What’s the second crank for?
Wing window. Little triangle in front of the main door window that opens separately. They’re generally hinged at the top (middle of the hypotenuse) and bottom, so they rotate on a vertical axis. Usually, they’d just be opened by hand with a latch to hold them shut, but luxury cars would have them on a little crank like that. Often, they would open so far that they’d be angled past 90 degrees, and act as an air scoop to bring massive wind into the car as you drove. Also handy for ashing cigarettes in the winter.
I loved the wing window on my first car, a VW Beetle. It really did great air movement, both for hot days and for helping defog the windshield (the blower for that was terribly underpowered).
I always called it a vent window, maybe it’s a regional thing like tyre/tire.
TIL another difference in the language, I’ve never heard of wing window, and these were always called ‘quarter-lights’ on the old cars in the UK.
My life just flashed before me.
