I miss not a having the parrafin heater in my car in the winter now like the old Trabant...
Sounds like some people need reminding that heaters in cars in Australia were uncommon until well into the 1960's. Some examples I remember - 1962 Holden Special I had as a company car at one stage, 1965 Landcruisers we re-equipped with in 1965. (My personal cars have usually had heaters - VW, followed by ex SMHEA Landrovers - but replaced by a non-Snowy Landrover, which I fitted a heater to after driving through snow near Orange on the way from the Simpson to Sydney).
Heaters were generally seen only on English or European cars, and then not always, until the 1960s. And then the Japs arrived, invariably fitted with heaters, and usually even with a radio! (Not the 4x4s, of course, they were work vehicles).
The requirement for demisters under ADRs from the early seventies ensured that cars from then on had heaters. And some of them even worked.
My 1948 Austin A40 Devon had no heater. So not even all British cars had a heater.
It did have leather seats in the front though.
I recalled after posting the above whether Sash meant the Diesel fueled heaters in reasonable use today, then I had another thought.... in a Trabbie?????[bigrolf]
No doubt he'll confirm or not, if he can be arsed.[biggrin]
Then again, it could easily have been this type of Paraffin Heater. [biggrin]
36 Vintage oil heater ideas | oil heater, kerosene heater, heater
Hi
I cut a hole in the firewall of my FX Holden one mid 60s winter in Melbourne. Then added a heater coil and tap kit from Repco.
Toasty.
The tap was in the engine bay, so a little planning ahead was needed. As for summer, well a piece of cardboard over the new hole kept most of the engine heat out of the cab.
Cheers
Yep.
The 1969 Toyota Crown ute I learnt to drive in didn't have a heater or demister.
A small suction cup radiant heater/demister was stuck at the base of the windscreen and plugged into the cigarette lighter but was worse than useless.
You always carried a cloth or two for spiking the windscreen when driving in wet/cold weather
The idea is you drive with the windows open! Up until the early sixties, in NSW at least, the driver's window was required to be open, as hand signals were compulsory. By the late fifties, perspex wind and rain shields round the top and front of the driver's window were commonplace.
And go back a little earlier, most cars had opening windscreens. However, by the 1940s hardly any of them could be opened enough to clear your vision, although this was quite possible with my 1955 Kombi - driving with the driver's windscreen opened 90 degrees was quite effective at dealing with a misty windscreen or dust on the screen. Not good if there were a lot of insects though!