I don’t know if they were alcoholics, but they were described by their contemporaries as two fisted drinkers. They were liked by their employees better than Ford, who had his employs homes searched for booze. The Dodge brothers paid their employees piece work instead of hourly, gave them beer breaks at work with free beer and had a fully staffed medical clinic in the plant.
Don’t forget turn signals. Our '50 Pontiac had them and our '51 Chevy did not, but both had mechanical clocks that ticked and whose springs were wound electrically periodically. Mid-50’s VW’s had turn indicating semaphores that flipped out of the sides at the push of a dash mounted control stick. Radios had vacuum tubes with high voltage supplied by a vibrating switch inverter circuit. Later radios used tubes that operated on 12vts B+, dispensing with the vibrator, and transistor radios followed shortly thereafter. Voltage regulators were electro-mechanical with points that needed filing and readjusting every few years.