Air conditioning or what?
07/27/2014
Nowadays, hardly any cars are delivered without air conditioning. It used to be quite different. Back then, air conditioning compressors were expensive and the fuel consumption was high. As a result, hardly anyone could afford one of these sophisticated systems.
And so car designers came up with other solutions to make things more bearable for vehicle occupants. There were flaps under the windshield (as in the Citroën 2 CV), flaps on the side for additional fresh air intake (as in the Fiat 2300 S) or even fold-out windows (as in the VW T1 Samba). And, of course, the famous fold-out triangular windows in the front doors and the hinged windows on the rear windows.
All these features have become obsolete and are now missing in modern cars. In contrast to the maintenance-intensive and sometimes fault-prone air conditioning system, however, they worked at all times and without much maintenance.
