On Sunday, March 8, 2015 at 10:07:59 AM UTC-4, N_Cook wrote:
Where self heating of current through the metal of a bimetal strip to a
heater or some other faily current hungry device, switches in and out
some contacts and so gives some sort of an indirect regulator for the
load. They were still to be seen in the dashboards of cars in the 1980s
and just termed regulators in the car repair manuals.

The last time I saw one of these in automobile use was in cars in the 60s (U.S.). They were called IVRs (instrument voltage regulators) when used for the gauges and plain old voltage regulator when used in conjunction with an alternator. Shortly afterwards, both were replaced with transistorized (or SCRs) electronic regulators.