My 1960 was spartan. The only instrumentation was the speedometer. It had red hash marks on the face of it at intervals to indicate where the manufacturer suggested shifting gears. There were two small warning/trouble lights: red for electrical and green for oil. Under the dash was a handy shelf that went all the way across. It had a non-adjustable bench seat with a space behind it to store the spare tire, jack and lug wrench. I didn’t have a spare tire, but that would have been a good place for it. Instead I stuck things back there for safekeeping out of sight because the locks didn’t work.   

On the raised portion of the floor between the driver and passenger were three controls.

One was pulled for the manual choke. When used the engine never failed to start cold.  Another was pulled for approximately one gallon of emergency fuel. Since there was no fuel gauge the driver either kept track of fuel consumption and miles traveled or relied on the reserve. The mechanism caused the first gallon of fuel pumped into the tank to be trapped. When the level was too low and the engine began to starve the knob was pulled dumping the reserve fuel into the tank. I preferred doing this to tracking mileage. I always knew there was a gas station within range when the engine stumbled. The trap had to be reset by pushing in the knob before fueling or the trusty reserve was not available when needed next. The third control was a big placebo knob to turn for the illusion of heat from the 36 HP air-cooled power plant in the rear of the car. There was a cleverly written booklet inside giving lots of technical information about the German rebuilt engine that had been installed. For instance, it told how many times the pistons would whiz back and forth in a specified period like 60,000 miles or how many times it would traverse the equator before heat found its way from the back to the front of the car.  

The ventilation system was better than the heating system although there was no blower to push air. Since the weather was more often hot where I went than cold I appreciated this feature. Overhead between the driver and passenger was a console that let in fresh air; well, as fresh as could be expected in the smog ridden environment.  A knob was turned to direct the air to the side or rear. There was a sliding window and a vent wing window for both driver and passenger. On each side in the rear were three windows that hinged open a couple of inches. The forward ones pushed air in and the rear ones let it out. There was a removable bench seat in the back. We used to go to a drive-in restaurant in Los Angeles where the car hops were on skates. Since the food tray wouldn’t rest on the sliding windows we would open the side doors, get in back and be served there. There was a little shelf over the spare tire carrier where we sat our drinks. It was the lap of luxury on the cheap.

I drove the car daily commuting to work and college. We went all over Southern California in it. We moved to Long Beach in it and hauled furniture and camping gear and various other things for ourselves and others. It never had a serious break down. Sometimes when driving over a dip in the road a distinct noise could be heard that sounded like “thank you” in a faint bullfrog voice coming from the radio speaker. I usually said “no, thank you” back although this disturbed passengers because they didn’t hear the noise and the radio never worked anyway.