2000 Honda 4-Speed Automatic Overdrive?

[Joggernot]

I was looking at my Accord V6 on "msn autos" 2000 Honda Accord Specs and Features - MSN Autos and noticed that it says I have a "4-Speed Automatic Overdrive". I have never noticed the overdrive feature, so went to Wikipedia to look up the transmission List of Honda transmissions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. None of these say there is an overdrive. There is an H5 5-speed at the bottom of the list. Is that what is in the car?

VIN is: 1HGCG1653YA020073

Honda VIN lookup says only a 4-speed automatic.

I wasn't aware that 2000 Honda Accord V6's had an overdrive option. Could someone let me know what reality is?

Thanks.

[Baltothewolf]

It's just that, overdrive. It's an extra gear. There should be a button on the gear selector or a button somewhere else to toggle it on and off. It makes cruising at highway speeds more efficient.

[Ecky]

Driving around my sister's Toyota Avalon, the "overdrive" seemed to just be 4th gear, though a very tall 4th gear.

[some_other_dave]

An "overdrive" is not always an extra gear. In fact, I believe that most of the time nowadays an "overdrive" is simply a transmission gear that is "taller" than 1:1. The 1:1 drives are sometimes called "direct drive" because some designs would have the input and output shafts in line with each other, and the "direct drive" gear would physically lock the two together without pushing the power through the gears. This was more efficient than going through the gears, though you still lost a little bit to spinning the other parts in the transmission.

There was a while where cars had external "overdrive" units between the transmission and the differential. Those were basically mini two-speed gearboxes that would let you select "high" or "low", changing the effective gear ratio. But I can't think of any new cars that have had those in several decades.

Some automatics would call their top gear "O/D", and you could lock it out if you needed engine braking, such as when going down hill. I remember a few (rental) cars that had a button to enable or disable the O/D gear...

But chances are in this case that "overdrive" simply describes a somewhat tall top gear.

-soD