As indicated by Florien Ferrière, on Caradisiac, on September 1, the automatic transmission is now the majority in new cars sold in France in 2021. It equips 54%, against 8% in 2004. It owes this success in particular to tremendous progress she has made.

How long ago are the days when people thought they should despise it, at least publicly, for fear of being considered incapable of driving properly! Conversely, in the United States, it has been used in the overwhelming majority of automobiles for several decades.

So much so that we think it was created there. If the first car to be equipped with it was indeed American (an Oldsmobile in 1939), the patent for the 100% automatic transmission (using planetary gears, hydraulic pressure, vacuum in the intake manifold and the position of the accelerator pedal) requiring no pilot operation neither to set off nor to change gear (unlike the Cotal or Wilson systems, for example), was deposited on December 20, 1935 by a Frenchman: Gaston Fleischel, born in 1885 .

This patent follows several others, covering the various elements of the said transmission, which he began to develop satisfactorily in 1923 on a Citroën B14. At the time, he owned a factory manufacturing precision mechanisms, in Bléneau, in Yonne, but had to close it in 1931 because of the Great Depression. He then devoted himself to pure research and in 1934 created the “Société des Transmissions Automatique Fleischel”.

From 1935, Peugeot presented at the Paris Motor Show a 402 equipped with the Fleischel gearbox, which nevertheless presented two major pitfalls. It swallows a lot of power and is very expensive, representing nearly 25% of the price of the Sochaux sedan! Also fans of automation will prefer the Cotal transmission, less expensive, leading Peugeot not to market the 402 with Fleischel gearbox.

In the meantime, our wise man made contact with many companies, including Chrysler, even filing his patents in the United States at the start of the decade. These do not go unnoticed: many American manufacturers are interested in them.

In 1938, Fleischel created the TAF (Automatic Transmissions Fleischel) which held all his patents, and in 1939, he was sent by the Government on a mission to the United States then, surprised by the armistice, remained there, supporting the combatants. of free France.

Only, Uncle Sam, who went to war against Germany in 1942, considers occupied France an enemy territory and, as a result, monopolizes all the patents that the TAF has filed in the USA.

They were not returned until 1947 to the Fleischel company, which set out to prosecute all these American manufacturers who had exploited them without asking its opinion. But, how can a little Frenchman face such behemoths? It’s David against several Goliaths!

To do this, the TAF sells its patents to an American company headed by a Frenchman, the Specialty Equipment and Machinery Corp. After a long legal battle, she won her case: in 1953, the leaders of major US brands (Chrysler, Ford, GM, Hudson, Packard, but also Bendix and Borg-Warner) signed an agreement in which they recognized that they had well used Fleischel patents. Excuse the little!

However, the inventor will not achieve notoriety and will die in 1965 in Nanterre. As for automation in France, Renault will try with some success to restore its image by developing the first French automatic transmission to be mass-produced.

Innovative, it is equipped with an electronic management, and is seen mounted first on the R16 from 1969. The manufacturer estimates that in 1975, 25% of cars sold will be fitted with an automatic transmission. However, the market for this did not begin to really increase in our region until the middle of the 2000s …

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