Standardized controls for all cars?
In 1971 , ADAC Motorwelt called for standardized controls for all cars in issue 2/1971, starting on page 39. This was in response to letters from readers, but also to a suggestion from the magazine Auto Motor und Sport from the previous year: "Finally install standardized switches, levers and warning lights."
Consequently, the ADAC people developed the "ideal" arrangement (pictured above), in which the blinker is on the left, the windscreen wipers are operated with the right steering wheel lever, the left steering wheel lever can be used to switch between full and dipped headlights, the central steering wheel element can be used to sound the horn and even the relevant warning lights and the fuel gauge and temperature display are standardized.
The world was much simpler in 1971 than it had been ten or twenty years earlier, when every car manufacturer distributed the controls as they saw fit. And gone were the days when not even the pedal arrangement was the same in all cars. However, in the early seventies, there were still car manufacturers who placed the blinker switch on the right-hand side of the steering wheel and made the horn sound not on the steering wheel but by pressing in the blinker lever (or in some other way).
The efforts of the trade press and the increasing globalization of the car industry have actually resulted in an operating standard, even if it does not include all the desired operating elements that the ADAC postulated in 1971.
In fact, you can sit in almost any car today and will be able to operate at least the essential functions, if they are not taken away from you by automatic functions (switching on the lights, operating the windshield wipers). The fact that modern cars nevertheless require increasingly thick instruction manuals due to the increasing range of settings and functionalities is another story.
