These Bizarre Features Once Made It Into Vehicles, and Some Still Exist

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When you sit down behind the wheel of your spiffy vehicle and everything just works, sometimes it’s hard to believe the modern features you enjoy are a culmination of years of development and research. To clarify, everything that we take for granted in our vehicles, like seat warmers, air conditioning, rearview displays, power windows, none of it existed at one point in time, at least in that generation of cars. Someone had to develop, test, and implement those technologies and features.

At its most basic, the original car was just wheels, axles, an engine, and a chassis. Maybe a sizable gas tank if you were lucky. But that also means there were years and years of new features, upgrades, and changes that didn’t work out so well. Refrigerated glove boxes, integrated scent diffusers, swiveling seats, water-filled hydraulic bumpers — yes, those were all real.

Today’s auto manufacturers still throw in some creative surprises from time to time — like the cozy fireplace in Teslas — but it helps highlight even more that, sometimes, creative and clever additions don’t necessarily result in the best products. In light of that, let’s take a small journey back in time and consider some of the more zany and bizarre features that almost made it into the cars we drive.

1950s Record Player

Our infotainment systems today are highly advanced, a testament to the evolution of humanity’s technological prowess. Smartphones and streaming displays may have overtaken MP3 and media players, fitting in the palm of our hands or pockets, but people played the music from days of yore using a record table. That’s why it made perfect sense in the 1950s to install a dashboard record player, which premiered in the 1956 Chrysler Highway Hi-Fi.

As you could probably guess, every bump, scrape, or tumultuous ride resulted in the record needle skipping, meaning it didn’t even work that well. To poke fun at the competition, Cadillac even released a commercial with a record player tucked in the backseat, playing perfectly, to drive the point home that their cars rode smooth as butter. Of course, the dashboard record player didn’t last too long with the advent of portable radios, cassette technology, and eventually CD players.

1970s Hydraulic Bumpers

Throughout the years, legislators and manufacturers alike have worked tirelessly to make vehicles safer for everybody. That’s why we have seatbelts, airbags, lane-departure and lane-assist tools, high-beams, and everything else that keeps us just a little safer on the road. But not every idea was a hit. In the 1970’s, for example, water-filled bumpers called Hydraulic Bumpers were implemented to lessen the impact of a collision.

Made of a thick vinyl chloride material, they worked like tough water balloons, softening the blow of an impact and essentially releasing water during an accident. However, they did this without rupturing, allowing for water refills. You’re probably wondering who would fill them back up after? You. Or rather, the owner of the vehicle would fill them with tap water. Purportedly, it did slow vehicles before impact, though no one is really clear on how well it would work overall with today’s vehicles.

2000s Scent Dispenser

That fresh car smell is something we all strive for, and it’s something that a lot of people try to maintain in their cars, especially after a deep clean. It’s no wonder we use air fresheners, portable diffusers and a variety of gadgets to aromatize the air. But in today’s vehicles, that stuff is added after the fact, by us — the people that own the cars. Back in the 2000s, BMW did this automatically for its drivers by adding a scent diffuser in the cabin.

That has evolved into the BMW Ambient Air system, which allows BMW owners to inject scents into their climate control systems. Sure, this still exists today, but there’s probably a reason it hasn’t caught on with all car manufacturers.

2000s Refrigerated Gloveboxes

Rolls-Royce and Bentley are known by many as luxurious, elegant, and lavish, three words to describe classy ridiculousness. That ridiculousness came to a head in the early 2000s when these car manufacturers decided to implement refrigerated glove boxes in the current generation of vehicles.

That has evolved into the coolbox, an excellent choice for temporarily stowing champagne and adult beverages — exactly what you want to drink on the open road, right? Of course, a more positive development, in my opinion, is the phantom humidor in the glove box. Yes, please. Either way, the refrigerated glove box idea didn’t stick around. Probably because refrigerators are known to be pretty power-hungry and problematic mechanically. But what would I know I’m not an engineer.

2010s Vacuum Cleaners

Keeping your car clean is essential, even more so if you have a family vehicle like a minivan and your kids are always making messes. Those crumbs and droppings can lead to some pretty nasty scenarios — like bugs. That’s why car washes exist, and that’s also why they have industrial-grade vacuums available to clean the mats, floors, seats, and everything in between. But when you can’t get to a local car wash, you do it all at home, likely with a portable vacuum.

If you owned a Honda Odyssey from the 2010s — 2014 specifically — you wouldn’t have to supply your own vacuum. HondaVAC was, as the name implies, a built-in vacuum that helped tidy up the vehicle on-the-go. It’s still around today, for a little while anyway, Honda quietly discontinued the feature in the 2022 Odyssey. Honestly, no shade there. It’s a great idea, and it would certainly be helpful to maintain your vehicle. That said, it’s still a little unorthodox to have an integrated vacuum in the back of a van.

Honorable Mentions

Don’t make the unfortunate mistake of reading this list and assuming these are the only ridiculous inventions that once existed in the automobile. No, dear reader, there were many, many more mishaps.

Some honorable mentions include swiveling seats from the 1970s, hidden gas caps, flip-up lights, hydrophobic-coated windows, vacuum-operated wipers in the Ford Model T, a fully washable interior — hello Honda Element — and vent windows, windows that opened for the sake of venting out the vehicle, or gaining access when you locked your keys inside.

You better believe there will be more, too. As auto manufacturers are always trying to push the envelope, this probably won’t be the last time we hear about them stuffing a refrigerator, VR game center, or some wild addition into modern vehicles. I wonder if we’ll ever see a hookah bar implemented into a passenger cabin?

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