Which makes were those?
The answer to the OP is simply Saab, although Citroen isn’t far behind.
In addition to the aforementioned oddities. They also have a fairly ingenious AC vent mechanism. A single knob handles the all of vent directional control.
They had freewheeling for a while.
In the sixties, you still had to add a quart of oil to each tank of gas.
Some 9-5s had a Night Panel button.
I drove (and loved) a Citroen 2CV for a few years - the whole car was a collection of quirks, including:
[ul]
[li]The windscreen washer was a rubber bulb on the floor that you had to squash with your foot to squirt the water[/li][li]The front door windows didn’t roll down - the lower half hinged outward and folded back on the outside of the top half (the rear door windows didn’t open at all)[/li][li]Gear stick emerged from the dashboard[/li][li]Handbrake was also a pull handle under the dashboard[/li][li]The cabin ventilation comprised a screw knob that you turn - this opened a long flap under the windscreen through which air could enter - you could see daylight through it.[/li][li]The jack handle doubled as a crank starter (the car could be started by inserting it into a hole behind the front grille[/li][li]All of the seats could be easily removed by unclipping them from the floor[/li][li]The body panels were bolted together - using the wheel brace (which was on the other end of the jack handle) plus one or two other tools, nearly the entire car could be taken apart.[/li][li]The soft top canvas roof was pretty unconventional too - the front edge was supported by a wooden bar - to open it, you undo a couple of clips and manually roll the roof canvas onto the wooden bar (sort of like a sardine can) and then tie it up at the back using a couple of laces.[/li][/ul]
My Volvo does that automatically.
Nice to see there is another Doper who’s a sucker for a used car salesman. 
You have got to read “The Edsel Affair” by C. Gayle Warnock. I always wondered about the odd two-tone pattern on my Pacer. It turns out that it happened basically by accident. Someone in development made the claim that the car would be so different that you could spot it from the top of a building. Huh? Every car looked basically the same from the top of a building. Now if the roof happens to be a different color from the hood and trunk --------------
(While the pushbuttons and stuff are cool my favorite part of the 58s will always be the speedometers. Watching the needle stay still while everything else turns still gets a chuckle out of me. Although I must admit the 59s are better drivers.)
A friend of mine from high school surprised her parents–and me–with her specific taste in cars once. She was about 33 when she did this, and she could afford it.
Not only did she buy a new car, she went all the way to Corona Del Mar–she lived in the San Fernando Valley at the time–to get the particular make she wanted, a Volvo, in a particular color!
I had seen the car before; but one day when I went to meet the parents I saw the car parked in front of the house–and my heart started pounding. When I came face-to-face with the girl in the living room–I hadn’t seen her in 14 years–my legs started to feel weak and I asked to sit down. :o
I’m really interested by this ‘feature’. When the spare tire was in place, i guess there was a little extension hose that you hooked up to the valve? Could you care to guess how many hours of windscreen wiper operation you’d get from a single spare tire load?
Did it ever happen to you that you got a flat when it was raining, and after replacing with a spare you suddenly found your wiper motive power was nonexistent and you had no wiper until you got the tire fixed or bought a new one?! haha
The Buick Skyhawk, Chevy Monza, Pontiac Sunbird, and Olds Starfire had a V8 engine that was so large, you had to lift the engine to reach all of the spark plugs.
Not just the Bug - the Squareback had this system too. The windshield washers are fed by a rubber tube, one end screwed into the tire valve, and one end pushed onto a metal tube connecting to the washers nozzles. This connection is inside the car, just in back of the dashboard.
My wife drives a SB, (it’s her baby!), and had a very amusing experience, to me at least, several years ago. The car manual says that the spare tire is supposed to be inflated to 43 psi, and I had just done so. She was driving home from some shopping and had just turned off into our development, about a quarter mile from home, when the hose came off the nozzle connection and started spraying cold water, at 43 psi, on her feet and legs. Now, when that happens, you can’t get away from it and you can’t turn it off. So by the time she was able to stop the car and get out she had been thoroughly hosed down with cold water.
She usually has a good sense of humor, but it failed her this time.
Your father had a 1962 Chrysler? **I had a 1962 Chrysler.
**
Crap I’m old.
Had nothing to do with the wipers themselves, just the washer.
On mine, the windshield washer reservoir clamped to the spare tire. with a very short hose which screwed to the tire valve stem leading from the cap of the reservoir. I found a picture. My clamps were slightly different, this one’s described as a 1970. I had a '72:
Includes but is not limited to the 1998-2004 Cadillac Seville, 2000-2005 Buick LeSabre, and 2000-2005 Pontiac Bonneville.
It’s not that the engine was “so large” (it was a standard small-block Chevy, after all) it was that those cars were based on the Vega which was only originally intended to accept 4-cylinder engines.
Yes, typical wheel nuts to look at, 6 on this vehicle iirc.
Chrysler products used to have left-handed threads on one side of the car. My '67 Dart did.
The Ford Model A had the gas tank immediately behind the dashboard above your legs. The gas gauge was purely mechanical and was installed through the dash directly into the tank. The fuel cap is centered in front of the windshield.
The original VW beetle also had the gas tank above the occupants feet and I think in the the earliest bugs the hood had to be opened to add gas.
I had a 1984 F-250 which had left hand thread lug nuts on one wheel.
One wheel.
Since it was the driver’s side rear wheel, my guess is that it had left hand thread lugs on the driver’s side, but sometime before I bought it the front brake rotors were replaced with ones which both had right-hand threads.
The spare tire didn’t move the wiper blades, they had an electric motor. The spare tire pressure just made the washer fluid squirt on the windshield.
A friend of mine had a Land Rover. Among its quirks was the wiper motors (there were two) were mounted under the windshield; there was no linkage, the wiper arm mounted directly to the motor. And there was a little lever on the back of the motor. (All visible here.) This turned out to be a useful feature, because when the motor broke he could just reach forward and twist the lever back and forth to move the wiper.
Unless there is a function I’m not aware of, the Volvo doesn’t mimic this feature. With this enabled on a Saab, the ONLY gauge visible in the instrument cluster is the speedometer. The rest aren’t dimmed, they are completely turned off. If another gauge becomes important, such as a high rev or low fuel condition, then, and only then, do they illuminate. Which Volvo does this?
The critical difference, of course, is that the Land Rover is an example of Great British Engineering and those little quirks just add to its utility and brilliant design. The 2CV, on the other hand is, well… looks around French. 