Lil4X

Yeah, I've had cars with high-beam indicators in just about every color of the rainbow. You had to flip the switch while staring at the instruments to see what changed. Oooh! THERE it is! Orange, huh! Our last two minivans have had the indicator in a sub-panel in a slit above the instrument binnacle. Right straight behind the rim of the steering wheel. They thoughtfully put the directional indicators there too so that you have NO idea what's going on with your lights.

I understand why they moved the high-beam selector, the foot switch was a nightmare. Probably the reason Chrysler moved the radio auto-tune off the floor too. When US manufacturers moved that dip switch to the column, I was delighted, having been spoiled by European cars.

The thing I never understood was why Ford put the HEADLIGHTS ON control on the same stick, just pushing to turn the lights on, then pulling back to select the high beams. That was probably invented by the same guy who thought up the "rim blow" horn button that was a rubber strip located on the inner diameter of the steering wheel that I first discovered on the '68 Torino. Just TRY to turn a low speed corner WITHOUT blowing the horn.

Aron9000

Best place I've seen an automaker hide a light switch was on a 90's model Range Rover. 99.9% of cars there is a switch to the left of the steering wheel on the dash or you twist the turn signal stalk. Rover put the headlight switch to the right of the steering wheel, like right where the ignition key goes into the dash on most Toyotas.

I've also seen on an older 90's model Audi had a little stalk on the column below the turn signal. Click it down once for parking lights, down twice for the main lights. I think the high beams were still done by the turn signal stalk.

Lil4X

I forget what car it was on, maybe someone can recall . . . the horn was operated by pushing inward on the turn signal stalk. I'm thinking it was Ford who did this somewhere in the '70's, but I'm not sure. We also had a minivan from the early days of airbags that required you to press one of two small pads on the steering wheel spokes. Well, that's fine when you have time to think about where that horn button is - in an emergency you find yourself trying to press the airbag at the center of the wheel.

Hiding various safety-related controls doesn't seem like a good idea, but maybe it was the way designers entertained themselves in the '70's - much like hiding the gas cap was in the '50's and '60's. I think the cleverest one was the '52 through about '56 models that required you push the reflector below the lamp housing to release the housing itself that then swung up out of the way to reveal the filler cap.



Of course if you don't remember these, maybe you recall those of the '60's and '70's that were hidden behind the license plate. With the bracket spring loaded and below the upper edge of the bumper, those filler necks were about a foot to 18 inches off the ground. In order to confine the activities to only two hands, you had to pull down the license plate bracket with on hand, hold it open with the nozzle while removing the gas cap, then you had to roll the gas nozzle sideways to get it into the neck. If you could perform those acrobatics without tearing the hide off the back of your hand on the sharp edge of your plate, you were the ONE person who got away with it. Another problem presented itself when the tank would fill and trapped air would belch out about half a pint of fuel onto your feet thanks to that filler that was almost level with the tank.

Kids with cars of that era learned never to buy gas on your way to pick up a date.

mmarshall

Or if you accidentally kept tooting that rim-blow horn with a bunch of gang-bikers around.

I remember those old gas-filler systems well. A number of them were either under fold-up or side-fold taillights or behind a spring-down license-plate on the rear bumper......which often meant gas spewing out the back.

You also mentioned horn-blowing by pressing in the left-column turn-signal stalk. That odd feature was not just on older Ford products. Some French cars (which were notorious for awkward and non-standard controls) also had that feature.

Aron9000

^ That was part of the charm of those old Citroens. I really love the spaceship dash on the CX, turn signal indicators were two different buttons mounted on in the instrument binnicle.

As for the gas filler under the license plate, I liked that feature on two of the old Cadillacs I had. Cleaned up the sides of the car not having the filler cap on the rear fender. Of course it would burp out gas on the rear bumper, but I figured out how to keep it from doing that. Once you had the tank almost full, you stopped filling for about 20-30 seconds, let the gas settle down, then put in the last two gallons. It would never make a mess doing it that way.

Lil4X

^^ Speaking of odd control locations, the '57 Imperial lacked a turn signal stalk at all. Instead . . . well, here:



Below the MoPar standard column of pushbuttons for the transmission to the left of the instrument binnacle, note the big chrome rocker switch. Yup, that would be your turn signal switch. Push down for left, push up for right. The switch usually self-cancelled when you turned the wheel more that a few degrees, but if not you had to try to push the switch straight in - doable, but a pain to fuss around your left kneecap at freeway speeds. Obviously, this was before the "lane change feature" achieved popularity.

Of course the 1958 Edsel retired the American trophy for goofy dashboards. Note the rotating disc speedometer that looked like a modern-art kitchen timer, and of course the signature transmission gear selector buttons on the steering wheel hub.



It was always fun to watch some poor valet try to park the car when he couldn't find the gear selector. A college pal who had one of these swore most gave up after a minute or so of searching the steering column, dashboard, floor . . . be for he yelled at them "blow the horn" - and the guy was amazed the buttons were in the hub . . . where the horn button should be expected.

In the '60's and '70's Citroen was an example of what can happen when your engineers run amok with a clean sheet of paper and started developing a car with no preconceived notions. Then they turn it over to the art department:



This is the car seemingly designed by the residents of Hangar 19.

mmarshall

The same concept, several years later, resurfaced with the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado (the country's first large FWD car since the 1930s), with its drum-type rotating speedometer. The difference was that the Toronado's drum rotated vertically, not horizontally.

I also remember my dad's 1965 Thunderbird. Its speed was measured by colored fluid that moved across a horizontal tube as it gained speed.....a feature on all of the 4Gen 1964-66 T-Bird models.