When is the last time you heard that?

If you’re a boomer like me, you heard that around the time you were in high school, but hardly at all now because car/truck windows are powered. Well most of them anyway. One of my many gigs is doing the marketing for a local golf course The Preserve at Deer Creek. I also help out in the golf shop.

Recently on a morning I was opening and one of our grounds’ guys, Bill, came in to tell me he saw a customer’s Toyota Tundra with the driving lights were left on and the driver’s side window partially open. Rain was on the way. I told him what group that golfer might be in and he headed out on the golf course to find him. We are HUGE on customer love here! The customer gave Bill the keys and on his way to the truck grabbed me.

The truck was not locked so I opened the door and started looking for the button to put the window up. We looked everywhere and were so focused we didn’t notice the window crank. That was good for a laugh. Turned the lights off, rolled up the window, closed the door. The next step would have been to hit the key fob and lock the truck. Wait, no power windows, no power doors, were we stuck in the 70s’?

Who still rolls down their windows with a crank?

Not my 17-year-old daughter Meg for sure. One day while our 2015 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited was in for service the dealership gave me another Wrangler to take home. Wow was it basic and of course had no power windows. Meg came out and must have looked at the crank and rolled it up and down for about a half hour.

You can still order vehicles with crank windows but mostly limited to subcompact model cars. They are still offered for really only one reason, cost. On the subcompact cars like the 2016 Ford Fiesta S, Nissan Versa S, Chevrolet Sonic LS and Kia Rio LX. At this end of the spectrum manufactures are selling the cars based on low price and that’s about it. What I was surprised to find in the features data on model-year-2016 vehicles, was manual windows being standard on the Ford F-150 XL. As part of the Power Equipment Group, a $2,055 option, power windows can be added. With the Ram 1500 Tradesman, power windows are added in the Power and Remote Entry Group for $735. Fleet managers, according to the owner of the Tundra, love manual windows because it keeps the costs low. How long will manual windows be around? As long as customers are shopping on price alone and I’m betting that will be for a very long time.