When did this happen? American made cars switched from the floor bright light button

[Ray1936]

How tough was it to manually crank over an engine before electric starters, Ray?!
LOL...

Well, with cars, that was just a bit before my time, John. But my 1958 DPD Harley-Davidson had a kick start that gave me heart attacks every cold morning.

[Mikeg]

In my previous post, I should have been a little more specific - it was redesigns involving FWD transaxles with transverse engine orientation [[east-west instead of the traditional north-south cylinder alignment) that affected the packaging. With a transverse mounted engine, the firewall could be moved closer to the front bumper, giving the occupants more legroom but causing the front wheel wells to encroach into the footwell and eliminating the real estate previously occupied by the dimmer switch.

Ray, I can't believe you never had the opportunity to hand-crank an old car!
My dad had an old Ford Model T clown car that was hand-cranked and by the time I turned 10 years old, he had taught me how to work the spark and gas levers on the steering column while he did the cranking. If you were trying to start the car by yourself, you had to take a guess as to the right settings for the spark, gas and choke, then turn the engine over by hand and hope it started to fire. If not, you had to re-adjust the settings and try again. With a helper, you could continue hand-cranking while your partner manually adjusted the levers to make the engine come to life. By the time I was 12, I was strong enough to hand-crank the engine. You had to be careful as you cranked because if the engine backfired, it would send a kick back through the hand crank that could break your arm.