According to the
"Operators's Manual for 1959 Chevrolet Light, Medium and Heavy Duty Trucks"
You could get a 283, 322, and 348 ci V8.
The manual also talks about various transmissions:
3 speed
heavy duty 3 speed
4 speed (in my truck)
Spicer, Clark, and New Process 5 speeds
And on 3-4000 series trucks you could get a Hydra-matic. 4 speeds from what I can see in the pictures. And they had a pattern of N I-4 I-3 I-2 space R(everse).
On the 2 - 2.5 tonners you could get a 6 speed 'powermatic' automatic. The floor selector pattern was:
R(everse) all the way forward
N(eutral)
3-Hi Normal driving
3-5 Downhill driving and city
3-4 heaving pulling, congested traffic, long grades
lo-2 starting extra heavy loads, asc/desc extremely steep grades.
Now that had to be pretty cool eh?
Btw, top ratios of all those trannys was 1:1 and there were 2 speed axles.
