Standardization of operation ...
Today we are used to the fact that practically all cars are operated in almost the same way. The blinker is on the left, the gearshift between the seats, the accelerator on the right, the brake in the middle and the clutch on the left. And if it's a car with automatic transmission, then the clutch pedal is simply missing on the left and the brake pedal is slightly larger. And some people think that was always the case. But it wasn't. There were also cars with the accelerator pedal in the middle, just to name one example.
But even with trivial things such as the "shift pattern" of the automatic transmission, different solutions could obviously be found. Even in the same company. The Mercedes-Benz S-Class models W 108/109 and W 116, which were built at almost the same time, had different operating philosophies for the automatic transmission, for example in the eight-cylinder models. Whereas the gearshift lever on the 300 SEL 6.3 (pictured above) had to be pushed forward from the rear in order to start driving, the 450 SEL 6.9 required a movement to the rear, i.e. exactly the opposite.
And the two vehicles were built almost simultaneously. And if that hadn't taken enough getting used to, the 600 even had a selector lever on the steering wheel. Yes, perhaps not everything was better in the past ....
After all, Mercedes (like many other car manufacturers) retained the gearshift logic of the W 116 for several decades and even today you pull the lever backwards in almost all automatic cars when you want to drive off.
