[Auto] Lightbulb moments: 10 innovations that changed motoring

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It’s often said there’s nothing new under the sun, and that’s as true in the automotive world as anywhere else. We’re constantly being dazzled with the latest tech, but it only takes a quick flick through the history books to discover that much of what’s ‘new’ has actually been seen before – often decades ago.

 

Here we look at 10 relatively recent innovations and find out just how fresh they really are. Plus we note five engineering inventions that promised to transform the way we drive, before pretty much disappearing without a trace. So dig in for a little motoring déjà vu.

 

The Toyota Prius was arguably the car that kick-started this revolution in 1997, although Alfa Romeo and Audi were experimenting with hybrids in the 1980s. Yet this system is almost as old as the car itself, with the Ferdinand Porsche-designed Lohner-Porsche Mixte making its debut in 1900. Drive was by a pair of hub-mounted electric motors, which were powered by batteries charged by two De Dion-Bouton petrol engines. The arrival of the Ford Model T made this heavy and expensive propulsion system redundant for nearly a century.

 

 

A climate-controlled cabin is still a fairly novel experience for many UK motorists, but the US was a much earlier adopter, with chilled interiors standard on most cars by the early 1970s. For the first true air-conditioned car, you have to go back to 1940, when Packard offered the Babcock and Bishop Weather-Conditioner. It worked, but an astronomical price and cooling gubbins that took up most of the boot meant it proved unpo[CENSORED]r, paving the way for the more powerful and compact Chrysler Airtemp system of 1953.

 

 

Ever since the smartphone revolution, car manufacturers have been in a mad rush to fill dashboards with similarly slick touchscreen interfaces. Yet this high-tech automotive must-have accessory predates the Apple iPhone by about two decades, making its debut on the 1986 Buick Riviera. Called the Graphic Control Center, the 9in display featured green-on-black graphics and controlled almost every on-board function, including the radio and climate control. Ahead of its time it may have been, but buyers weren’t convinced, and it was consigned to the bin by 1990.

 

 

The quick-shifting dual-clutch transmission has been around for nearly two decades now, following its debut on the Volkswagen Golf R32 in 2003. Yet work on this novel system started much earlier than that. French engineer Adolphe Kégresse went so far as to patent his design in 1935, despite never building a working version, but it was Porsche that refined it into what we have today. It had been working on the idea since 1964, but it wasn’t until 1983 that it installed an experimental unit in its 1983 Group C 956 racer, while Audi trialled the same transmission in its 1985 Group B S1 quattro rally car.