Originally Posted by cth350

my cars all thrive on 4-60 climate control. It's especially fun when the windows are hand the budget style hand crank kind. There is a well worn story of Jackie Gleeson hating the A/C in his early 60s Mercedes limo while driving in FLA. He invited two Mercedes Benz execs for a ride and they gleefully accepted and he made them sweat a while in the back seat. Soon after that, they added a whole separate A/C system in the trunk, accurately referred to as "the Gleeson A/C" system from that point on.

There are several variations in the heating and cooling technology in the 60s and 70s due to folks trying to balance noise, weight and efficiency of the equipment. At times they tried high-tech solutions like climate control where you choose the temperature and the car figures out if it should be on heat or cool. And plenty of times, the technology didn't fit the need well. Often it worked up front, but after time, the maintenance cost became untenable.

Mercedes had made some rather interesting design trade-offs over the years. The 60s limos have hydraulics controlling just about everything, even closing the trunk lid, but the maintenance cost is staggering. The hydraulic windows controls are totally effortless, fast and silent. It's exactly what a head of state would want. Then some later owner has to pay the bill to fix it, at thousands of dollars these days for the switches and tons of money for the hours and hours of labor, presuming you can even find somebody well trained to do the work. Why? Because small electric motors just weren't good enough for what was required.

-CTH