I hired a Bedford CA van when I got married in '71, that had a column change. My first and only ever experience of one. It was awful and I recall spending a lot of time in neutral looking for a gear - any gear. It was also only running on three cylinders, so I took it back at the first available opportunity to do a U turn. They removed the (non matching) spark plugs, one of which looked like it had been in there since Noah was a lad. It ran a bit better after that.
I did drive an early Renault five with the gear lever coming out of the dashboard. That felt perfectly natural. I wonder why the concept was abandoned?
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