I remember. When we had a station wagon and we’d always fight over who would have to sit in the very back.

We didn’t have a seat in the very back - that was our playpen!

Remember on the older Fords, the ignition was on the left of the steering wheel?

Adella, we didn’t eat or drink in the car either. But we didn’t have the culture where everyone is walking around with water bottles and snacks all the time.

I do remember when cupholders that hang on the door came out. They were handy when my carpool buddy and I commuted to grad school 40 miles away. We’d stop at the 7-11 for a longneck and nurse it on the trip home in the evening. Oh, yes, back when you could drink while driving.

I remember when you pushed a button for the ignition. Everything old is new again!

Oh my! I remember our "touring car" which was black as were most cars. It had side curtains which could be removed in summer. Had to be cranked to start. We've come a long way since then.

My very first car was a '54 Buick Special.....an absolute tank! My parents gave it to me after high school graduation to commute to both a job and college and as an excuse to buy a new car for themselves :-)

No seatbelts, bench seats (no fold down armrests) and a trunk large enough to pack an entire household in. That big, heavy car could go anywhere! I drove it for another 4 years or so until it finally just pooped out.

My kids loved riding in the way back, and I did too as a kid. Open the back window and wave at the person behind you. Or worse.

“. But we didn’t have the culture where everyone is walking around with water bottles and snacks all the time.”

Plus there were no drive through windows at restaurants To grab food and go. Drive In restaurants where you parked and a ’car hop’ would bring you your food on a tray.

I remember our giant glove compartment full of BCAA (AAA) road maps for the city and for the province and the west coast states. There wasn't any GPS on anything.

Even when my kids learned to drive and google search was available I made them learn how to use a city map to learn shortcuts and alternate routes if they had to reroute.

I remember as a very small tot, having a car called a Rambler. I think it was a station wagon, with a bench seat in front. There was a spot on the dash where apparently I was permitted to chew. Vague memories of sitting between my mom and grandma, gnawing on the dash.😣

When I was 18 my father helped me pick out a 1965 Plymouth Barracuda. It had lap seat belts. He told me that he didn't think it would be safe to use the seatbelt because I could be trapped in the car in an accident.

Always, I’d forgotten about that. It was easy to do by accident!

Rose, I remember hearing that, too. In fact, lap belts were actually dangerous because they threw your upper body forward, more likely to result in a spinal injury.

I was, however, involved in a car accident where we were t-boned. The police said that if the driver had been wearing her seatbelt she probably would have lost her leg; instead she was shoved across the seat and “only” had a broken femur that kept her in the hospital for a month and homeschooled for the rest of the semester.

Still, that was an anomaly. We always wear our seatbelts.

Good old bench seats. As the youngest in the family, my place was in the front between Mom and Dad. Unless I was feeling carsick, then Mom traded places with me so I could get plenty of fresh air from that triangular window (loved them!), and be nearest the door when Dad had to pull over suddenly! I vaguely remember shoulder belts in our new car (mid 1970's?). After that we all started wearing seatbelts, even in the back and middle seats that only had lap belts.

I remember deciding I was finally a big girl when I was able to duck under the dashboard instead of slamming head first into it when my dad slammed on the brakes.

I remember when no car seats for our kids. Gives me chills to think what could have happen in an accident. Just read a few days ago where a mother and two children were in an accident with no seatbelts. One child was thrown out and air lifted to a trauma center. Don't know the outcome.

The first new car I ever had was a '73 Olds cutlas and if the seat belt wasn't buckled, it wouldn't start.

I remember sitting on those bench seats next to my boyfriend who had his arm around me as he drove. If it was a standard transmission, I would shift the gears. As I recall the gear shift was on the steering wheel. Real safe, huh. I wonder how many girlfriends flew through the windshield in an accident.

I can't remember when we finally had a car with seatbelts. My favorite memory as a kid was going to Eat 'n Park and ordering dinner from the car. The waitress would bring the trays and hook them on the car windows. That was such a big treat. And of course going to the drive-in with the speaker hooked on the window too.

I brought my first child home in a two seater Fiat Spider convertible - DH drive and I held him on my lap. The following week we traded it in on an Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser - the first of my 4 station wagons before I graduated to a Chevy Suburban.

For those of you who remember the classic station wagon and the third row seat that faced out the back - there's a wonderful little film titled "The Way, Way Back. " It stars Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell and a fantastic young actor who manages to convey all the uncertainties and embarrassments of a shy 14 year old on a summer vacation with his Mom and her boyfriend who constantly belittles him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way,_Way_Back

Sometime in the mid 1980's we bought a 1964 1/2 Mustang convertible - black with red interior. DH took it to a custom shop to replace the rag top and they added seat belts.

I think we’re all but ready to ask, “Remember stick shift?” I always swore I’d buy another car with stick in time for my kids to learn to drive, but now that seems more nostalgic than necessary.

push button ramblers

We traveled a lot-cross country in every direction. My mother would put a crib mattress on the back seat and we would sprawl out and sleep. We must have been pretty small. The back window was a coveted spot. We got a car in the early sixties that had pushbuttons. My mom would leave us in the car back when mothers did that and our major job was keeping my baby brother, with his magnetic attraction for the buttons, from pushing the buttons through the cover plate. Even we learned to take the plate off and reseat the buttons.

I changed gears for a boyfriend as well. At first he would tell me to change gears but eventually I recognized the sound of the engine changing and would do it all without knowing such a thing as a clutch existed. I also didn't know about the button to switch lights.

The first time I wore a seat belt, in college no less, going home with a friend we hit mud on a new section of interstate and spun out going over 70. My window was open and I was being pulled out the window. I had major bruises.

I remember standing on the rear floor of our Ford sedan and holding onto the strap that went across the back of the front bench seat. It was a long satin covered rope style with brass fittings screwed in on each end. I loved holding on tightly on curves and leaning dramatically to the side going "wheee !". Also a great place to sing along with Doris Day's What will be will be or Corinna, Corinna.

I remember the phrase "4 on the floor and a 5th under the seat" lol.

I miss the side vent windows, changing the beams with a floor button, ashtrays, lighters and cars that actually fit 6 adults comfortable, not 6 anorexic 10 year olds. Put the stick shift back on the column and the E brake back on the floor. I would rather have a seat there.

That and a 4 x 60 air conditioning

I remember drum brakes. Get them wet and the only way to stop (5,000 lbs of car) was to grab the steering wheel and stand up on the brake pedal, the sound was awful.

Back bench seats were like big soft couches. Lovely.

Even then, before my mother had a driver's license, my father would tell us to sit down, he was concerned we could get hurt. (1950's)

Couple of years ago in I think Car and Driver that one of the car companies was experimenting with the vent windows. Apparently it did not take. I liked them because they would deflect bugs away from the car rather than inside if you had the main windows all the way down.

My best friend in HS lost her first child when she went over railroad tracks and lost control. The door opened and he fell out and as the car rolled backward down the embankment he was killed. Messed her up really bad for years. However even before that I was super cautious because of where I lived when I purchased my first car. Always drove with seatbelt and the doors locked with windows down only far enough that a person could not stick their hand in except for the drivers window.

I remember falling out of cars when I was four or five. The first time, my mother was driving on a gravel road to my uncle's house (not very fast), and when I leaned against the door in the back, it opened, and I fell out onto the road. I guess I had never closed it very well, but I was only four. I remember thinking that I was going to be left on the side of the road because it took my mother a while to realized that I had fallen out. That was scary, but at least I didn't get killed.

A year later I fell out of my father's pick-up at a gas station and landed on cement. This happened right when he started driving, and so he didn't get far - plus I was in the front instead of the back.

I always wore seat belts as soon as they were available because I was afraid of falling out.

I remember my parents telling me a story about driving my Dad's old Volkswagen Bus with his Mother & Father (my Grandpa & Grandma) in the very back seat. When they arrived at their destination they discovered Grandma (who unfortunately was an old battle axe) wasn't in the back seat beside Grandpa. The story goes she fell out but my Mom & Dad jokingly say Grandpa probably pushed her out HaHa!

In the late 1940s, I learned to drive in a 1928 Model A Ford. Seat belts were never considered for that model. It did not have wing windows for ventilation; we rolled down a side window that offered plenty of buffeting. It did have provision to tilt the bottom of the windshield outward. We used that once or twice, but for most of the time, the windshield was kept in place due to deteriorating seals. That wasn't needed anyway. Wing windows would appear in the 1930s. I had a 1954 Dodge Sedan with the Red Ram hemi engine (rated all of 140 hp). It had a cowl vent that worked well, blew air down toward your feet when the car was in motion. That did very little in slow traffic.

That old Model A did have one item that was modern for its time. The windshield wiper was driven by an electric motor; Most others of that period were vacuum powered and those quit when one opened the throttle. It was designed in a half circular case and had an appearance of a vacuum wiper, but was electric.

I still have a stick shift--a 2011 Subaru Legacy. Always prefer stick shift.

I remember having lap seat belts and not using them. Most people didn't back then.

Now we have heated and even cooled car seats. I remember people buying wicker pads to keep the driver from sticking to car seat in summer's heat.

I recall 'bug shields' that mounted on the hood to keep some insects from smashing on the windshield. (DId that somehow stop being a problem? I haven't driven cross country in summer for a long time.)

Some car windshilds had a band of greenish glass along the top to prevent glare.

Remember the analog clock that quit working forever in the time it took you to drive home from the car dealership?

I cried when I grew too tall to fit on the back shelf under the rear window. Soon I couldn't stretch out on the back bench seat either!

To this day I have the urge to thrust my right arm out across the seat when I have to make a sudden stop. There hasn't been a small child 'loose' on the front seat for decades.

I fell out of a car once. DH parked on Nob Hill in San Francisco. I was on the 'down' side. I removed my seatbelt, opened the door -- which swung completely open -- and lsat on the street. DH was busy using both hands to lever his door up and open. We're a couple of flatlanders.

I remember dating and being able to snuggle up to my date as he drove along because of the bench seats. Heavens, bucket seats would mean no snuggling, and I would be sorry to have missed that.

Chisue, I vaguely remember bug shields. But I do recall in the 90s or early 00s driving home from, somewhere, through Nebraska and Iowa and picking grasshoppers out of the grill for days afterward.

I never did get the hang of standard shift. I think if I had a visual of what happens with the clutch and shifting I could have gotten it. When I lived in Texas, my friend and I would drive home to Chicago at Christmastime in her standard shift. She‘d take me out the Sunday before our trip to practice in the shopping mall parking lot (blue laws, the shopping mall was closed). On the trip, I drove only on the interstate; I could handle the on and off ramps, but certainly not traffic!

My mom, she learned how to drive as a young women when she became a traveling rep for Lilt home permanents. She was from the prairie and was assigned to western New York, with all the hills, and that’s where she learned to drive a standard shift In the 1940s!

Definitely. No car seats either.

I learned to drive with automatic transmission but then switched to stick shift in order to drive trucks for my father. I vaguely remember driving a standard shift, but normally I drove either automatic or four in the floor, which is what I have now. There is less maintenance with a stick shift, and they are cheaper to buy in the first place.

My left arm got a work out when we had our first child who rode upfront with us in the old Plymouth. Then we got a country squire Ford station wagon which was as big as a bus and the kids would sit way in back in facing seats. One of the cars, a Nissan Maxima had automatic seatbelts but they were dangerous unless you pulled the one across your lap.

I bought my first automatic shift car in 2016 when I was 68. I almost cried because you just cannot buy a nicer car with a standard shift anymore - except a few coupes. I traded in my BMW for an Audi and neither had a new model with a stick shift, except some really high end performance sports cars and I need a sedan. I HATE driving an automatic more than I can say.

My father drove a Kaiser when I was young. I remember it had push button door latches on the inside and the doors opened oddly. maybe both front and back opened from the middle of the car, one hinged in back one hinged in front. I swear I remember it was a 3 door model with only one back door, but I haven't ever been able to confirm that when looking them up on the internet.

My best friend in high school's family had a really nice 60 something DeSoto that had push button transmission on the dash. Her father had a Hudson Jet that he drove to and from work. It was a riot. If she took the DeSoto on our nights out, they checked the mileage and she wasn't allowed to put too many miles on it (bad for our forays) but the Hudson's speedometer didn't work so we could drive as far as we wanted (to their summer cabin about 25 miles away, where our friends also had cabins and weekend parties). That poor car really complained on the freeway.

We always called the vent windows "wing windows".

If you want a good arm workout, drive a car without power steering. My first vehicle had power assisted steering and was a moderate arm workout.

Here's a Kaiser from the Culver City Car Show:

At last, the reason to mount one of those little 'knobs' on a steering wheel: It frees an arm to snuggle your girlfriend.

Driving 'stick' isn't fun in traffic. I remember one hot summer day when it took *forever* to drive from north of Chicago to Joliet in the Healey. My left leg was about to fall off after stop and go on the expressways, then Road Work the rest of the way. No A/C in that little roadster.

After that first car - a fully automatic '54 Buick Special - every car I owned for the better part of 25 years was a standard transmission! It wasn't a conscious decision....that's just how things worked out and there were a lot more cars with a standard transmission back in those days :-) It started with an Opal my DB and SIL gave me after the Buick went to car heaven. That was a lot like driving a tin can on wheels!! Then came a '66 VW Bug, probably the second most favorite car I have owned.

My favorite car was my 124 Fiat Spider. I had two - the first was killed in an arson fire we experienced but it was replaced with a slightly newer model with insurance proceeds. I owned that car for almost 20 years and while it was not my primary means of transportation, it was certainly my favorite 'play' car. Tootling around in that with the top down and the stereo blaring filled me with joy every time I drove it :-) Was also the only car I ever owned that I sold for twice what I paid for it! A highly successful investment on all counts! 15 years later, I still miss it.

I once traveled from Texas to New Jersey with my infant son on my lap, protected only by my strong hold on him and the knowledge that I would protect him with. my own body!!!!!!

It was not before seat belts but is was just before child safety seats. We had no safety seats when my two kids were little. There was no law requiring them in those years. it came just after my two passed that point.

Yes and I do remember shifting gears for a teen aged boy in his old bench seat sedan car. That was before these times when females are no longer an accessory to a male who has the seat of power. Now, she is the on who doing the driving!!! And, it is her car!

aok, we had a Rambler, made by Nash. It looked like an upside-down bathtub.

My mom learned to drive in it, it was a hoot. Grinding gears, and Dad yelling at her, with us 6 kids in the car.

One night, she was trying to shift, panicked and turned off the headlights (it was dark out). There was lots of excitement and swearing!

We had a mercury zenith I think it was. The entire back window could be put down. We would kneel on the back seat, facing backwards and loved when our parents put down that window. Coolest thing I had ever seen. We loved it.