Velvet Drive History: Paragon to Correct Craft

2001-004 clutch pack discussion

Before Velvet Drive: Packard and Paragon

Packard built the first marine hydraulic transmissions, and used two separate pumps, one for each direction an engine could turn. Paragon Gear Works got into hydraulic marine transmissions in 1948-49 and solved the two-pump problem for good: engineer Robert W. Seavey patented a reversible crescent-gear pump (US 2,694,367, filed Nov. 1, 1950, granted Nov. 16, 1954, assigned to Paragon) that let a single pump serve either engine rotation, just by turning its internal parts about 180 degrees.

The pump fight

Borg-Warner didn't take any interest in marine hydraulic transmissions until 1956, seven years after the Seavey pump was already in commercial production. The trial court's own findings say Borg-Warner got hold of a Paragon transmission, "dismantled, studied and measured" it, and copied the pump after its own design attempts didn't pan out.

Paragon sued, and Judge Wyzanski ruled for Paragon on Dec. 18, 1964, in federal district court in Massachusetts (Westerbeke, which sold Borg-Warner's units in the state, was named as a co-defendant). Borg-Warner appealed, and the First Circuit affirmed on Dec. 16, 1965, roughly two years from filing to final ruling. The appeals court did not find literal infringement, since Borg-Warner's pump rotated its parts about 127 and a half degrees rather than "substantially 180," but it found infringement under the doctrine of equivalents anyway, over one judge's dissent, and vacated only the award of attorney's fees. An earlier opinion in the same appeal, later withdrawn, had actually found no infringement at all.

The name

"Velvet Drive" predates the marine gearbox. Borg-Warner first used the name on automotive automatic transmissions starting Jan. 31, 1950 (trademark registration 553491). A separate registration covers the marine and industrial use, first used July 31, 1957 and registered in 1959 (registration 682177); that marine registration lapsed in 2000 for non-renewal, and we can't confirm what trademark protection covers the name today.

You'll see different founding years floating around. The court record and the trademark filings both put the start of the marine line in the mid-1950s, and the marine Velvet Drive name was first used in 1957.

Borg-Warner years: Muncie, then New Bedford

Warner Gear itself goes back to 1901 in Muncie, Indiana, where brothers Tom and Harry Warner designed a gear built by a company headed by Abbott L. Johnson. Borg-Warner formed in 1928 out of Borg & Beck, Marvel-Schebler, Warner Gear and Mechanics Universal Joint, with Morse Chain and Long Manufacturing joining a year later.

1017-001 Bushing Style Case

Velvet Drive service manuals from the 1980s carry a Muncie, Indiana address, and Chris has an old bushing-style 1017-001 with a serial number in the 2,000s that he reads as built by Borg-Warner in Muncie, Indiana. Regal-Beloit bought Borg-Warner's Marine and Industrial Transmission Division effective Jan. 1, 1995, for about $9.19 million, and renamed it the Velvet Drive Transmission Division. At the time it covered marine gearboxes up to 500 hp gas or 250 hp diesel, plus industrial units for forklifts, airport tugs and mine personnel carriers, and did roughly $27 million a year in sales.

By the mid-1990s the marine line was being built in New Bedford, Massachusetts; the exact year it left Muncie isn't documented. Regal-Beloit's own annual filings list a New Bedford, Massachusetts address every year from 1996 through 2000, and the plant wasn't sold until January 2006, with a seven-year partial leaseback afterward. Chris has an early 5000-series unit tagged "Borg Warner Marine and Industrial" that he says is "one of the very early models that New Bedford put out."

The original Warner Gear plant in Muncie, separate from the marine transmission business by then, closed for good in 2009, mostly building automotive transfer cases in its final years.

Regal-Beloit and the move to Liberty

By about 2006 to 2007, Velvet Drive had moved again, to Liberty, South Carolina, where Regal-Beloit combined it with its Richmond Gear business. That's still where Velvet Drive is built today. Regal-Beloit sold the Richmond Gear side of that Liberty operation in December 2011; Velvet Drive itself stayed at 1208 Old Norris Road.

Correct Craft today

Regal-Beloit sold Velvet Drive on April 1, 2019, and its own filing shows $8.9 million in proceeds and a $0.5 million loss on the sale. Correct Craft, Nautique's parent company, folded Velvet Drive into its Pleasurecraft Engine Group, kept it in Liberty with no change in management, and pointed to a customer relationship of more than 40 years between the two companies.

How the design changed

AS171C Early Velvet Drive 1017-004 Transmission

A few things about the transmission changed along the way, and they still show up on a teardown today. Transmissions built before September 1978 used bushings instead of sealing rings; a rebuild on one of those old bushing-style cases won't give you a solid, positive neutral the way a sealing-ring case and planetary will. Early reduction units also used a collapsible spacer to set bearing preload where current production uses a solid one.

Fluid recommendations shifted with the automotive industry around them: GM's Dexron dates to 1967, Ford's Type F also to 1967, and Ford's Mercon to January 1987, with Velvet Drive's own approved fluid list moving along with them, era by era.

Timeline

Related reading: Velvet Drive manuals, reading an ID tag, and the Borg-Warner cross-reference.