@@dougfisher1813I think the first car to have it was the 1939 Packard but it wasn't common at all. Movie theaters did commonly have air conditioning back then though.
Most older cars had floor vents. One on the left and one on the right. They worked great. My buddy had a 1965 Falcon. We could put 4 beers in each side. They kept our beers ice cold especially in the winter.
They still used it in 1962 on the Corvette. The cowl vent has been a mainstay of cars with air conditioning to this day. Fresh air almost always comes in between the hood and the windshield. What's funny is Chevrolet had this fantastic idea to bring in air from vents over the headlights in 1956, so the 57 Chevy had this standard. It didn't last. It scooped up all the exhaust from cars ahead of it on the road.
@@davidsprauer9443 Man gas prices back then seems like a dream today. The state I'm living in has gas prices that are reaching 4$. Edit: oops meant that to go to Frank Gillespie
An unknown number of 1941 Cadillacs were indeed equipped with the Bishop & Babcock 'factory' a/c units. Finished cars were shipped to B&B's Cleveland plant for fitting, with the finished car then shipped to dealers.
My brother had a '51 Chevy pickup had the same vent, if it started to rain u would eventually get wet feet.😊 He still has a '63 ford Fairlane, had a vent for the left an right side, air came from under the fenders, control each side separately.
I have read that 6 1941 Cadillacs in fact did have air conditioning from new. They were prototyping that system in those years. I guess it must have been delayed by the war, as the air conditioning did not became an option until 1953. It was develloped by Frigidaire and GM.
Its cool and I love vintage/antique cars n have a couple although every car does. The button that shows air coming at the car saying recirculation or fresh air.
My 69 Firebird vents are like that. Not originally, they were the heater vents but the whole heating system was removed, so now the “heater vents” are just opened to the outside air lol.
People were more heat resilient then. air conditioning was only at the movie theater and drug stores and a few restaurants. People were therefore more used to heat.
Just add some R-12 and you won't be able to sit in that car in a heatwave very long cuz it'll freeze everything . My HVAC instructor told us about a guy who did that and he said when he ran the AC for more than a minute it would start snowing inside the car!😂😂😂
@@danielulz1640 LoL. I had a 68 Rambler American that was a hilarious car. The windshield wipers worked off of a vacuum off the carb so the faster you drove the faster they went. The windshield washer had a rubber "pump" on the floor board that you pumped with your foot. I got the car from my brother in law for $200 and he pieced it together from another Rambler so it had one brake in the front right and one in the left rear and that was it. The left front tire was bolted right to the hub, and I couldn't even tell you what happened to the back one on the opposite side. So the car only had 2 brakes on it and the other two weren't even present! And some drunken nutball drove it all the way home from CV leve lol and in reverse cuz they ran it out of tranny fluid, so reverse gear was burned out of it too. I had that stupid car for 2 years and all I ever had to pay for was gas and oil. Back in those days you weren't required to have insurance so I didn't worry about it. There's more to this story about that old rust bucket but I'll leave off here cuz you get the idea. That car was the craziest heap of junk I ever owned and it never left me stranded (with the exception of the heater core going bad, so I bought one of those dashboard heaters that you plug into the cigarette lighter, and I used that to keep a little holed thawed out in the windshield so I could see when it was really cold outside.)
Still an issue on modern cars if you so happened to have it set to outside air, that said at least you can quickly switch it. In an old car, eh, just roast until you are past it.
new car makers could learn a thing or two from the old school way. my best currently own have side window vents and I love that option. 72 Mercedes : 84 f150 : 97 ford 250 power stroke D
probably not disrupts airflow hindering aerodynamics whit h effects gas mileage plus the EPA out lawed many things that protrude from the hood of cars for safety reasons that's why we don't see hood emblems or pop up headlights anymore
@@nicharred07That wasn't the EPA, they just deal with environmental stuff. I don't see vent windows making a comeback with how good A/C systems are now though.
