Ford Pinto
Offered with an inline-4 engine and bucket seats the Pinto's mechanical design was conventional, with unibody construction, a longitudinally mounted engine in front driving the rear wheels through either a manual or automatic transmission and live axle rear end. Suspension was by unequal-length control arms with front coil springs; the live rear axle was suspended on leaf springs. The rack and pinion steering had optional power assist, as did the brakes.
Howard Simpson
In the early 1950s Simpson attempted to sell his patent to major American automakers in Detroit, but was greeted with skepticism, despite his experience and positive reputation. Ford Motor Company licensed his three-speed gearset in 1953, although they did not put it into production at that time. In 1955 Chrysler Corporation licensed the same gearset for use in their new three-speed Torqueflite automatic, which went into production in mid-1956. General Motors was reluctant to adopt this gearset, but eventually relented and licensed it for the Turbo Hydramatic, which entered production for the 1964 model year. Ford similarly introduced reengineered Cruise-O-Matic transmissions (C3, C4, and C6) using the gearset they had already licensed. The Simpson-geared Cruise-O-Matics were introduced in the 1964 and 1965 model years. Germany's Daimler-Benz licensed the gearset as well, although it did not enter production until the early 1970s, as the Mercedes-Benz three-speed automatic.