Another car questions + opinions

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I've never driven anything with mechanical brakes; I came close to driving a Model A once but we found the gas tank was filled about 50% with water. I've owned several vehicles with manual hydraulic brakes and never found them to a be problem, aside from getting used to them a bit if you've been driving a modern car. When I was a teenager I alternated between an old Ford pickup with manual brakes (odd because it wasn't a total stripper) and an Impala with typical over-boosted power brakes. Drive the Ford for a week then jump in the Chevy and at the first stop sign you nearly threw yourself through the windshield!

(I once had a later model International pickup, plain Jane. Power brakes were standard, and worked well, but it had manual steering. On a light car, no problem. Heck, with skinny bias plies you hardly notice it. But, with 235/75R15's that truck was downright brutal! I nearly threw my shoulder out more than once in a parking lot, and sometimes the steering wheel would snap backwards and hit my fingers HARD.)

I drove a customer's c.1975 Newport once. Both the brakes and steering were so over-boosted that it was almost dangerous. I felt like I could twirl the steering wheel with my pinky and it would just spin like a top.