My '67 Mustang may have had one of the first “intermittent wipers”. The windshield washer was a small pedal at the far left of the footwell that operated a mechanical foot pump that sprayed washer fluid and triggered a few sweeps of the the wipers. You could just tap the pedal an get one wiper sweep as you needed it.
Strangers thought the tiny pedal was the emergency brake.
That reminds me of public buses–with separate wipers (each with its own wiper motor) on the two halves of the windshield.
Sounds like “idiot lights.”:dubious:
I had a 1972 Impala that had the heater controls to the left of the steering wheel. It also had a little fan in the back deck for a rear window defogger that was turned on and off by a toggle switch on the dashboard.
My brother had a 1967 Oldsmobile Toronado - a 425 cubic inch V8 front-wheel drive monster; it was front-wheel drive before front-wheel drive was for econo-boxes. It was sleek, low-slung, powerful and futuristic, with features like hidden pop-up headlights.
The most unusual feature though was its rolling drum speedometer. My brother got it up to 127 MPH, trying to roll the speedometer back around past 0 (it went to 135). He drove over some railroad tracks and seeing sparks in the rear-view mirror he decided he should probably slow down. It was a great car, except for the 9 MPG.
Battery in the trunk? Hell, my Corvair had the whole engine in the trunk! 
Lot’s of oddness with those cars - but a joy to work on - and drive! Loved driving it with the rear seat folded down and my dog hanging out in the back…
The VW Squareback I used to have, had the engine in the back. The two pairs of cylinders were horizontally opposed.
Some VWs have lug bolts. Not nuts. Real headache when you work in a tire store, and you are trying to put four wheels back on one of them.
Which generation of the G-body would that be? I’ve had/have 2 G-bodies and my brother had one and I’ve been in various others and none had the battery under the rear seat. All those were from the 1978 to 1988 generation. Other people may have moved it under there for racing but GM didn’t put it there.
My first car ever was my grandfather’s '62 Rambler American that had a push-button transmission. I saw people mentioning the Chrysler above, but the Ramblers had them, too.
My next car was a '67 VW Beetle that had an auxiliary gas tank that contained 2 gallons of gas that you could access by flipping a switch on the floor. That saved me from running out of gas any number of times.
What was your gas mileage?
Oh lord - I have no idea after all these years. I was just your typical teenager who didn’t pay attention to the gas gauge the way she should and often came close to running out of gas. :o
late '90s through mid-2000s.
Well…I have come close to not practicing what I preach. The Mercedes I bought had an instrument panel with some parts that didn’t work, including the fuel gauge and the speedometer. (And a tachometer–I don’t know why a car not designed for high performance would need one.) I have been impressed with the car’s excellent gas mileage and have given it the benefit of the doubt concerning the amount of fuel in the tank–but this morning I had the faulty instrument panel replaced.
The 90’s Pontiac Gran Prix, Grand Am and some other models, as well as the Crossfire had body panels and hood that were ribbed - obviously designed for your driving pleasure.
I had a 1969 Rover 2000 TC, LHD U.S. model, and it was nothing but quirks. The “TC” stood for “twin carburetors,” so you needed a carb balancing tool to tune it. It had four-wheel disk brakes (the rears were inboard, not in the wheels) and De Dion tube rear suspension.
Inside the cockpit, the turn signal stalk was on the right, instead of the usual left side, and the left stalk was the horn. You pulled it towards yourself (the way some cars flash the high beams) to sound the horn. The headlights were controlled by two toggle switches on the dash. You clicked both into the down position to turn them on.
The car had a device called ice alert: a sensor that flashed a yellow light on the dash when the outside temp approached freezing, and went on solid at freezing or below. Many modern cars have a display for outside temperature, but in the 60s and 70s it was very rare.
For all that, it was a fun car to drive.
My cousin’s Mustang had this type of horn, too. And 1984 sounds about right. Maybe earlier; I think it was a replacement for her very short-lived Fiat.
We once had a Lincoln–I think it was a 1948. It had a real quirk–practically everything was controlled with buttons. Even the doors–they were opened from inside and outside with buttons!
Note that some of these “VW Bug quirks” are of vastly different vintages. They were produced for over two decades with many incremental changes. The “semaphore style” signals were only on pre-1961 Beetles. That type of turn signal wasn’t unknown on cars in the 1950s. The “spare tire powered windshield washers” was on my '72, which had a fuel gauge, etc.
My '72 was a regular Beetle, not a Super Beetle. Flat windshield. That was actually a good thing when I moved to CO, and safety inspections forced me to replace it because it had small crack in it. Very cheap replacement.
