Of course if you want REAL engineering brilliance, you have to look at the pushbutton automatic transmissions of the late '50s - early '60s. Notably Ford's 'Teletouch' system used on the Edsel:
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The single circumstance under which a Teletouch could be put into gear with the car moving at greater than three to five miles per hour was if the neutral button was depressed first, thereby removing hydraulic pressure from the inhibitor switch, and then the reverse or park button pushed. These actions would, as a result, either shear off the parking pawl or suddenly set the rear wheels turning in the reverse direction, effectively locking them up against the road surface and possibly damaging the reverse bands in the transmission
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Teletouch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia