PRNDL, which served to reduce "shift shock" when changing gears and reduce "torque shock" when trying to rock a stuck car back and forth. The original Ford-O-Matic, while capable of three forward speeds, started out in second and shifted to third, with first only being used when selecting L on the gear shift column. However, if floored from a standing start, it would immediately shift from second to low then shift back to second and then third as the vehicle accelerated. The Ford-O-Matic was manufactured from 1951 until it was replaced by the C4 in 1964. Ultimately the transmission Ford licensed to build from Warner Gear/B-W was less expensive to build than the Detroit Gear/B-W unit that Ford had initially sought to license from Studebaker. When Studebaker ran into financial difficulty in the mid-1950s, Studebaker turned to Ford and licensed the less expensive Ford-O-Matic, rebranded it as the Flight-O-Matic, and dropped the DG transmission from its line-up. Merc-O-Matic "Keyboard Control/Multi-Drive" For 1957, Mercury offered mechanically activated pushbutton transmission controls in response to the Chrysler TorqueFlite pushbutton controls introduced in 1956. The Mercury control buttons initially offered five buttons and was called "Keyboard Control", with a long button on top labeled "Drive" with four smaller buttons below labeled "Brake", "Neutral Start" which would allow the engine to start with the ignition key, "Hill Control" and "Reverse" with later versions separating the "Drive" button to "Performance" and "Cruising" for 1958 and relabeled as "Multi-Drive Keyboard Control". A separate push/pull lever was included below the control buttons labeled "Park" which would lock out the control buttons until the Park button was pulled to release it. The control panel was installed to the left of the steering wheel. In 1959 the keyboard control was discontinued and used a steering column gear selector lever. MX/FX In the mid-1950s, cars began to grow in size, and in response to heavier vehicles, more powerful engines were being developed. The original Ford-O-Matic was used as a template when developing the next automatic transmissions for Ford; in fact, many of the gear sets are interchangeable. The new transmissions arrived for model year 1958 which coincided with the release of Ford's new FE and MEL engines. Although marketed as Cruise-O-Matic, the new transmissions were known internally as the MX (larger) and the FX (smaller). They were a three-speed design using a Ravigneaux planetary gearset like the original, but moved the