That whirring sound you hear is Henry Ford and Louis Chevrolet revving up in their graves. Why" Because Chevy and Ford are collaborating on automatic-transmission design and development. This has been going on for more than a decade, with the first fruits of this cooperation appearing as the six-speed automatic transaxle currently in wide use throughout Ford and General Motors.
Based on that trial?s success, the Detroit rivals agreed to an additional program in 2013 covering new nine- and 10-speed automatics. Ford already is producing the jointly developed 10-speed for F-series trucks; the Mustang is expected to get it soon, too. Chevrolet?s Camaro ZL1 arrives soon with GM?s version, followed by eight additional 2018 models. The nine-speed is for transverse applications. As Ford led the development of the longitudinal 10-speed, GM Powertrain engineers led the design of the nine-speed. Chevrolet has just introduced the Hydra-Matic 9T50 for the 2017 Cruze diesel, the 2017 Malibu, and the all-new 2018 Equinox, with additional applications to follow.
Competitors enter these sorts of agreements from time to time because designing new transmissions is a labor- and resource-intensive process, and few customers know or care where their transmissions come from. In spending the same time and investment dollars required to engineer one transmission, Ford and GM reaped two new state-of-the-art designs. The same parts used by both companies are identified with different Ford a...