[dawidloubser]

And hydraulic power back seats, and a hydraulic sun roof (!!) and hydraulic power aerial, and hydraulic controls for the air suspension. Some models even had a hydraulic glass partition between driver and passengers.

Absolute nuts. But the high point of dead-silent, powerful, smooth conveniences no matter the maintenance cost.

[technothrasher]

I used to have a Ferrari 355 with a hydraulic soft top… sort of. The hydraulics (when they worked) only got the top part of the way up, and you had to manually finish the job. If the hydraulics didn’t work, or the seat and window sensors didn’t work, which was frequently, you were out of luck. If you disconnected the hydraulic system you could do the whole job manually and it was actually faster to do it that way.

[peterbecich]

In addition to those reasons, the pneumatic system was smaller than an equivalently powerful electric motor, at that time, so I've been told.

[TacticalCoder]

> Absolute nuts. But the high point of dead-silent, powerful, smooth conveniences no matter the maintenance cost.

Wife's car broke down (probably the water pump or just a loose hose) on the highway while coming back from vacation. As it was a very busy day where we were (France), there were not any regular cab left so the insurance company sent us a driver with... a Mercedes S class 550 (not a taxi but a private driver: no "cab / taxi" thinggy on the roof). It's still as you wrote: dead-silent, powerful and silky smooth.

Diesel engine but as a passenger I honestly couldn't tell, even though I'm a petrolhead and tend to notice these things.