Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for February 12, 2016

Is the toilet paper in the glove box?

Ok Joan, what are you going to do if the car is auto-shift? Tell them to slam the brakes?

Did the VW bug come in automatic? My sister had several and they were standard.

Put it in H! (Assuming that she bought the car from Crazy Vaclav.)

Use the windshield washer (powered by air pressure from the spare tire!).

I usually pop the clutch before I flush.

MO MO MU

This is just a prototype. She’s still got to work out some bugs !

VW did make some automatics, but it was a while before they got them working well. The old 4-speed was pretty cool, almost stall-proof, and the way of getting into reverse was kind of mysterious. You could also shift them without using the clutch, if you did it gently. (A handy feature when my clutch went out, and I was too poor to replace it.)

My parents had a bug that had a clutchless manual. You had to shift by hand but not clutch. My mother could never get the hang of it.

I drove a Beetle in Republica Popular de Angola (The People’s Republic of Angola) made in Saõ Paolo. The windshield washer had a foot powered system. You could push harder or softer and hit higher or lower on the windshield.I wish cars today had that sweet feature.

No “squatty pottys” available in this one, huh?

That purple animal looks like a cross between Mr Butts and Jim Crow

That’s actually kind of cool!

Who was J.J.’s father?

In my orange beetle (Freckles) the heater hoses disintegrated, so the mechanics devised a little periscope that came up through the center of the car between the seats and could be pointed at the windshield if necessary or at the feet if they were cold (and they always were because there were holes in the floorboards).