The lighter port was also very useful for a hand held spot light too!!, Great for looking @ a campsite,especially when it was cold out which I've been to many a time.
Bench seats; They were great for parking on Sawyer Camp Road, scrunching together with your girlfriend and making out. The back seat was also a bench seat, this was useful for things I'll leave to your imagination. Manual window cranks; A safety feature that should be returned on new cars and retrofit devices for cars with only electric windows. Read too many stories of people trapped in cars after accidents when electrical system went 10-7. Wing windows: great when the air conditioning goes 10-7. In the early sixties when I spent eleven months stationed in the Mojave (Fort Irwin), they did a great job without an accessory that stopped up extra gasoline. Change drawers and CB radio plug-ins; Holding parking meter change was all I ever used automotive ashtrays for. The lighter plug-in was what I used to plug in a portable CB rig.along with the CO-AX to the antenna.
The "charm" of rolling down a window is only surpassed by the potentially life-saving convenience of being able to open said window, if one's vehicle should ever end up in the water.
@@debeeriz Maybe in some circumstances but certainly not all. You'd have a much better chance to get out quickly with a roll-down window than an electrically-operated one that has been put out of commission. And, vehicles existed with both seat belts (even in the air bag era) and roll-down windows for decades.
You forgot the lap blanket hanger, a horizontal rope mounted on the back of the front bench seat. It began in the early era of mostly open cars (1900-1930's) during the preheater era. A lap blanket would fend of the cold of winter driving. I think they disappeared in the 1960's.
Full size spare tire; not the donut given today. Metal bumpers. The swing away steering wheel & traffic light viewer, side vent windows should come back.
My 1997 Toyota Hilux has manual windows quarter (vent) windows ashtray cigarette lighter and a cassette player and manual windows are still available in a couple of commercial vehicle's sold in Australia and a vehicle sold in Australia and other countries the Toyota Land Cruiser 79 series have a lot of these items manual windows ashtrays and cigarette lighters and are expensive
Colors that ain't black, white, blue, red, and gray. New cars these day don't have interesting colors and the one that do are limited edition versions like Scat Pack Chargers or TRD Tacomas.
Carburetors. manual choke and throttle. Also radio aerials and curb feelers. Not to mention adjustable spotlights and Continental spare tire kits. And then there were Bermuda chimes on many sport cars.
The things I miss the most about older cars is the vent or "wing" windows, and the ignition switch in the dash (pre-1968). Also cassette players, and NOW even CDs have gone the way of the dinosaur... Drive-in movies were also "cool", being all but gone by the late 70's.... Ahhh, the good old days...
