Fan belts

In the 50s and 60s, all cars had fan belts to drive the car engine’s cooling fan; nowadays, cars have electric fans.  One of the key differences is that the current fan only comes on when it is needed – when the engine reaches a certain temperature where it needs to be cooled – whereas the fans in the 50s and 60s were on all the time;  so what you may say – well, the so what is that driving the fan belt when it was not needed used power;  I remember disconnecting my fan belt during the winter months and seeing an improvement in MPG – in fact, the company I worked for advised people who had company cars to disconnect their fans. The other advantge of electric fans is that there is no fan belt to break and that was a common occurence back then when one of the favoured methods of fixing the broken belt problem was to get a stocking and use that - it worked!