I'm Sorry...What?: Hurst/GM Lightning Rod Shifters

There are plenty of things that come to fruition in the automotive industry that are downright strange. Deals between clothing lines, department stores and varying other non-car businesses make their special edition models and while they are interesting, they lack a certain level of pizzazz. Enter Hurst, a company known for its interesting and awesome shift levers. They are known for the famous Olds/Hurst 442s of the late 60s and early 70s, but in the mid-80s, they really tried to steal the show with these, the Lightning Rods.

Available for 1983, this three-lever system looks like it would be right at home attached to the car from “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”. In essence though, it’s an innovative design that would later give way to the shiftgate system, and even the paddle shifters that can found on today’s cars. It’s pretty simple once you stare at the diagram long enough. Each lever is responsible for a gear change. The one on the right is in charge of first to second, the one in the middle is for second to third, and then the one on the left does third to overdrive.

Understandably though, this system was confusing, so Hurst made sure the system had a means of being driving by non-Shift-a-holics, if both the center and right lever were pushed forward, the car could be put in OD, and have the gears controlled automatically. The Lightning Rods didn’t catch on clearly, and after the 1983 Olds/Hurst 442s left the factory, that was the end of them. Hurst did make aftermarket kits for the Camaro and Trans Am to convert them to the Lightning Rod system, but they also didn’t catch on. Ratchet shifters proved to be more effective in the street racing scene, and once the shiftgate systems of the early 2000s began popping up, it was game over for this incredibly innovative system.

That’s the only word to describe the Lightning Rod system, innovative. It was more cumbersome and intricate than a normal transmission, it wasn’t a true manual, and all it did was take a basic function of every car and make it incredibly confusing, but it was pretty cool. Bearing in mind that Fiat Multipla and the Pontiac Aztek were equally as “innovative” and bizarre, but they paved the way for the modern crossovers on the road today, were it not for the Lightning Rods, we may have never gotten to the paddle shifters that can found in almost every car on the market today.

What do you think of the Lightning Rods? Were they before their time? Comment Below!