Agreed.
A/C was also a dealer-installed option on US domestic vehicles as well.
I installed many A/C units in Chrysler/Plymouth vehicles in a dealership years ago.
Mom? Is that you?
My mom wanted a luxury car. Then she got mad that her luxury car had a bunch of features she didn’t want. I told her the same thing I’ll tell you. Car makers do not make cars to target you, they make cars to target the most populated audience. Most people want the toys, so unless you pony up 6 or 7 figures for a bespoke, fully custom car, you’re getting the toys.
Yeah, and I rode around in the bed of a pickup truck at 70mph when I was a kid, because I was stupid, the driver was stupid, and my folks never found out. I survived, but the logical conclusion to that is not that riding around in the bed of a pickup truck at 70mph is perfectly safe.
Just because you got away with it before does not mean you will get away with it next time.
Plus, you’d probably pay more overall if there was a crank window option. Design costs money, parts storage costs money, switching things up on the assembly line costs money. At this point it’s cheaper to just put power windows in every car.
He’d have liked my dad. 
He bought a stripper '82 Tercel. No radio, no air conditioning. Ran like a top until it got T-boned by some guy running a stop sign.
But the no air conditioning thing was… Not pleasant.
Cars aren’t rocks. They won’t shoot to the bottom at Mach 3 or anything. And most lakes aren’t 60 feet deep right at the shoreline. If you drive off the road and into a lake, open the door and walk to shore.
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My late 50s MGA wasn’t even equipped with door handles, just a wire inside the door that you pulled to unlatch it.
My 57 Karmen Ghia wasn’t equipped with a fuel gauge, just a motorcycle like petcock. It did have a nice clock though, as big as the speedometer.
The good old days of simplicity. Man O Man do I miss vacuum wipers!
The only ignition failure I ever had was with a keyed ignition and the lock cylinder failed due to wear and tear. None of my push button starts has ever failed, including one at over 180,000 miles. So the modern advanced gadgets have held up well and the simple keyed ignition has failed. Sometimes technology and new gadgets are better. Just sayin…
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+1
Some of you might recall my interaction with my elderly aunt after she bought a new Chevy Malibu, circa 1973.
She was very proud of herself because she had taken a steak knife, and cut the seatbelts out of her brand-new car as soon as she got it home from the dealership.
Me: Why did you do that?
Aunt: If I broke my arms in an accident, I wouldn’t be able to unfasten the seatbelt if the car went into a lake or burst into flames, and I would be trapped.
Me: Well, if your arms were broken, you also wouldn’t be able to operate the door handle, so you would still be trapped, but you would be much less likely to be injured in the first place if you’re belted-in.
Aunt: Stop being impertinent!
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180,000 miles on wheel bearings or piston rings, I understand, but miles on a push button?
Just messing with you but I understand what your saying. Just like ECU’s have proven themselves incredibly reliable over time, hopefully push button electronically controlled starters will also.
Time will tell whether that new Ford Maverick is reliable. Its cheap, for a pickup, but it’s still comparably loaded with electronic compared to an early 90s Tercel! Also, a good friend of mine had a Tercel, and he wasn’t very impressed with its reliability, not at all.
Approximately 400 Americans drown each year in their cars. Many, but not all, water escapes are hampered by water shorted electric windows. It doesn’t have to be in deep water. It could be in rushing water where a door won’t open but a window might if it was not shorted out.
It’s fascinating to see some of the snarky responses, to a statistically small, but real tragedy. Hopefully it never hits someone they care about.
Yup. That’s why they make and sell them. For a tragically real, but admittedly statically small, problem.
Considering OP is against airbags as being unnecessary because he once hit a wall in a pre-airbag car and didn’t die, I didn’t think safety was exactly priority #1 for this thread.
I haven’t done the research because I have other things to do, but I’d be willing to bet airbags have saved a lot more people than shorted out power windows have killed.
I’m glad you admit that this danger is statistically small. As it is statistically small, it’s perhaps a candidate for not being overly worried about. After all, there is also a statistically small chance that I will be hit by a meteorite if I go outside, yet I still plan to go outside if it ever warms up out there. The odds that I will be killed are low enough that I am willing to risk them in order to enjoy the benefits of being outside.
Similarly, the odds of dying because my power window won’t go down are sufficiently remote that I am willing to take the risk in exchange for having power windows.
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Power windows will work when wet… but they won’t roll the window down with water pressure against them. But neither will you be able to HAND crank the windows down.
IF you get the windows down BEFORE the water rises above the level of the bottom of the glass, which power windows makes EASIER, you can just exit the window, or open the door.
It isn’t the fault of power windows that cause people to die as their car enters water, it is ignorance and panic. Just like it isn’t seatbelts keeping the occupants from being thrown clear of the crash that kills people in a fatal accident!
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My doctors nurse recently drowned in her car going off the road at night. I have no way of knowing if electric windows were a factor.
Meteors? Now we are going from the statistically small to the absurd.
Good information.
I think electronic components may be more reliable than mechanical components. I remember periodically having to clean the mechanical channel selector on my old black and white television. The electronic tuners on my present television sets have never caused a problem. I certainly would not go back from electronic fuel injection on my vehicles to a carburetor.
Charles Babbage’s Analytic Engine, the forerunner of today’s computers, was designed with cams and gears and. never worked. The French government cancelled his grant. Today’s electronic computer is reliable.
My suggestion to the OP is to buy a King Midget. The stripped down version didn’t have electric start. It had a recoil rope starter like a lawn mower. It did have interval windshield wiper. The wiper worked on the interval when you took your hands off the steering wheel and turned the crank.
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Here is an idea. OP can save the money on buying a car, insurance, gas, maintenance. and use that money for UBER rides. OP will not have to worry about the new Tech.
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… and we have no way of knowing whether she had a heart attack, or a stroke, or was under the influence of drugs, or if she was drunk, or if she was just… a bad driver. Since you have no way of knowing the reason for her drowning, why did you even bring it up?
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Good question. I guess you got me
I guess I just related it to drowning deaths do happen, cars do go in water more than a couple of feet, not everybody can just walk out, it was over her roof….why it happened you’re right.
………It was never reported in the local news.
#1 Falling into a river or lake in all probability rendered the driver and passengers in the vehicle unconscious so it wouldn’t matter what type of window mechanism they had. If they were conscious and the electric windows actually did fail then all they had to do is wait about 30 seconds for water to fill in cab so they could open the door.
#2 400 people is so statistically low that you’re 100 times more likely of winning Power Ball 2-3 times. In the US people drive a total of hundreds of millions of miles. 400 deaths due to drowning in car is statistically insignificant. I wouldn’t spend any thought on if I’ll ever die that way.
Why are there no longer hand crank windows? Because the public doesn’t want them. Plain and simple.
I’m with you I’m not giving up my electric windows ( my air bags, seat belts, crumple zones, abs, etc. ) and I don’t carry a hammer in the highly unlikely chance I drive off a bridge.
…….Just trying to be honest about one part of the OP’s complaint.