[Dan in Pasadena]

The day of my sixteenth birthday in 1970 I took my sister's then-new Vokswagen Autostickshift, light yellow, chick mobile Beetle, left it in high gear (so it was a pig on takeoff), and took the test.

Also took my Dad's CL175 Honda motorcycle for the bike test. The tester said, "Okay drive across the parking lot, make a couple of circulars left and then right and come back shifting slowly. THAT'S what constituted a motorcycle's driver's exam in California then.