An electric motor includes a rotor and a stator. The stator surrounds the rotor, has a top half, a bottom half, and wire windings, and is fixed with respect to the drive-unit housing. The stator is cooled by gravity feed via a fluid supplied by an external source and flowing onto and past the top half. The motor also includes a fluid dam fixed relative to the stator. The fluid dam is configured to guide the fluid around the stator and shield the rotor from the fluid flowing past the stator thereby limiting an amount of the fluid between the rotor and the stator such that spin losses in the electric motor are controlled. An electro-mechanical drive-unit employing the above described electric motor is also disclosed.