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Ram dial-a-gear is child of Chrysler's push-button past

The shift-selector dial is to the right of the steering wheel.
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Automotive News
April 16, 2012 - 12:01 am ET

Chrysler's re-engineered Ram 1500 pickup held a hidden nugget for automotive history buffs when it debuted this month at the New York auto show: a resurrected transmission name that dates back to 1956 and a novel way for a pickup driver to shift gears.

The 2013 Ram 1500's eight-speed automatic transmission is named the TorqueFlite 8, after the push-button transmissions introduced by Chrysler in the mid-1950s.

The pickup has a rotary dial to the right of the steering wheel for the P-R-N-D functions of the automatic transmission. There also are button controls for manually selecting gears 1-8 of "Drive" for those who don't want gear selection to be done automatically.

Chrysler introduced the TorqueFlite name in 1956 when it appeared on the Chrysler Imperial sedan. The push buttons mounted on the instrument panel were dropped in 1965 in favor of a column shifter, and the name was last used by Chrysler in 1993.

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