The GM 8L45 transmission is one of the GM (General Motors) entries the open record knows by name and by date — in 2014, and by little else. That is not nothing: a name in the catalogue is where a car's story starts to be recoverable.
How it came about
The 8L is the first 8-speed automatic transmission built by General Motors. All 8L transmissions are based on the same globally patented gearset concept as the ZF 8HP from 2008 and, like this, are designed for longitudinal engine installation and features a hydraulic (Hydramatic) design. While fully retaining the same gearset logic, they differ only in the patented arrangement of the components, with planetary gearsets 1 and 3 swapped.
Family and rivals
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the 6L 45 · 6L 50 · 6L 80 · 6L 90; its successor was the 10L 80 · 10L 90 · 10L 1000. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Infiniti Q50, the Ferrari 488, the Chevrolet Camaro — show what else the money bought that year. Its GM (General Motors) stablemates include the 1955 Chevrolet and the 1957 Chevrolet.