Volkswagen is known for its reliability and in the early days this did not go hand in hand with a lot of luxury, especially with the Transporter, reliability and simplicity were more important than all kinds of complicated systems.
The ventilation is a good example: no cables or electrical controls, but ventilation that works without the intervention of parts that can fail. A button on the side of the ventilation channel opens the main ventilation valve and a second button at the bottom of the ventilation channel operates the valves that distribute the ventilation flow.
After more than 50 years, you can imagine that the knobs no longer look nice, pieces have broken off or the knobs are not present at all.
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