Ford C3

Ford's lightweight three-speed automatic for small rear-drive cars, built at the Bordeaux plant at Blanquefort in France — the first product that factory made when it opened in 1973, and the reason a Pinto and a European Granada share a gearbox.

It is the small member of the C family and it is not a C4 or a C6. Those are the mid-size and heavy-duty units; the C3 was designed around four-cylinder engines and small V6s, and its torque capacity reflects that. A C4 will not stand in for one and the reverse is worse. There is no overdrive — three forward ratios and nothing above direct — which is exactly what the A4LD was built to correct.

Its span is longer than most people expect and splits by market. European cars carried it from 1970 — the Granada, the Sierra, the Cortina, the Escort and the Consul — and American ones from 1974: the Pinto, the Mustang, the Fairmont and the Mercury Capri. Its last appearance anywhere was the 1989 Merkur XR4Ti, which is a useful anchor when dating a used unit.

The A4LD that replaced it in the mid-1980s is the same architecture with an overdrive and electronic control added, and that lineage is why a C3 bellhousing conversation and an A4LD one overlap so often in the Ranger world. If a small Ford of this era has three speeds it is a C3, and if it has four it is an A4LD.