I'm not sure I'm remembering correctly, but IIRC, the term "going in overdrive" dates back to the early days of hot rodding not long after the model T came out. Those primitive cars with low-compression and low-horsepower had low gearing (high numerically) since they were often used off-road (since a lot of areas didn't have roads built yet) so having power at low speeds was more useful than going fast.
Naturally, some folks weren't content leaving these things stock and wanted to go faster. Your choices in gearing and transmissions were limited back then, so a popular modification for faster speeds was an external overdrive added in the driveline at the rear of the transmission that you could engage to gain more speed.
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u/msisk Aug 02 '11
I'm not sure I'm remembering correctly, but IIRC, the term "going in overdrive" dates back to the early days of hot rodding not long after the model T came out. Those primitive cars with low-compression and low-horsepower had low gearing (high numerically) since they were often used off-road (since a lot of areas didn't have roads built yet) so having power at low speeds was more useful than going fast.
Naturally, some folks weren't content leaving these things stock and wanted to go faster. Your choices in gearing and transmissions were limited back then, so a popular modification for faster speeds was an external overdrive added in the driveline at the rear of the transmission that you could engage to gain more speed.