Yes, doing the starter (once or twice in the life of the car) was easy (it was on the “top” side), but doing a tune-up (every 10K or so) was a major hassle, because the distributor was on the “bottom” side…
Bulletproof engine, though.
I love the bumpersticker on a lot of the 2CVs that reads:
I THINK YOUR CAR LOOKS FUNNY TOO!
I read an interesting article about the Mini once. I can’t remember the exact title, but it said the day the Mini was introduced was the day the British car industry died.
The design innovations that made Japanese cars such a success in the 70s were all present on the Mini ten years earlier, and it sold very well, but they had no way to follow that up and take advantage of it. There was no effective dealer or repair network, bad customer service and advertising, no ongoing improvements or development of the design. Their one bit of brilliance only highlighted how bad everything else was.
The designer of the Mini, Alec Issigonis, was knighted in 1969.
Coldfire, I knew someone with a DS once. (Pretty rare in the states.) He was showing off once about how easy it was to change the front brake pads. Open the hood (inboard brakes), pop open a couple of clips, and there’s the pad. It took about five seconds.
Tuckerfan, believe it or not, a lot of things on some cars you wouldn’t expect are made of balsa wood. I think there’s a term for it, something like “organic engineering”, but I can’t think of it at the moment. Also, balsa is used more often than one would imagine for things like splitters on track cars.
Useless car trivia? Hmm. I have a lot of useless trivia in my head about cars, but most of it applies to mechanical intricacies of cars I don’t own. 
Good god, a bricklin. I hadn’t thought about that car in ages. I’ve been in one.
When Carroll Shelby started making his legendary Cobras, he had to go to court to get permission for the name. Cobra had been used to denote the COpper and BRAss sleeved cylinders of of the ill-fated engine that spelled the failure of the Crosley automobile.
I don’t think it had a rope: it came with a crank IIRC. But the story about the prototype is way cool!
I found two links on the topic, but unfortunately they were in Dutch and Danish. The Danish article has a picture of the 1938 prototype, though. Cool.
As for cars being made out of wood: Morgans have an all wood chassis, too. Here’s a bunch of them during production. The wood can be seen quite clearly! And here’s the end product. What a car!
