REALLY? Those are some whacky shift patterns. I wonder when they standardize the patterns to the ones we know commonly today? The didnt do this with the automatics till when the 60’s? I recall that the P-R-N-D-L…was something they all had to agree upon.
The original GM Hydramatic, introduced in the 1940 Oldsmobile had the following pattern:
N-D-L-R. There was no Park position. The Hydramatic then became available on the Cadillac, and finally, was available on the Pontiac in 1948. When the Buick “Dynaflo” automatic was introduced in 1948 and the Chevrolet “PowerGlide” automatic in 1950, a Park position was incorporated, but the sequence was P-N-D-L-R. The independent manufacturers, (Nash, Kaiser,Hudson) used the GM Hydramatic as did the Lincoln starting in mid-1949, and of course had the same shift pattern. I remember the brochure for the 1953 Chevrolet advertised that having Low and Reverse next to each other made it easy to “rock” the car if it became stuck. (This probably also helped the service department business in rebuilding transmissions).
When Ford introduced its automatic in the 1951 models, the shift pattern was P-R-N-D-L and I think the same pattern was used in the Studebaker automatic and the Packard Ultramatic. I think the Government finally set a standarized shift pattern of P-R-N-D-L and GM finally went with the rest of the world.