Here's a picture from a sales brochure for the 1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Notice that the center drawer with the radio and climate controls slides out like a Motorola Quasar set. They had the same idea of making it easy to service and replace parts
This was the first year for the GM Colonnade A body cars, and Olds was the only one that had this feature. This is back when there were still major differences between GM cars. Olds always prided itself as the engineering arm of GM and tried to be an innovator.
They didn't advertise this feature very much. But, they didn't need to...Cutlass became the biggest selling car in the US and stayed there for many years.
Here's a link for the rest of the 1973 Olds brochure:
http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/stati.../dirindex.html