Chugalug,
Your:
"or has it been swept away since ?" All too true, I'm afraid. (I'll go into much more detail in my next post). I've tried to pinpoint our "flat" in Heerlen, too, but my memory of an "
Akenstraat" (of course,
not "
Akenstraße !) or any thing like it, seems to be false. But I've found a "
Parallelweg" which twangs a faint memory as being nearby, but nothing more.
I've often wondered why the Smiths-Jaeger "
Coupleur" was not a commercial success, although Peugeot used it in the 404, before going over to full auto on the 504. And Renault used it briefly, too. (I can't find anything to support my earlier tale of the Rootes supposed full-auto development of the magnetic clutch principle).
For the
Coupleur had everything going for it. Although it cost me about 6% on top of the basic car (which would be around the price of a full autobox on a new car today), the mechanism was so simple really that, in quantity production, it should cost little more to manufacture than the friction clutch it replaced. And it should not be difficult to design it to the exact same size.
I take your point about electrical complications, but again, all it was was an interlocking system of on-off switches which even I could understand (and not a "chip" in sight, either !)
I think that the sad truth was, after the years when the "O-matics" had got such a bad name, that when a real solution appeared, nobody wanted to know any more. But we were "sold" on it. In the years since, I've run six cars, five of them full hydraulic autos, (
EDIT) and I'd swap any one of the five without a moments' hesitation now for my old
Coupleur back again !
Danny.