Children - You'll Never Believe This.

If you have no concept of  hand cranking a car when the battery died - believe me I've done it -  you'll find it hard to believe that "once upon a time" car windows were operated manually, not electrically. Such hard work!

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My first car was a British Ford.  I was twenty three years old, and was the first member of my immediate family to own a car.  My mother rejoiced because her oldest son soon became her personal Taxi service!

I knew that I wanted a Ford.  I have no idea why, but I'd been obsessed with Ford Cars long before I could be an owner.  This was odd because BritFords were the least innovative of all the U.K. car manufactures (remember them?!).  BritFords hung on to three speed gear boxes long after four speed were common.  BritFords also had pneumatically powered windscreen/shield wipers,  A good idea until you stopped at a traffic light and had to rev the engine to activate the wipers. 

Despite all this it was a Ford I wanted for my first car; and it was a pre-owned Ford that I bought.

My car (in common with all other British made cars in that era) did not have air conditioning.  That was fine.  We could manually roll down the windows to get fresh air.

That was fine until it was raining and we could be soaked from an opened window, 

Except that most cars of that era had a moveable "quarter light" on the front diver and passenger sides. The quarter lights could be opened manually thereby providing fresh air and no rain. 'Twas a great idea in my ancient and primitive  car ownership days.