The 1938 model year was a transitional period for General Motors, in which the corporation offered its final rumble seats but innovated the Safety Transmission.

An early attempt by GM at obsoleting the manual transmission, the Safety Transmission allowed the driver to use the clutch only to get the car moving and underway.

From that point, the transmission could be conventionally shifted, up and down, without manual clutch operation.

It was, essentially, a semi-automatic gearbox.

The Safety Transmission was costly and, like all new technology, not immediately welcomed by GM’s conservative clientele.

It lasted for only a season but was the predecessor of the Hydra-Mmatic, introduced only two years later, which was, of course, a fully automatic transmission, would be hugely popular, and would be used in various forms for four decades.

Thus, the Safety Transmission remains a rarity, but an important one, that marked one of the first steps taken toward the engineering of a truly mode...