Borg-Warner Model 35 / 37

Borg-Warner's Model 35 and Model 37 — three-speed automatics fitted by almost every European maker that did not build its own.

⚑ Bought in by Saab, Jaguar, Volvo, Triumph, Rover and a dozen others, which is the useful fact: a Saab automatic question is a Borg-Warner question, and the marque's own material will not have it. The same gearbox under six badges is why its documentation is scattered.

Three speeds and a tall first is the character, and on a small European engine that makes for slow acceleration and an unwillingness to change down — the design rather than a fault, and a complaint readers make constantly.

It is entirely hydraulic. No electronics, nothing to interrogate, and a road-speed governor rather than a sensor: fluid condition, band adjustment and line pressure are the whole diagnosis, in that order.

Band adjustment is a real service item most modern technicians have never performed, and a slipping gear on one of these is frequently an adjustment rather than a rebuild — the same finding this catalogue records for Chrysler's A-series transaxles.