After owning a Mehran, I've learned that if it's an older model, it's brakes will not work as good as when it was new. I'm not talking about the preformance of the brakes but various other things; noises from the brakes, brake pedal feel, pulsating or vibrating brakes, wraped rotors, oil level decreasing, etc. My car has suffered from almost all of these but the braking has remained constant alhamdulillah. It has brought me back alive from shittiest of situations.
What I'm trying to say is maybe your friend's Mehran has shitty brakes to begin with you know.
Almost all Japanese "run of the mill" cars (Corolla, Sunny, Familia, Publica, etc) from the 70's came with manual brakes. Toyota, Mazda, Datsun, even the G10 Charade had manual brakes. The FX also uses manual brakes.