STAFF CARS SILVER SHADOW PROJECT
It would be tricky to count all the cars built with General Motors’ Turbo Hydramatic transmission and its close relatives. They would number in the tens if not hundreds of millions, even if you counted only those variants made between its introduction in 1964 and the year Rolls-Royce switched over to the electronically-controlled successor, the 4L80-E, in 1992. Yet it’s only those installed by Rolls-Royce (unless you know different?) that were operated by a separate electro-mechanical device called an actuator. Everyone else made do with a Bowden cable and a bracket, as indeed did RollsRoyce for previous automatic transmissions in the Silver Cloud family.
A cable, however, can call for a bit of effort with the gear selector. This matters less when it’s mounted on a centre-console, as you’re obliged to take