Saturday, April 21, 2012

Automotive Enlightenment

I should never, ever own or even drive a Ford Model T: the controls are...different. In way that will cause the driver, if she is me anyway, to get in a lot of trouble very quickly. Yowza!

...The controls on your car didn't just happen to end up where they are -- it was a slow process, with plenty of weird permutations. (Motorcycles, even more so -- the Indian and Harley "suicide shifter" being merely one of the better-known.)

(Also because this. You realize over half the people you meet have that kind of mental process? And they always have.)Link

7 comments:

perlhaqr said...

Ha ha ha, yeah. I remember my grandfather trying to describe the controls on a Model T to me once shortly after I'd learned how to drive. He was not successful.

perlhaqr said...

Ha ha ha, yeah. I remember my grandfather trying to describe the controls on a Model T to me once shortly after I'd learned how to drive. He was not successful.

Comrade Misfit said...

Same thing happened with aircraft controls. Every designer seemed to come up with a different system to control the airplanes. Hell, even into the `40s, there were airplanes where one pulled back the throttle to add power as opposed to pushing it in. Wright engines required pulling the mixture control to enrichen, Pratts required pulling it to lean.

Sheer insanity and it caused not a few fatalities.

Robert Fowler said...

Yeah, but it's still a sweet car.

Loki1776 said...

And I thought it was bad that the shifter on the Norton Commander I test rode worked backwards.

CGHill said...

Nowadays they grumble over whether the manual flick-it gizmo for the otherwise-automatic transmission should go this way for up, that way for down, or the contrary. It's enough to make you want to leave it in D.

Ritchie said...

In the 70s I had the opportunity to look into a Citroen 2CV parked on the street on Nantucket. I was able to identify the steering tiller, yes, but after that it was all ???