Paul - this has been hashed over here for as long as there's been an internet - the usual answer is back then it was common to exit on the curb side .... it was also common when they first started putting locks on vehicles for "filling stations" to be simply a gas pump right next to the street in front of a garage or store, and you'll notice the older trucks have the gas filler on the pass side, then in the mid 50's, when drive in/thru gas stations became common, the filler was moved to the drivers side, later to the back, so you could drive thru the station either direction
lots of odd little quirks about older vehicles, mostly explained by 2 things: inertia, the way it started [mostly arbitrary] was the way it stayed, and also by a critical thing with these cheap consumer goods, the OEM's saving every penny they could - why put 2 locks on when 1 will do?
Bill
