Changing gear the Cotal way

"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse) 10/23/2014 at 17:43 • Filed to: None

2

2

When you buy your first luxury French car of the 1930s or 1950s you might get one of these. A Cotal semi automatic with electrically engaged gears. This dainty little lever operated solenoids which in turn engaged the desired gear by electromagnets. The French referred to the lever as a moutardier , a mustard pot, because it was reminiscent of a mustard pot with a little spoon sticking out.

You use a clutch to start but from there you just flick your little lever.

Best of all, reverse wasn't incorporated into the electrics so you had a separate forward/reverse lever. Result: four forward and four reverse gears.

If you can't quite rise to the several million a Delahaye or Delage with a one off body by a famous coachbuilder will cost you, there's a Ford Vedette with a Cotal for sale !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

vdub_nut: scooter snob > Cé hé sin 10/23/2014 at 17:52

0

God damn Frenchists.... Who else would design this?

twochevrons > vdub_nut: scooter snob 10/23/2014 at 18:59

1

And they didn't stop there: Citroën's BVH semi-auto transmission in the DS is similarly bizarre.

It was a manual gearbox, exactly the same as they used in the manual transmission models, but clutch control and gear engagement were controlled by a crazy web of hydraulics. It would "creep" like an automatic in first gear, and changing gear was, like the Cotal system, just a matter of flicking the shift lever between positions – the shift lever connects directly to a valve block on the steering column, with no mechanical connection to the gearbox.

Not only that, the shift pattern is utterly bizarre. The photo below gives some kind of an idea: first is engaged by pushing the lever away from you, and from there you can engage reverse by moving the lever down. To get second, you pull the lever towards you from first gear, through the neutral position, and from there, you move the lever down to get to third and down again for fourth. The "D" position is for "démarrer", and activates the starter – the idea being, that since it is only accessible from the neutral position, it is impossible to start the car while in gear.

I've never driven one, but they're apparently excellent when they're correctly set up. The French are by no means short on crazy when it comes to transmissions: A French engineer, Adolphe Kégresse, developed a four speed dual-clutch transmission in the 1930s that was remarkably similar to what VW and the like are using today. Due to WW2, it was never put into production, and no examples survive, but there is evidence that a working prototype was installed in a Traction Avant, so he must have figured out some kind of control system for it.