My sister has never owned a car with an automatic transmission

[Heo]

I'm not familiar with the Packard transmission, but a friend of mine had a VW Beetle that worked similarly.  You had to shift it (I think it was a 4 speed but might have been a 3 speed) but there was no clutch pedal which made me nervous the one time I drove it.  You just accelerated in first gear, then backed off the throttle, shifted to second, then got on the throttle again.  Kind of interesting...

Pat

Saxsomatic! was it called option on some european cars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxomat

Here in Sweden autotrans is more rare than stickshift, especialy in the past. Auto was something the disabled drove up until the 80s. The only cars with auto was
a few Mercedes, and Amerikan cars and there was few of them.

[FrozenMerc]

Unlike VW, the Packard still has a clutch pedal.  There is a button on the dash that enables/disables the Electromatic clutch, so you can drive it like a standard 3 spd+OD, or let the car operate the clutch pedal for you.  The first time I pushed the button in, and the clutch pedal dropped to the floor, it freaked me out.  Figured I broke something, but I gave it a little bit of gas, and the clutch engaged smoothly and the car took off.  The big 327 straight 8 has so much low end grunt it is damn near impossible to stall. 

[Rory428]

Back in the 70s, I drove my buddys VW Beetle with the "automatic stickshift" transmission. If you put any pressure on the shifter lever, the clutch would disengage, so it didn`t take us long to figure out that if you  rested your hand on the shifter, you could rev up the engine, and then let go of the shifter, releasing all 40 someodd HP, similar to dumping the clutch at high RPM. Of course, you could do just that, right beside a Police car, and the car was so gutless, the cop wouldn`t notice!