Editing Dynaflow (section)

===Design rationale===
During the Dynaflow era, many of Buick's unique engineering features ranked smoothness above most other design and marketing objectives. Dynaflow's non-shifting design was demonstrably smoother than the rough shifting automatics then available. Moreover, Buick's [[torque tube]] "[[live axle]]" rear suspension design, which incorporated a rigid drive shaft with just one single [[universal joint]] ("U-joint") at the front end of the driveshaft, was said to amplify the harshness of contemporary automatic shifting transmissions. Dynaflow's non-shifting design addressed this characteristic of Buick's driveline. [[Torque tube]] rear suspension was a simple design that enabled Buick to use soft [[coil spring]]s while its competitors, including its corporate cousins, used harsher, firmer [[leaf spring]], [[Hotchkiss drive]] rear suspension.
 
Dynaflow's smooth but inefficient five element torque converter which fed power through a non-shifting direct drive (plus one manually selectable "Low gear" of 1.8:1) was the conceptual polar opposite from the [[Hydra-Matic]] used by its sister [[General Motors|GM]] divisions [[Oldsmobile]], [[Cadillac]] and then [[Pontiac (automobile)|Pontiac]]. The contemporary Hydra-Matic, the world's first large scale successful automatic transmission, used a simple two element fluid coupling — a more efficient device than a torque converter but which provided no torque multiplication —  to feed power to its fully automatic four speed planetary gearbox. Hydra-Matic's high number of gear ratios for the day compensated lack of a torque converter by including an exceptionally low first gear of 4:1. Other contemporary automatics followed the middle ground by using two or three automatic shifting gear ratios along with a relatively simple three element torque converter. Three element torque converters continue to be the norm — albeit "tighter", more efficient and less torque multiplying torque converters — even as the number of discrete gear ratios in modern 21st Century automatics continues to increase to as many as ten.

Two speed automatics with three element torque converters were common for lower priced cars of the day and in the Chrysler [[PowerFlite]] as used in the entire Chrysler Corporation lineup through 1956.