[Keith Tedford]

I've had first hand experience with both. With our '69, which I bought new, you had to hold your elbow away from your body and pull straight back going from first to second and third to fourth. If you pulled sideways at all, the shifter would hang up in the neutral gate. The shifter had a lot of play from new. Once I figured out this technique, shifting wasn't a problem. Then, one day when driving normally, the third-fourth shift arm broke off up inside the shifter mechanism and dropped down. A Hust Competition Plus shifter followed and worked flawlessly ever after. Our '72 Lemans Sport has the original factory Hurst shifter with the rounded handle and it seems to work just fine with about 90K miles on it. This factory shifter doesn't have the bolts on the front and back of the box for adjusting the shift stop. The handle also is the slide in type that creates a little fore-aft handle slop because it isn't bolted on solid . The shifer rodss don't have the wear bushings either. I would imagine that Hurst wanted the round handle so that there was a differentiation between what you bought from the speed shop and what came in the car. I believe that the Speed shop version was a better quality unit all around. With our SS car I just adapted the Muncie handle to the Hurst box and got the best of both worlds.