Silly Features That Never Made It
In most modern cars, you can find a selection of neat features to make the task of driving easier and more pleasant. Some of the ones I particularly like include active cruise control, ambient lighting, steering wheel mounted audio controls, reversing cameras and Bluetooth connectivity so my phone and car talk to each other. I guess most of us have our favourite driver aids.
However, over the over 100 years that the car has been around, manufacturers and designers have come up with some features that flopped, mostly because they were plain silly ideas. We’re not talking about things that have been phased out because they are no longer in high demand, such as cigarette lighters (which have morphed into 12-volt power outlets), or because they were a bit iffy in terms of safety (such as bench seats). Instead, we’re talking about ideas that were totally nuts. Here’s the looniest ones that were put forward by designers with a straight face.
In-Car Toilets
In the late 1940s, an inventor named Louie Mattar customized his Cadillac so that he could go on a long-haul trip of around 6000 miles without stopping, even to refuel. While most of us would be more interested on how you manage to get something that goes for that long without refuelling, which wouldn’t be silly, quite a few designers in the 1950s considered installing one of the other things that Mattar put in his customized car: a toilet. Yes, a toilet that the driver or passenger can use without leaving the car. However, this proved to be impractical, considering how easy it is to simply pull over at a public loo, or café or garage – or, in remote and rural areas, a handy bush.
Flamethrowers
Yes, seriously. In the late 1990s, when violent crime was a real problem in Johannesburg, South Africa, one inventor decided that the best way to protect drivers from carjackings was to install aftermarket flamethrowers that could be activated in self-defence. This was designed to use gas to create a fireball that didn’t damage the paint. The laws at the time allowed South Africans to use deadly force in self-defence, and the fireballs sent out by the “BMW Blaster” weren’t lethal; they “merely” blinded the would-be carjackers. The downsides were that (A) a matching fireball was released from the opposite side of the vehicle, potentially injuring innocent bystanders and (B) flamethrowers have been outlawed by the United Nations. The invention won the Ig-Nobel Peace prize for 1999 and the rumour is that 25 BMWs received this “upgrade”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/232777.stm
Children’s Partition
Another one from the 1950s, back when rear seatbelts (and possibly seatbelts full stop) weren’t really a thing, and kids who monkeyed around in the back seat while the car was moving were threatened with “Don’t make me stop this car!” Some designers thought that perhaps it would be less distracting (and pleasant) for the driver to ensure that the children were neither seen nor heard, courtesy of a privacy partition of the sort found in very posh limousines. However, most parents preferred to know if their kids were screaming, fighting or giving each other black eyes in the rear seat, so this idea didn’t catch on.
Automatic Seatbelts
This one’s from the 1970s to the 1990s when more automatic features were becoming popular. One that didn’t catch on was the automatic seatbelt. An automatic seatbelt worked by taking the shoulder strap from the back of the seat and fastening itself onto the B-pillar when the engine started or the door closed. The user had to buckle up a lap belt him/herself. This idea was very exciting, and in 1977, a law was passed in the US that stated that by 1983 all new cars should either have automatic seatbelts or airbags. The first commercial vehicle to have these automatic seatbelts was the 1975 Volkswagen Golf, and many other manufacturers had offerings with this safety feature, including Hyundai and Toyota. However, the downside was that a seatbelt that isn’t permanently fixed to the B-pillar isn’t as secure as one that is, and users still had to clip in the lap belt separately. They also didn’t play nicely with child seats and were a pain for getting in and out if you were carrying anything. As someone with long hair that occasionally gets pulled into the slot of ordinary retractable inertia seatbelts, I imagine that these automatic seatbelts would have been a right pig for people with long hair. So airbags were the safety feature that won out.
If anybody has experience of a vehicle with an automatic seatbelt, let us know in the comments what you thought of them!
Joystick Steering Systems
Although the original horseless carriages of the late 19th century sometimes used a rudder system rather than a wheel, the steering wheel has become the one we’re all familiar with. However, during the 1990s, Saab decided to fit its some of its 9000 models with a joystick steering system. Fortunately, not all Saab 9000s had them and plenty had the ordinary wheel. The joystick was too easily knocked and wasn’t precise enough. This was particularly an issue, given that the Saab 9000 was pretty responsive when you put your foot on the accelerator (I used to own one, and I rather miss the way that it could dart into the gaps at the intersections like a hummingbird spotting a tasty new flower…).
Coffee Machines
Although coffee doesn’t originate in Italy, all the words we use at the local coffee shop are Italian (latte is the Italian world for “milk”, for example). So it’s not surprising that Fiat, in 2012, attempted to include a real working compact espresso machine that sat in the centre console in its 500L models released in Europe. It was, however, short-lived, probably because it took up the driver’s armrest, and comfort won out over the convenience of coffee on the go, and possibly because hot liquids and sharp corners are not a happy combination. However, there is still part of me that thinks that this idea isn’t so silly and wouldn’t mind one.
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