The Turbo-Hydramatic 125 is one of the GM (General Motors) entries the open record knows by name and by date — in 1979, 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 Turbo-Hydramatic 125 (modern designation 3T40) was the first in a line of automatic transmissions from General Motors designed for transverse engine application.
Introduced in 1980 in the X-body and T-body (FWD) platform vehicles the units were used across all of GMs divisions worldwide, and was augmented by later automatic four speed transaxles, starting with the 44T-4 (4T60) which bore no internal functional resemblance to the original design 3 speed transaxle other than its basic chain driven 180-degree rotated version of its longitudinally mounted Stromberg THM 180 incarnation.
Family and rivals
Its family tree is legible: its successor was the 4T40-E/4T45-E / 4T60-E/4T65-E / 4T80-E. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Mercedes-Benz G-Class, the Lancia Delta, the Toyota Supra — show what else the money bought that year. Its GM (General Motors) stablemates include the 1955 Chevrolet and the 1957 Chevrolet.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Turbo-Hydramatic 125 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.