A design method to reduce the circulatory circle axle size for automobile hydraulic torque converters is proposed. According to the beam flow theory, the variety of the axle size has little effect on the characteristics of torque converters. Based on analyzing traditional design method, it’s found that the basic reason for oversize of axle is the unreasonable semi-empirical expression of the first and third arc radius. An improved design semi-empirical expression is proposed for passage car torque converters based on the analysis of several foreign mature torque converters, and an improved design method is established. The improved method is used to design a torque converter, and the results show that the circulation circle axle size reduces about 26% in the condition of keeping the same characteristics of the traditional method. It means the improved design method can better meet the design requirement of automobile torque converters.