The letter E on the gearbox of old cars: here’s what it meant and what it was used for

efficiency.

At the same time, the growing popularity of automatic transmissions has further reduced the need to manually select a specific gear for savings.

The E on the gearshift is a little piece of car history
Today, finding an E on the gear knob almost always means you are looking at a car from a few decades ago.

That single letter tells the story of a particular phase in the history of the automobile, when manufacturers were looking for simple mechanical solutions to reduce fuel consumption and the driver had