planet4ever
Well-known member
This is off-topic, even for the “Off-Topic” area, but was triggered by a comment I made over at Nissan : 6,000 (Japanese) orders to be delivered by Mar 31 ?. I said it would be a blast for me to drive a LEAF with the steering wheel on the right side, because I used to drive that way. One person wanted to hear more, so here it is.
My story starts in 1943, in the middle of World War II. No, I'm not that old – I wouldn't be driving for another ten years or so – but I was definitely around. My dad owned a Willys, and he loved it. You never heard of Willys? They built a great car in the thirties, and I can prove it. When the army got bogged down in Europe they sent out a call for a light utility vehicle that could be used off-road. Willys got the bid, and they came up with what the army called, in their inimitable way, “Utility Vehicle, General Purpose”.
Well, the soldiers loved them. They would go anywhere and run forever. They started calling them G.P.s, and that got shortened to Jeep, and you know the rest of that story.
So, back to my tale, and Dad's Willys in 1943. Because of his work, my father had to move from Kansas to northern Wyoming that year. He had every confidence in the Willys to make the trip, except for one thing – its tires were totally bald. He wouldn't normally run tires that long, but this was the War; the real war, where everyone sacrificed. Every bit of rubber the nation could produce was needed for the war effort. Tires, like many other things, were rationed.
The ration board said “no dice”, and Dad was stuck. The only way to get new tires would be to get a new car, and there were no new cars for sale, even if he could afford one, which he couldn't.
One day Dad was chatting with a fellow who ran an auto repair shop. Well, it used to be a Hudson dealership, before the war, but now his only business was repairs. The fellow said, “John, I've got the funniest thing to show you. Come on back here and take a look at this.” It was a brand new Hudson. An ugly, dark gray, bulgy, kind of a beast. And it had the steering wheel on the wrong side. The fellow told Dad that he hadn't requested the car, but Hudson had sent it, and told him to get rid of it for whatever he could get. It seems the car had been built to be sent to South Africa, but German U-boats patrolling the Atlantic made commercial shipping impossible.
Dad made him an offer, said good-bye to his beloved Willys, and drove the Hudson home. But then he had another problem. Most of you will find this hard to believe, but until after the War, very few cars had turn signals. Even brake lights only began to appear in the late '30s. The Hudson did have brake lights, but no turn signals.
So, how did people "in the olden days" signal their intentions to other cars? Hand signals. Even when I started driving ten years later you had to demonstrate that you knew the proper hand signals as a part of your driving test. You rolled down the window (no power windows, of course) and stuck your arm out. Hand straight out and finger pointing meant you were turning left. Bent up at the elbow meant you were turning right. Bent down at the elbow with hand open facing backward meant you were stopping. That's what drivers were looking for, and what everyone did until after the war.
Everyone except Dad, because no one was looking for your other arm stuck out the other window. Oh, there was one other exception. Trucks. In those days big delivery trucks had a cab which was narrower than the main part of the truck, so you really couldn't see much if the trucker stuck his arm out the window. The solution to that problem was a truck semaphore – a rigid metal bar, usually with reflectors built into it, that had one end mounted on a pivot, and a cable that could be used to pull it out horizontally, or up or down at an angle.
So Dad bought a used truck semaphore and got someone to weld it to the left front door. He ran a cable through the wing vent (you remember those, don't you?) and down to an angle pivot that he bolted below the left side of the glove box. The car had a bench seat in front with a “grab strap” attached to the back of it. The grab strap was actually a cable wrapped in leather. Dad took that off, connected one end to the angle pivot and wrapped the other end around the steering column.
Dad still had that car in 1954 when I started driving, and we still gave “turn signals” by pulling on the grab strap next to the steering column. But then he bought a used '50 Chevy, and let me drive the Hudson. The car was pretty beat up by then, and I managed to destroy the transmission. (You know how it is with teen-aged boys.) But the last I heard, 10 years later, the engine was still roaring away, pumping water for a local rancher.
My story starts in 1943, in the middle of World War II. No, I'm not that old – I wouldn't be driving for another ten years or so – but I was definitely around. My dad owned a Willys, and he loved it. You never heard of Willys? They built a great car in the thirties, and I can prove it. When the army got bogged down in Europe they sent out a call for a light utility vehicle that could be used off-road. Willys got the bid, and they came up with what the army called, in their inimitable way, “Utility Vehicle, General Purpose”.
Well, the soldiers loved them. They would go anywhere and run forever. They started calling them G.P.s, and that got shortened to Jeep, and you know the rest of that story.
So, back to my tale, and Dad's Willys in 1943. Because of his work, my father had to move from Kansas to northern Wyoming that year. He had every confidence in the Willys to make the trip, except for one thing – its tires were totally bald. He wouldn't normally run tires that long, but this was the War; the real war, where everyone sacrificed. Every bit of rubber the nation could produce was needed for the war effort. Tires, like many other things, were rationed.
The ration board said “no dice”, and Dad was stuck. The only way to get new tires would be to get a new car, and there were no new cars for sale, even if he could afford one, which he couldn't.
One day Dad was chatting with a fellow who ran an auto repair shop. Well, it used to be a Hudson dealership, before the war, but now his only business was repairs. The fellow said, “John, I've got the funniest thing to show you. Come on back here and take a look at this.” It was a brand new Hudson. An ugly, dark gray, bulgy, kind of a beast. And it had the steering wheel on the wrong side. The fellow told Dad that he hadn't requested the car, but Hudson had sent it, and told him to get rid of it for whatever he could get. It seems the car had been built to be sent to South Africa, but German U-boats patrolling the Atlantic made commercial shipping impossible.
Dad made him an offer, said good-bye to his beloved Willys, and drove the Hudson home. But then he had another problem. Most of you will find this hard to believe, but until after the War, very few cars had turn signals. Even brake lights only began to appear in the late '30s. The Hudson did have brake lights, but no turn signals.
So, how did people "in the olden days" signal their intentions to other cars? Hand signals. Even when I started driving ten years later you had to demonstrate that you knew the proper hand signals as a part of your driving test. You rolled down the window (no power windows, of course) and stuck your arm out. Hand straight out and finger pointing meant you were turning left. Bent up at the elbow meant you were turning right. Bent down at the elbow with hand open facing backward meant you were stopping. That's what drivers were looking for, and what everyone did until after the war.
Everyone except Dad, because no one was looking for your other arm stuck out the other window. Oh, there was one other exception. Trucks. In those days big delivery trucks had a cab which was narrower than the main part of the truck, so you really couldn't see much if the trucker stuck his arm out the window. The solution to that problem was a truck semaphore – a rigid metal bar, usually with reflectors built into it, that had one end mounted on a pivot, and a cable that could be used to pull it out horizontally, or up or down at an angle.
So Dad bought a used truck semaphore and got someone to weld it to the left front door. He ran a cable through the wing vent (you remember those, don't you?) and down to an angle pivot that he bolted below the left side of the glove box. The car had a bench seat in front with a “grab strap” attached to the back of it. The grab strap was actually a cable wrapped in leather. Dad took that off, connected one end to the angle pivot and wrapped the other end around the steering column.
Dad still had that car in 1954 when I started driving, and we still gave “turn signals” by pulling on the grab strap next to the steering column. But then he bought a used '50 Chevy, and let me drive the Hudson. The car was pretty beat up by then, and I managed to destroy the transmission. (You know how it is with teen-aged boys.) But the last I heard, 10 years later, the engine was still roaring away, pumping water for a local rancher.
