Born in 1902 Mr Howard Hobbs from Adelaide, South Australia designed the Mecha-Matic Automatic Gearbox which he had been working on for twenty years.
It was a four-speed epicyclic automatic gearbox that used 2 and 3 plate clutches that were engaged with rubber bags.
One clutch also did direct engagement, so no torque converter or fluid flywheel.

Around 1963 the gearbox was to be fitted in the Ford Cortina, Capri and Classic and a new factory in Manchester was built for 500 units to be built a day. (Now Westinghouse/Hobbs)
It was a far higher quantity than the Leamington Factory could possibly produce, but due to poor manufacturing in Manchester the first batch of gearboxes was faulty and Ford then went with the Borg-Warner 35 for the Corsair, as the option for the manual gearbox.
Colin Chapman through carried out testing on a five-speed version of the “Quick Shift” gearbox for the Lotus 25.

Stirling Moss thought the gearbox a good design though and he had one fitted in his own Lotus Elite.

Racing successes by his son David Hobbs in a Lotus Elite was that because there was no conventional clutch, the shifts were fast and there was less torque loss in the geartrain, but initially, they were unsuitable for high-performance engines because of the small clutch design.

Howard and his family moved from Leamington to Rose Cottage, Napton-on-the-Hill, near Rugby, about 1965 and David Hobbs and his son John set up a workshop.
They went back to the original concept of the infinitely variable drive, but this time made it hydraulic, not mechanical. Hobbs took out an Australian patent on 28 August 1974 in the name of Variable Kinetic Drives Ltd.

Howard Frederick Hobbs died on 15 December 1982 at Bulcote, Nottinghamshire.