A few weeks ago, quite by accident, I had an opportunity to drive a new Ford Freestyle, the "station wagon" version of the Five Hundred sedan. All Freestyles, whether FWD or AWD, are equipped with a continuously variable transmission (CVT). And, let me tell you, this is the biggest change in transmissions since Oldsmobile introduced Hydra-Matic in its 1940 models.
But this column is not about transmissions - that's for another Yoostabees.
Because, once I had a chance in the Freestyle, I opened up the glovebox to take a gander at what the Owner Manual had to say about operation of a CVT.
That examination also caused me to look back over the years at how owner manuals have changed. It was educational in more ways than one.
This retrospective for TCC readers was facilitated by the fact the National Automotive History Collection at the Detroit Public Library will hold its third-ever sale of duplicate materials from Saturday, July 30, through Monday, August 1. As a volunteer and trustee of the Collection, I was able to borrow a small selection of vintage owner manuals to study for this report. Yes, at the NAHC sale you will be able to buy the very manuals I am writing about.
For comparison purposes, I chose manuals for a 1915 Buick, a 1931 Ford Model A, a 1954 Ford, a 1955 Chevrolet, my new 2005 Ford Focus, and the aforementioned 2005 Ford Freestyle.
Changing manuals
The most striking thing is how the size of the manuals themselves has changed over the last 90 years. The Freestyle Owner's Guide (as FoMoCo calls all its manuals now) comes to a whopping 284 pages PLUS a generic Ford North American 28-page Warranty Guide and a 48-page generic Scheduled Maintenance Guide. The Focus manual is only slightly smaller, 224 pages plus the supplements.
How long did owner manuals "yoostabee?" The 1915 Buick and 1931 Model A guides, which included pages of descriptions about how the mechanicals of cars worked, came to only 82 and 50 pages, respectively. By the middle Fifties, Ford's 1954 manual used only 40 pages and the 1955 Chevrolet, 32 pages. Roughly speaking, they're all sized to fit in the glove compartment, the largest being the 6x9-inch 1915 Buick Reference Book.
Printed only a decade after volume production of Buicks started with 750 vehicles in 1905, the 1915 booklet spent many paragraphs explaining the basics of driving. This was evidently on the assumption many of the 43,946 Buick purchasers in the later year were first-time drivers as the industry was still in its infancy.
Thus, the first words in the 1915 manual were: "The art of driving is easily acquired, and the average man or woman should be able to master all the rudiments of ordinary driving in the course of a few trials on a quiet street." It continued, "The proper handling of the car on all sorts and conditions of roads, and in all kinds of weather, however, is a matter requiring considerable judgment and experience, and calls for an exact knowledge of the car and its mechanism." Is there an auto enthusiast anywhere who wouldn't agree whole-heartedly with this even today?
You'd think that by 1931, driving instructions wouldn't be necessary for Model A buyers. But Yoostabees has to point out that most A buyers were trading in Model T Fords with pedal-operated planetary transmissions and were yet to master the clutch and floor-mounted gear shift lever.
Accordingly, the '31 A Instruction Book coaches, under a subhead Starting the Car, "Release emergency brake lever. With the engine running, disengage the clutch by pushing down the left foot pedal. Move the gearshift lever to the left and back which is the low speed position (see Fig. 3 [which showed the familiar H pattern]); Gradually release pressure on the clutch pedal, allowing it to return to its normal position and at the same time increase the speed of the engine by pressing lightly on the accelerator."
It went on to advise shifting to Second at five to eight mph, and High at 12 to 15. It also instructed on double-clutching for downshifting to avoid non-synchronized gears clashing. Cadillac had introduced Synchromesh on its 1928 models and even today typically it takes several years for such advances to work their way down to the mass market. (As teen-agers over half a century ago, we used to double-clutch - racing the engine between first and second gears - in the belief it helped win back-street pick-up races.)
The '15 Buick, by the way, had a floor-mounted shift lever, but the "H" pattern was reversed because Buicks were right-hand-drive through the end of their 1913 models. Evidently management - Walter P. Chrysler was Buick president - had not wanted to invest so soon in production machinery for a new transmission.
Not all early American right-hand-drive models had such a Buick mirror pattern with Reverse positioned to the right and forward and First right and back. I had a chance to ride in a RHD 1909 Thomas Flyer at a preview for the Meadow Brook Concours d'Elegance - which this year will feature such Brass Era Cars - but with the shift lever to the right of the driver, the pattern was similar to the "H" familiar among LHD cars until today's four-, five- and six-speed manuals took over.
When maintenance was more regular
Getting back to owner manuals demonstrating how cars yoostabee, the second most striking thing is the scheduled maintenance required for cars of the Teens, Thirties, and even Fifties, compared to today's cars. Few of today's motoring press have any notion of this unless they are collectors of vintage cars themselves.
Consider this: the '15 Buick required some 20 maintenance operations EVERY 100 MILES, another seven steps every 500 miles, plus yet an additional three to four procedures every 1000 miles. The Model A was on a basic 500-mile chassis lubrication schedule; a grease gun was among the standard tools which came with the car. Even the '54 and '55 Fords and Chevys called for chassis lubrication every 1,000 miles and oil changes every 2000 miles (However, my first new car, a '55 Plymouth V-8, had a recommended 5000-mile oil-and-filter change interval, and I ran it well over 100,000 miles with no engine repairs.).
As to warranties, there was no mention in the '15 and '31 manuals, but the '55 Chevy manual specified - with the usual legal jargon - a factory warranty of 90 days or 4000 miles. All this changed after Ford introduced sharply reduced maintenance schedules and longer warranties for its 1961 models.
Why are today's owner manuals so thick? One word: lawyers. Numerous suits have been won over the years before naïve juries who zinged manufacturers because the most obvious and stupid acts were not expressly warned against in the manuals. In addition, either Federal or state laws dictate some content. Moreover, today's vehicles are far more complex than their ancestors, especially with sophisticated electronics, entertainment systems, and climate controls.
The problem is, of course, that the longer and more complex such manuals become, the less they are likely to be read. It's a standing joke that the most-unread large-circulation books in existence are auto owner manuals.
One solution in my wife's new Mazda6: a brief, celluloid-like folder covering the high points of operation without all the dire warnings in the full manual. Probably the lawyers will attack that idea, too.
Nevertheless, a visit with vintage owner manuals is indeed fascinating reading. The clearly written and well-illustrated Buick and Model A manuals, even though 90 and 75 years old, are full courses in automotive operation, engineering and mechanics worthy of any Driver Education or Automotive Shop class. Like holy scriptures, they contain eternal truths.
;)
