You’re probably expecting this article to discuss whale oil lubricants in old cars. Really old cars that used tillers and engines that had to be started by hand-spinning a flywheel, and had adorably anachronistic names like the Aldrich Runabout or Marot-Gardon Rear Entrance Tonneau.
But shockingly, the last time whales needed to give up their lives for automotive purposes was during the 1972 model year. No, not 1872, 1972. The year “The Godfather” came out and Richard Nixon was reelected U.S. president is the same year General Motors was fretting over a lack of spermaceti. Because sperm whales were classified as endangered in 1970 and placed under the protection of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the company no longer had access to the goo that protects whale brains and made GM-branded Dexron good at lubricating automatic transmissions.
If you had a pre-1973 GM car with a TH400 or TH350 transmission, or a Chrysler automatic transmission until 1966, you can squarely thank sperm whale for its reliability. Yes, sperm whale brain-cushion wax was so integral to the operation of some automatic transmissions that they went from under a million failures per year prior to 1972 to over 8 million failures yearly by 1975. Spermaceti was so effective as an additive that before it was removed, people expected their transmissions to last the life of the car, meaning that once upon a time, there kind of was a “sealed for life” transmission that really meant it.
Sorry, sperm whales, your fluids are really useful
Whale oil could be found in GM-developed Dexron Type A and Type B transmission fluid until 1972, as well as Chrysler’s pre-1966 Mopar re-branded GM-spec Type A automatic transmission fluid. Sure, “whale oil” sounds like an antiquated lubricant that had no place in the 20th century, but using it in car transmissions wasn’t the moon-brained idea it sounds like, as its properties were well known and exploited for centuries. It’s really good at fighting rust and can handle high temperatures, especially when mixed with sulfur. If you needed complex machinery to run without a hitch, from watches to rifles, sperm whale oil was smooth, consistent, and didn’t gum up the works.
If you’re old enough to have had margarine in the 1940s, you probably know what whale oil tastes like. Unilever, corporate parent to Dove, Vaseline, and Ben and Jerry’s, was using loads of the stuff to make that “tasty” butter substitute. In 1935, 84% of all whale oil was used to make margarine. Whale oil was even a major ingredient in nitroglycerin throughout World War II. Divorce whale oil use from its ethics, and you can see that it’s pretty versatile stuff.
Once whale oil was gone from Dexron, corrosion became the norm for TH350s and TH400s. The problem was that the transmission cooler lived in the radiator, and this led to corroded fittings allowing transmission oil and antifreeze to swap places. In 1975, GM estimated that it would take $2.2 million to fix all the ruined, whale oil-less transmissions, or about $13.21 million today. Fortunately, modern transmission fluid can last anywhere from 60,000 to 120,000 miles before you need to change it, no whale oil required.
Jojoba oil to the rescue
Without spermaceti, perhaps Turbo Hydra-Matics, the main transmissions affected, could have started rusting themselves out of existence, but a substitute was discovered. Frank Erickson founded International Lubricants Inc. in 1984, and teamed up with Phillip Landis of Mobil Oil in 1986 to create a substitute for the old whale-oil-infused automatic transmission fluid that relied on jojoba oil instead. You can even breeze through their patent, US4873008A, if you’re into legalese.
Jojoba plants are desert shrubs, and the wax in their seeds is so chemically close to sperm whale oil that it just slots right in. The resulting product was the basis for Lubegard transmission fluid. It’s not the first time humans used slippery plant squeezings in machinery on a large scale, as canola oil did a fantastic job at lubricating engines in World War II.
Unfortunately, by 1992, jojoba itself became hard to get, possibly because people didn’t yet know how to grow it effectively, so replacements had to be found. Fortunately, Erickson and Landis figured it out, creating synthetic Liquid Wax Ester (LXE) to replace the replacement for whale oil. Lubegard says, “LXE Technology is bio-based, and composed of the fatty acid of a high erucic acid containing seed oil esterified with an expensive and rare alcohol.” In other words, “We found a substitute. As for the specifics, it doesn’t use whale, so mind your own jojoba wax.”