situation where misogyny beats ridiculousness. Misogyny is inexcusable shittiness, but being ridiculous can often be a pretty good time, if you do it right. With that in mind, I think that Hurst, the shifter-making company, did the right kind of growing up and evolving, as they transformed a concept that started steeped in the worst sort of midcentury misogynistic bullshit, and turned it into something much better: the most ridiculous shifter setup on pretty much any car, ever. This shifter is essentially like a lot of automatic transmission shifters today, ones that give the option to manually pick what gear the car is in. Sometimes this is done via paddles, sometimes by side-to-side motions of the gearshift or a secondary gate, or some combination. What’s almost never done is to have three separate shift levers, all sprouting out of the console like some kind of perverse licorice lollipop bouquet. And yet, that’s exactly what Hurst did. Meet the Hurst Lightning Rods Shifter.
The idea an the automatic transmission that still lets you shift manually is sort of a strange one, and it’s a concept that can be approached from two different directions. There’s the direction of trying to adapt a manual transmission into a sort of half-assed automatic, where you’re basically just automating a clutch on a manual transmission, as was the case for the Volkswagen Automatic Stickshift or the Saxomat automatic clutch system that showed up on a number of European makes. That’s the path for carmakers who don’t have full automatic solutions, and the manual shifting of gears is an unwanted but necessary trait.
Then there’s the other side, where a carmaker already has a full automatic transmission, but for marketing or just its-more-fun reasons they want to let drivers decide when they want to shift between gears. It’s still an automatic with a torque converter like any automatic (and, keep in mind, these are automatics from the ’60s to the ’80s, so they’re still power-sucking, slow-shifting slushboxes) but you at least have an option for what gear you want to be in and how long you want to stay in it. One way is an attempt to make a manual feel more like an automatic, the other is a way to make an automatic feel more like a manual.
The very existence of these is a good reminder of one of the worst parts of the human condition: we always seemed doomed to want what we don’t have.
But we’re here to talk about the second kind, the automatic that can feel a bit more like a manual, and Hurst built some aftermarket shifters to do just that. It appears they started off just as a “dual-gate” type of shifter, where you could pop the lever out of the usual PRNDL prison and switch between first, second, third, and if you were a big shot, overdrive, like you were some manner of god.
Now, you’d think this would be fine on it’s own and plenty marketable, but for whatever reason, possibly due to all the lead in the gasoline and all the chauvanism floride in the water, this was the approach Hurst took to selling these shifters when they came out in 1963:
Yes, His and Hers! Finally, you can have a car that your special, delicate lady could drive by sliding that lever to D and then not having to worry her pretty little head about a thing, while you, a man, absolutely leaking testosterone from every meatus and pore on your body, could unlock the little lock, flick that shifter to the right about an inch, and jam it forward and back as you drove, which I think we’d all agree is pretty much the midcentury equivalent of slaughtering a mammoth and butchering it right there on the veldt in order to provide for your village.
Also, you can make race car sounds with your mouth while doing it!
Of course, this is all deeply stupid. Sure, you could bang through the gears and hold the revs a bit longer, but come on, it’s still not a manual! And if that’s what your 1963 masculinity hinged on, then you’re not going to be happy to know how much shifting he little old lady in that Renault Dauphine or VW Beetle is doing as she buzzes alongside you. Also, what if you’re feeling lazy and drive in “her” mode? Would you be cringing the whole time knowing you’re using a woman’s shift pattern?
It’s so bad. It’s so embarrassing. Well, the marketing at least. Technically, it’s not a bad thing, being able to pick your own gears, even if it’s not going to be the same as a real manual, it’s not the worst thing. Happily, Hurst made a version that didn’t demean half the human population, and called it the Dual Gate:
It’s the same damn thing, just with 100% of the misogyny removed via a complex process known as “not being shitty,” and this effort was rewarded by the Dual Gate becoming a factory option for the 1968 Pontiac GTO:
Okay, pretty cool, right? An automatic with a way to row your own gears without making women feel like garbage, you’d think we could close the story here, happily! But we’re not going to. Because the story of this shifter gets so much weirder and better.
Things in Hurst automatic-with-manual-gearchange-optionland remained pretty static until the 1980s came along, and with this bold new era came the craving for a bold new kind of shifter. I guess. The car that was used to move this bold new shifter, now called Hurst Lightning Rods, around from place to place was the 1983-1984 Limited Edition Hurst/Olds:
This was the hottest Oldsmobile you could get at the time, and even though the body was still basically a Cutlass Supreme like your school principal drove, this one had a 5-liter V8 making a (ho-hum by modern standards) 180 horsepower, with a decent 245 foot-pounds of torque. There were dual mufflers and lots of stripes but really there was one standout feature of the car, hinted at in that ad above.
See the hand and the shifter up there? You might think the multiple shifters pictured were to suggest the motion of the shift lever, but you’d be wrong, because that picture is literal. There were three fucking shift levers. Yes, yes, three levers! I know I said so in the first paragraph, but still! Look what this was like:
See the instructions there in the upper right? All that text, explaining what you need to do with that trio of levers to just, you know, drive the damn thing? Here, maybe this will make it easier to understand:
Okay, so, once you get in the car and spend a good 15 seconds just staring at that bouquet of levers mumbling “the fuck am I looking at?” here’s all you need to do to drive it: first, make sure all the levers are um, huh. I guess, okay, to go in first, the leftmost lever is in D, the middle lever is down, and the rightmost lever is down – that’s first gear. So you start off, then shift the rightmost lever up, which shifts from first to second. To go from second to drive, move the middle lever up. Then, to go from third (or drive) to fourth (overdrive), move the leftest lever to the OD gear. Is that right? I think so. Let’s watch a video:
I guess you get used to it, and seeing it in action doesn’t seem so bad, but still who the hell wanted this? I can’t possibly see how this would make for quicker shifts than a regular sequential-type shifter, like the earlier Dual Gate. I mean, the three rods are certainly a fun novelty, but I just have yet to meet someone who desperately wishes their car was more like a pipe organ in terms of complexity of levers. In fact, in case you are one of those people, there was even a specialized four lever setup that was used for track driving, somehow. I think the extra lever allowed for reverse?
I love this thing so much, because it’s so gleefully, deliriously absurd. Can you imagine drag racing with this setup? There’s no way you’d be faster than, oh, literally anything else, if only because you have to move your hands across three separate levers and the idea of trying to do that all quickly in the high-pressure environment of a drag race makes my brain hurt and a lone trickle of blood creep out of my nose. It’s like if Oldsmobile said hey, instead of just shifting normally in our superfast car, what if you solved a Rubik’s cube side every time you want to shift gears? How cool is that?
I think having a setup like this in your car has to be worth it just for the blank, confused stares you’d get from anyone who opened your door. Imagine the fun you could have watching a valet choke back a sob as they take your keys and sit down in this thing. I mean, sure, I think you can also just drive it in normal, fully-automatic D, which I’m pretty certain every Hurst/Olds owner did 90% of the time after the first month of ownership, but that’s not the point.
Also, wild ridiculousness still beats misogyny, every time. Feel free to use this as an example if ever challenged.
This feels like Torch was replaced by an AI writer. I’m just curious, is this article written as though mid century USA was in a vacuum that hasn’t been said before? IMO the headline is Jezebel but the content is written like the Onion, like no one on staff saw Mad Men ever. I just don’t get why The Autopian is getting in a political manner to start and end articles and I don’t feel it’s necessary or within the mission statement as described previously. Instead of heralding innovative engineering of it’s time of a weird manual shifting version of an automatic transmission, it’s overwashed with a triple coat of the thickest misogynistic history lesson I’ve seen in recent memory.
“Of course, this is all deeply stupid. Sure, you could bang through the gears and hold the revs a bit longer, but come on, it’s still not a manual!”
Calling the Lightning Rods ‘stupid’ is basically a big FU to the engineers who actually designed something that gave a different feel akin to a Top Fuel shifter (I mean the reaction time between shifts is like 1000% slower in an Olds Hurst so why not just add more shifters instead of a vise grip). I guess I don’t actually see Jason calling this ‘stupid’; maybe this is an angry at the clouds moment… just feels irrational. Back half of the Malaise era and something designed to give the driver an additional touch point that engages them is wrong? Color me surprised.
“I mean, sure, I think you can also just drive it in normal, fully-automatic D, which I’m pretty certain every Hurst/Olds owner did 90% of the time after the first month of ownership…”
Torch…”you think they can not just [drive in D] and then say ownership did do just that?” I’ve never driven one but know from prior articles that you can do this. Second guessing this feels awkward as we trust you to do that extra research.
This article has kinda tainted the idea of even owning one of these, but to what end?
Not to be pedantic but Top Fuel cars don’t have shifters at all (excepting the planetary gear for reverse). The cars are direct drive.
Genuine question, for future reference: How does talking about misogyny in advertising count as politics? I mean, Hurst assumed what women drivers wanted, which, at best, is bad advertising. Hurst must have figured out that gendering a shifter wasn’t a great idea since that part of advertising was abandoned in later iterations.
Sort of related question: Does that mean stories about how cars helped me in my trans journey are also political in nature?
I have to assume you’re not going to get a coherent answer here from OP, but from one trans gal to another: it’s all politics. Everything is political. A better question is how any of this could not be political. Certain very noisy commentators want to pretend there’s a world where nothing, especially personhood or power structures, is “political”, so they can just keep enjoying those power structures and silencing the people who question them.
The answer to the second question is “unequivocally yes”, not just because of the first reason I mentioned (everything is political), but also the second (silencing the people who question anything). I, for one, would love to hear your stories, as my spouse is a butch biker geek and I didn’t reconnect with my greasemonkey roots until long after I’d started hormones.
I’m sorry for busting in with commentary, but I really, really don’t want this to hang in the air. That first ad was absolutely a political power statement, and it should be reckoned with by anyone that thinks Cars Are For Everyone. That sidebar it has alone is appalling. So ridiculous, but also appalling that anyone would genuinely run it, regardless of the time it was printed. Point and laugh, because it deserves to be ridiculed.
Hell the reason I’m even HERE is because of a forum post in another community that was all “Hey they have a trans contributor over at The Autopian! Neat!”
I suppose you are right! Everything is political when you really think about it.
In regards to this site’s mission, I think I can speak for my colleagues that we will call out ridiculousness in the car world if we think it’s worth calling out. This was definitely worth it. I mean, this shifter came out during one of the movements for women’s liberation and independence, so I wonder how well it was received in period.
Also, thank you so very much! ❤️ I do have some more personal stories on my docket for someday!
Totally agree. But the flip side is true. They might pretend something isn’t political when it suits them, but they will cry “oh nos, politics on my car/sports/whatever site!” when they are really faced with it. (Exhibit A: OP on this thread.)
Overall, this commentariat has been so refreshingly chill compared to … you know … the entire internet. Nebraska’s comment was really disappointing and made me a little nervous for the future of the site. :\
Misogynistic is a fancy word for sexist and being sexist isn’t political lol
Wonderful article, made me laugh out loud. Thanks Torch!
The up top banner video ad is not good marketing strategy when you open an article. Delete this ad feature and burn it with ????
???? = the glowing light of a galaxy being consumed by a black hole.
This is 100% awesome Autopian humor! I love it…Thank you
Pipe organ…ha!
Rubik’s cube…ha!
Valet driver…ha!
This is very, very, very easily, the best shifter in any production vehicle ever. And, I hate automatics, very, very, very much.
The misogyny was typical of the period, but Hurst sponsored plenty of women drivers. The late Judy Lilly among them, one hell of a 4-speed drag racer.
Yes, while this seems particularly bad from today’s perspective but it is tame for the era.
I mean, next to this at the news stand, there might have been a copy of Good Housekeeping featuring a man spanking his wife for buying the wrong coffee, as though she were an unruly child: https://adweek.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/coffee_2.jpg
Yeah, as 1960s advertising misogyny goes, the Hurst ad barely registers.
Holy shit that ad…
It’s absurdy aggressive advertising but probably accurate in use case. I see it at the dealer I work at all the time with paddle shifters. Now why Lexus decided the grandkid shuttle RX needs paddles I have no idea.
The key for “his personal key ring”
that prevents use of the competition gate by “the automatic minded little lady”?
More red flags than checkered flags are being waved there.
Cutlasses were common as dirt, but the Hurst/Olds were not and the 442 that replaced them ditched the Lightning Rods. From what I remember back in the day, they had a reputation for having issues. I don’t know what that meant, like if they got out of adjustment or what happened, but that was the word and IIRC, it only applied to the superfluous shifters—the main would still work. Everyone seemed to think they were a goofy-cool idea just the same (including me). I miss goofy fun stuff with cars even if it’s just graphics packages . . . hell, simply having a color probably qualifies today. Of course, maybe a lot of these old cars needed some embellishments to make up for the lack of performance or what have you, but there’s no reason we can’t have both today. There are a few small instances of this kind of thing today, but they’re primarily retro themed (Toyota truck retro stripes, Bronco heritage colors, Challenger stripes and names and so on) and as much as I like that, too, it would be nice if someone thought up some new stuff.
Tripling the odds for something to go wrong? What could go wrong? Makes sense they were known for issues.
Actually if I remember an old article I read when they 1st came out each lever corresponds to a different gear in the transmission. They were having issues getting one lever to handle the 3 different gears. So if you think 3 gears 3 gear shifts it makes sense and is extremely unimpressive.
I had a neighbor who owned one of those GTOs with a dual-gate shifter. It was also equipped with an overhead-cam inline-6 engine. When I rode with him, he never used the “manual shift” option.
That wasn’t a GTO without a V8, that was a Tempest
Probably was, as it been a long time ago. But it had the dual-gate shifter. It also had the Quadajet carb (I remember he had to take it apart to fix something inside). I also remember that the GTO was an option on the Tempest and the only way a person can tell the two apart from the outside was by the GTO hood scoops.
Another example of why Stick is Superior
As others have mentioned, this setup was born from drag racing. However it is definitely delightfully ridiculous.
I might point out that manually shifting automatics is disappointing, most of the time. When we were teens in the 80’s some of us tried this but to me all it ever seemed to do was make the car unhappy. I mean there’s a complete lack of rev matching on downshifts and there always seemed to be a half second delay on the upshift between when you moved the lever and the shift actually occurred.
However, I autocrossed an automatic ’89 Firebird for many years, and for that use case manual shifting was awesome. Because a GM automatic will hold gear until the engine blows, for all it cares. So I would start in 1st, slap it to 2nd when appropriate (had to have the timing down for the inevitable delay), and then just run ‘er hard the rest of the run, left foot braking. I won four consecutive class titles in that thing. Great fun.
Those were confusing times. Remember when they advertised Certs as two mints in one? Hell, do you remember Certs?
Yes like life savers one mint, fill in the hole with second mint then add retsin, whatever that was.
Retsyn was copper gluconate and cotton seed oil. When Cotton seed oil was banned as a food ingredient, Certs went off the market. Also, there was literally no mint oil of any kind in Certs, so instead of two mints in one, they were literally no mints, not one.
I used to love certs. Sometimes I’m glad I know next to nothing about chemistry, this way I can eat all kinds of stuff. Ignorance is bliss!
Needs a Hyster monotrol pedal to go in reverse, for maximum ridiculousness and confusion.
Never knew the name of that setup, I just know that it’s awkward as hell to go from a more typical stalk control to one of those.
Why in any gods name is forward on the left side of the pedal, and reverse on the right?
The foot placement goes against every fiber of my driver being.
I hate the monotrol pedal like a mouse hates snakes.
Thank you! It’s an absurd choice for most of the world. I don’t think Hyster does a lot of business in RHD markets, either.
Do they still offer that as an option? I don’t remember seeing it the last time I shopped for forklifts. I may have been very clear about that control being a dealbreaker, though.
I can’t fathom what they were thinking when they came up with that nonsense.
So… for intricate forklift work (unloading flatbeds, getting close to the ledge of a dock) I’ve gotta use my left foot on the break pedal?
No no no. The wheel is spinning just fine. Has been for a while now.
No need to try and reinvent it.
Garbage design for sure.
These multi-stick shifters and sequential shifters were really offshoots of the sport of drag racing, a strange land that inspired strange things, Hurst had its roots there. My old Nova had a Turbo-hydramatic 400 with a manual valve body, trans-brake and a 6000 rpm stall torque converter.
The trans-brake was used for launch from 1st gear, second gear you’d pull the shift knob towards you and top gear you’d pull a bicycle brake like lever on the shifter. Selecting reverse was a two handed operation for safety.
The ultimate multi-lever device has to be the Lenco transmission :-), you’ll see: https://www.lencoracing.com/
i was wondering if anyone would mention this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zx54zjDU4s
It gets good about 1:32
Never understood this ridiculous Rube Goldberg setup. Even less as I read the instructions.
Why not just use the standard P R N OD D 2 1 single lever to accomplish the same damn thing? Especially once I read that the Hurst still selects between OD and D as needed. Yep just like the standard single lever that is used in the 80s GM vehicles currently in my driveway.
Perhaps my dad would have some insight. Drives a 90 Vette with a 4 speed auto, and always shifts it manually because he “likes the way it sounds”.
“Never understood this ridiculous Rube Goldberg setup. Even less as I read the instructions.”
Manuals are dying for a myriad of reasons, and you are giving a major one.
Manuals are great! I have two 5 speed vehicles and love driving them. One stick to point to the gear I need. Done.
Now if I had to deal with 3 sticks and a puzzle, then no thanks.
I’m saying that the Hurst shift is just a silly puzzle to accomplish the same thing. The single lever already lets you lock it into whatever lower gear you want. At least on the comparable 80s GMs.
“…an automatic with a torque converter like any automatic…”
As the owner of two Variomatic-equipped Volvos I must object to this restrictive view of the nature of automatic transmissions.
Then again, as the owner of two Variomatic-equipped Volvos I object to quite a few things.
How could they not call the lightning rods menage a trois? His, hers, and an amiable third.
Yeah! Like the ad says “an experience you won’t forget”
Sadly underrated comment right there, Freelivin
(thumbs up)
Bitch!
Look who’s talkin…what’s your deal? You know what, don’t care…get a life and talk about CARS
“ get a life and talk about CARS”?
That’s a strange slogan to shout at me randomly.
Are you alright?
Should I be concerned about your mental health?
No, should be concerned about yours, you psycho…how do you not understand to maybe talk about cars instead of calling people a bitch like you are
Release now you would need like 5 or 6 rods male, female, gay male, gay female, binary, non-binary, asexual, kitten, dog,
May I have an F Major, please? And a partridge in a pear treeee!
I think it was a way of making a pretend Lenco transmission – the Lenco’s use stacks of planetary gears and you can shift under full load. They too use a series of levers and look mental, I’d love one in a car
I was thinking of a Bruno/Lenco setup as well for drag cars. Still fuckin’ ridiculous for the street, though.
I seem to recall seeing multi-stick setups like that in professional drag [racing] cars in the 1970s (1980s?).
A long time ago I had a ’71 Challenger with what Mopar called a Slap-Stick. The transmission was a 727 TorqueFlite (three-speed) and the slappy paddle was designed – as the story goes – for street racing.
It was a T-handle shifter with a ratchet mechanism: pull the handle all the way back into 1st; launch; wind up 1st; shove the handle forward to shift into 2nd; wind up 2nd; shove handle forward to shift into Drive. The ratchet prevent the shifter from going more than one notch, so you couldn’t e.g. jump from 1st to 3rd or jump into neutral or reverse.
“Can you imagine drag racing with this setup?”
Sure. From a usability standpoint the Lightning Rods aren’t all that dissimilar to the levers of a Lenco drag racing transmission:
https://live.staticflickr.com/3808/9390493490_18dda070cc_c.jpg
Came to say the same thing. Here’s a video of it in action…
https://youtu.be/2zx54zjDU4s?t=83
Came here to say the same thing as well!
I came here to witness y’all saying the same thing. Mission accomplished.
Why didnt they just cut right to it and say “Ladies love the D in our enhanced cockpit”?
Because (even way back then) add men had standards.
I’m still digesting the contents of the article but have to say the header illustration is one of the better ones I’ve seen in terms of collage. Almost like a Taboola AI thing but relevant and now I have a strange compulsion to go grip something firmly.
Seems designed mostly to increase the performance of your sense of motoring drama.
If so, it’s the progenitor of the manumatic/flappy paddle thing, which makes me wonder if there are fans of those who look at this as “the good old days, you know, when things were all hardcore pure. You had to reach for it, you know, not like how today’s drivers are so coddled and all.”
I would also gleefully delight in this Rubicesque option and try to loan my car out as often as possible.
If you get a valet who can operate it, how much should their tip be?
Their tip is the opportunity to drive the lunacy themselves!
Touché!
Proof that some really don’t know shift from shinola!
Maybe he doesn’t like the cans.