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

[Don K]

Or how many have ever started a car by either

• depressing a floor-mounted starter switch?
• adjusting the spark-advance lever on the steering column?

When I was working on a peach/apple orchard in South Jersey in '70, I was told to drive by the foreman to drive a beat-up wreck of an early-50's Chevy pickup over to somewhere on the farm to pick something up. That was my only time using a floor-mounted starter switch and my first time driving a stick, but I got it done. I was 16 at the time [[driving age in Jersey was 17, but I guess it was legal since I didn't drive on public roads).

Oh, and I remember my Dad having to play with a manual choke with his '58 and '61 6-cylinder Fords. His first automatic choke car was a '64 Mercury 390 V8).

Now back on topic, I'm pretty sure my '75 Mercury Monarch [[worst car ever) had the dimmer switch on the floor, but my '79 Mustang had it combined with the turn-signal lever, but I'm willing to be corrected on either. BTW, one of Ford's worst design errors was combining the turn signal, dimmer, and wipers on one switch, even on cars with floor shifts, to accommodate cars and trucks with column shifts. I had several Fox-platform cars with that switch. You had to take your hand off the wheel to operate the wipers and you had to go through all of the intermittent settings to get to the constant-speed settings.

[rid0617]

I remember the floor dimmer switch, wish they'd come back and I remember the dashboard choke. The dashboard throttle I don't remember.

I put driving lights in the grill of my retired police cruiser. Didn't want a toggle switch so I got a dimmer switch for a Ford F-150 [[1970s) at Autozone and mounted it to the floor. Hole in the floor mat and that's the new on and off switch for the driving lights.

[Forwardlook]

I would rather say that the floor switch was moved to the column because of cost cutting. Just like other good basic features of a car, vent windows, color-keyed interiors, rear wheel drive etc etc. The true downhill in the automotive industry started in the late 70:s...even before that with totally unrealistic government emissions requirements that killed the drivability and mileage of otherwise nice vehicles. I would suspect that the astronomical costs of these requirements made the big three cut corners in many other places to survive.