1 month ago
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Let's face it: obsolete technology is always at least a little bit cooler than what we have now, evident in a recent article I wrote about the things we miss in old cars, which are physical buttons instead of touch screens.
While many commenters shared my view, a few mentioned one specific component — wind-up windows.
"I genuinely love driving my old cars. My old Alfa and ancient Beetle are devoid of any tech this side of wipers and lights. No beeps, no silly warning flashes, no glass to smudge to get something to work. Hand-wound windows work a treat," said one reader.
"I have owned many classic cars and have not driven a car with heated seats or ambient interior lighting or adjustable suspension or steering wheel adjustment via a touchscreen… I adjust my own seat, steer myself and accelerate and brake in the same manner. I use a handle to open a window, a key to open a door and to start an engine," said another.
"The actual manual opening of a window is great. I've pulled some apart before and put it back together again. They're quite ingenious for the time they were built in," said Hall.
Looking back on them now, Hall is right; they are an ingenious invention. Here's everything you need to know about wind-up windows.
How a wind-up window works
A wind-up window has been such a timeless design because of its simplicity.
You can see a gearbox on the end of the handle that is meshed with another gear on the inside of the door.
This "gearbox" consists of a ring and worm gear. The worm gear restricts hand movement of the glass up and down (so no one can simply push your window down).
The second gear has two pivoting shafts that move up and down on the inside of the door in a scissor motion. These two arms push and pull along a track on the bottom of the glass, and being supported at both ends means that the glass moves up and down straight.
A spiral spring is located on the shaft to ensure that the window stays in place regardless of where you wind it up or down. It also uses the tension gained by coiling up while winding down to make it easier to wind the window back up.
It's a heavily overlooked car component (maybe because it's hidden from view) and because it works like a Swiss watch with all of its gears and springs. Wind-up windows became more efficient in later years by playing with the ratios, making the glass feel weightless.
The history of a window regulator
The history of the wind-up window is actually a bit of a shady one, as no manufacturer has really staked the claim for this invention.
We know that the first mass-produced car, the Ford Model T, had manual up-and-down windows, but they were operated by a strap on the bottom of the window rather than a winding action.
The first car we could find with wind-up windows was the 1915 Packard Twin Six. This American car used a very simple system—two gears and a chain that spins by hand to lift the window.
This was common practice amongst car manufacturers for many years, but it had two major flaws: the chain would rattle in the door and the window either needed to be fully up or fully down.
This is where the modern-day window regulator came in, invented by a German man named Max Brose. He patented the crank drive for windows in 1926, and it differed greatly from the chain drive because it could hold the window at a certain height — not just roll all the way up or down.
Called the "Atlas window crank apparatus," Brose began selling his invention to manufacturers, including Daimler, Volkswagen, Borgward, and Lloyd. The invention was so popular that the Brose company had a turnover in 1928 the equivalent of around one million euros.
When Packard introduced new button-operated "power windows" in 1940 for the Packard 180 by using a hydraulic system, and the Lincoln Custom had an option for electric power windows in 1941, it seemed like the end for the manual window. But, the manual window winders remained.
It didn't become the norm to have power windows until the 1990s, when base specification models began being fitted with this option. However, there are still cars sold today that have wind-up windows.
The Toyota 70 Series LandCruiser is the most popular example, with the base model WorkMate never being offered with power windows, even for the current generation.
But why are cars still fitted with manual windows? While years ago, it may have been a cost-saving excuse to make the cars cheaper to produce, electronics are fast becoming much cheaper and closing the gap to manually-operating components.
The likely truth is that brands still want to separate trim levels for a wider range of buyers, so you'll often find that the price hike between models with power windows and manual ones is much more than just installing power windows.
Although power windows use the same mechanism as manual windows, with an electric motor, it's likely we will see the death of wind-up windows quite soon because the cost of manufacturing a manual handle will outweigh the worth.
Mark my words, manually-opened windows will soon fall into the same category of cool as vinyl records and cassette players.
Zane Dobie comes from a background of motorcycle journalism, working for notable titles such as Australian Motorcycle News Magazine, Just Bikes and BikeReview. Despite his fresh age, Zane brings a lifetime of racing and hands-on experience. His passion now resides on four wheels as an avid car collector, restorer, drift car pilot and weekend go-kart racer.
