Why Classic Cars Are Awesome: Coolest Features That You Can’t Get in New Cars

So today for America's sesquicentennial, I hope everybody is enjoying that by the way, I thought I would do a brief feature employing one of my 1965 Bonnevilles, showing some of the things that were features on cars in the late 50s and mid-1960s, even through the 1970s, that you still can't get today. Things like reverberating radios would tend to be found on cars as optional equipment in the 50s and 60s. There were of course, vent windows that I think Chrysler was probably one of the last to continue with those. Although Ford did have them as optional on a lot of cars through the 80s. And you also have the crotch cooling vents, you have early mechanical automatic climate control and other features. So take a listen to this particular video and hope you enjoy. By the way, another feature that is in the video that I didn't quite talk about, but you don't find anymore are the rear window defoggers, the blower style defoggers, not the ones with the electric grid. Those basically were outmoded by the electric grid that was put in place starting in the early 1970s. Hope you enjoy and happy 4th of July. All right. So one of the things I thought I would show in my 65 Bonneville with 8,200 miles on it, is a feature that was optional in a number of cars in the late 50s and through the mid 60s. That is the reverberating radio. So these came with, in some cases, a lot of cars even back then didn't even come with the radio. You had to pay for a radio. When you got the radio, you got typically one speaker up there back during this timeframe. When you got the reverberating radio in this Pontiac, you got that speaker up there. You got a reverberating one back there. That's the defogger, by the way. And you could play the sound multiple ways. You could play it with the reverb off. You could play it with the reverb on, or you could just play the rear speaker alone. So let's take a listen here. If I put music on, YouTube is going to say copyright infringement. So you're going to have to listen to talk radio. And by the way, these days, there's not much else on. So happy semi sesquicentennial to everybody as well, July 4th. So let's see here. So this is the normal sound just coming out of there. Now I'll turn the reverb on. Hear that? It's kind of creepy. And then this is just the rear speaker now without reverb. And then the front speaker. The metal springs even continue reverberating for 10 seconds after you shut the radio off. Kind of funny. So that was how this was done back in the day. A lot of cool features that you just can't get anymore. I wish, I mean, it gets a little annoying on talk radio, but if there's music, then it actually sounds pretty decent. Now, the other thing that they have in this car that they don't have anymore are the crotch cooler vents down there. So when you have the air conditioning on, you get air flow not only through that, the center vent up there, and then on the driver's side, but you get flow through down here on these two vents. And it's a very pleasant experience overall. This, by the way, is the automatic temperature sensor. This is a unique IP for the automatic climate control cars. First year for Pontiac automatic climate control. Looks like a second radio there, but it's not. And by the way, this is all real wood on the dash. Pontiac definitely spent some money and it's just so well put together. I mean, the finishes, real wood on the wheel, this Lucite wheel, the gear shift that's sculpted, like the turn signal that's sculpted here. I mean, it's just a fantastic interior in this car. Everything looks rich. The door panels look rich. The headliner. You can't get color combinations like this either. It's kind of a bummer. I really wish they had this. And even the deluxe seat belts, which are only in the front, by the way, there's no seat belts in the rear of this car. That's how it came stock. They're not tucked in. There are no seat belts there. But when you got the deluxe belts, you got the color-coded belts, and you also got, look at this beautiful buckle. It's like a piece of artwork with the Fisher Boddy logo on there. So a few things that they don't do anymore. Certainly don't do loop pile carpeting. You know, that I can understand. I don't know that it was always all that durable. It kind of used to get a little matty as it wore, but it worked. You certainly can have automatic climate control, but it is not manual like this. And you don't have these articulating wipers any longer. So on these, see that? You have this. Let's see if I can stop it. There. See how this is a four bar linkage? So it means that the wiper is able to move parallel to the A-pillar at the end of its track, and it's not run over to the side. It's not kind of leaning over. So this was a Pontiac invention that debuted on these 65s, these butterfly articulating wipers. And you didn't interestingly get it on the Canadian Pontiacs. You got it on these up-level Pontiacs like the Bonneville, and it works well. I mean, I don't really drive this car in the rain, but you can understand how this is going to sweep the entirety of the glass versus something that didn't have those articulating arms and would not. You get a nice little, this was optional, little rear view mirror. I shouldn't say rear view, but vanity mirror. This was also optional. These little dome lights with the reading light that you can turn on. You don't really do all that stuff anymore. You of course have reading lights, but even here you've got a piece of artistry in terms of the lens cover. And this is the optional extra full foam cushion front seat. They only did that in the front. I think it was $15. You got a little bit extra padding and huge thick center armrest. I don't know why the armrests on cars, they don't pad them very well anymore. They're all hard. This is what I want to rest my arm on for a long trip. I don't want it to be on some hard piece of plastic. I don't know why that's so hard for car makers these days to have nice armrests. Interestingly, you get a front armrest, but no back armrest on the four-door. On my two-door Bonneville, there's an armrest back there and there's no armrest up front. Rarely do you see analog clocks either. And this one has stopped working a long time ago, but you know, it looks nice. You get the beautiful light here, a reading light. I guess you flip it that way if you want it to stay on. That's an interesting kind of switch. You push it a little bit and it'll spring back if you push it that way. Or if you want it to lock on, you do that. Huh, that's intentional. It's not a bad switch. Weird. It's clearly sprung loaded this way. It's a little stiff from time. And a grab handle. You can get grab handles up there now, but you don't get one that's on the front of the dash like that. It just conveys power. And this has the 3 to 38 horsepower, 421 cubic inch, four-barrel V8 under hood. So you have plenty of power should you need it. Put these wipers back down and they park. And little coat hooks. You weren't carrying much dry cleaning back in the day, I guess. Not going to fit all that much. Of course, you have one on either side. But little handy things. A little jewelry in the seats. Beautiful door panel in the back. Now the rear door panel is just all cheaped out and hard plastic. Everything here is beautiful, including this Bonneville logo. No more vent windows to crank out. Kind of handy. But that is a couple features I thought that I would just show you that I thought were interesting on this Bonneville. Thanks again for watching.