Charles S. Davis

Charles S. Davis joined Warner Gear in Muncie, Indiana, as secretary-treasurer in 1919. When automakers began making more of their own parts after World War I, he proposed that Warner Gear design one standard transmission for many makes and win on volume and price; its T-64 became one of the most common transmissions in the United States.

Davis helped negotiate the 1928 merger of Borg & Beck, Warner Gear, Marvel-Schebler Carburetor and Mechanics Universal Joint into Borg-Warner Corporation and became its first chairman. In March 1929 he switched roles with George W. Borg and served as president until 1950. He ran Borg-Warner as a holding company that gave its divisions wide autonomy, added Morse Chain, Long Manufacturing and other parts makers in 1929, bought Detroit Gear and Machine for factory space (which brought the Norge refrigerator line with it), and in 1935 started the program that produced Borg-Warner's postwar automatic transmissions. He died in 1954.