Forget things like nuclear power, lasers, and freeze-dried ice cream. When it comes to back-engineered alien technology, the automatic transmission is a marvel of seemingly otherworldly intelligence.

Long before automatic transmissions like the 4L60E earned such bad reputations, General Motors entrusted the Turbo Hydra-Matic family to handle shifting duties in its legendary lineup of muscle cars.

Automatic transmissions are mysterious things, aren't they? They somehow take mechanical power from the engine, multiply it via a fluid coupling and a series of gears, and transfer it onto the drive ...