Urbandale Ia, (but originally from SE IA) | My dad tells the story about the first car he had in High School back in the 50's. It wa a '40 Ford with a "3 in the tree". They put a different engine & tranny in it and the mechanic helping him came up with the bright idea of flipping the gear shift lever over to the left of the steering column when they put it back together. Not sure if they had to modify anything, or just a matter of reconnecting the linkage.
The benefit was supposed to be that you could drive & shift with one hand while your right arm was wrapped around the little girlie snuggled up next to you.
Of course, the shift pattern was inverted from "normal". So, one day his buddy was driving it, went to pull away from the stop sign, put it in R instead of first, and promptly nailed the car that had pulled up behind him.
Edited by greenswede 7/4/2006 13:33
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Operator control instinct
