Most significant automotive development

[320touring]

Rack and pinion steering allied to front wheel drive. Sorry RWD lovers.

 

Aye, I mean, Who needs decent lock?

 

for me, most significant development is Inertia reel seatbelts- better safety for everyone due to a lack of patent being applied.

[Luckythirteen]

The wheel

 

The round ones, you mean? The previous square ones were murder...

[chaseracer]

Beige paint.

[forddeliveryboy]

Can I be serious for a mo? Obviously the right answer is along the lines of mohair seat covers, but....

 

Monocoque? Flippineck no. Citroen were the first to use it in Europe, mass-style, decades before the rest and the first to ditch it - fine so long as there aren't many holes cut in it, or any localised loadings. Umm. The latest BMW uses an alloy chassis to carry the oily* and springy bits with a lightweight shell to provide torsional stiffness and to keep the rain off. Anyone who knows their Citroens is having a quiet chuckle...

 

Computers. Jesus. Just an excuse to make everything mechanical uber-cheapo, then add a bit of crapness, all rectified by a bloody PCB. Just like civil engineers and town planners were the death of anything half respectable building-wise, so cars have deteriorated rapidly since the black box.

 

My vote? The metal bearing. Where would we be without it? Absolutely fabulously nowhere, still shoving goose fat between two smouldering bits of wood.

[Junkman]

Automatic windscreen wipers.

 

No, really.

 

There is nearly one billion people, who don't have enough to eat, but our engineers have nothing else to do, than come up with something, that saves an obese First Worlder the effort of having to flick a switch when it rains. It's just gleefully decadent.

[AlabamaShrimp]

Apart from all the obvious answers like dogging you need to define 'automotive development' it could mean anything from as small as standardised nuts and bolts to whole concepts like fordism........

 

So with all that the answer must still be dogging?

[forddeliveryboy]

Automatic windscreen wipers.

 

No, really.

 

There is nearly one billion people, who don't have enough to eat, but our engineers have nothing else to do, than come up with something, that saves an obese First Worlder the effort of having to flick a switch when it rains. It's just gleefully decadent.

 

Too true.

[Honey Badger]

Apart from all the obvious answers like dogging you need to define 'automotive development' it could mean anything from as small as standardised nuts and bolts to whole concepts like fordism........

So with all that the answer must still be dogging?

You can't* go dogging without an interior light, so it must be the interior light.

 

But not the directional ones, some things are better not seen.

 

 

 

*Gillian Taylorforth once told me

[Junkman]

It's a clever ploy by those who are quietly steering the world to make firstworlders even more stupid than they have already become in the last 70 years.

I better put on my tin foil hat then.

[forddeliveryboy]

I better put on my tin foil hat then.

 

Unless you're on the Moby.

[rml2345]

Tin hat, wrapped in tin foil at the ready...

What about synchromesh on all forward gears? I know there's been loads more important but that was probably one of the greatest leaps in making a car easier to use. 
Also, self starters were pretty damn important as it meant being able to drive to the shops without having your wrist snapped like a twig. 

[Junkman]

Curved side windows. Dunno their advantage, if any, but they were a significant development, since meanwhile every car has them. Introduced into mass production with the 1957 Imperials. PPG had to come up with a way to produce them.

 

Rear view mirrors glued to the windscreen, so they can fall into your lap during the first Winter, and never be properly stuck on thereafter. First seen in 1958 Thunderbirds.

 

But automatic windscreen wipers still are what humankind was longing for all those millenia. They render even such important things like electric seats, mobile phones, and shiny shit from China superfluous mumbo jumbo.

[stuboy]

bumpers.. u seen woman in ther late 50's and early 60's park..

[chaseracer]

Could someone reboot the TXTSPK and Misogyny 1.0 filters, please?

 

Thanks.

[dugong]

Absolutely nothing invented by VW. They invented nothing. 

[chaseracer]

Indeed.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_(company)#Tatra_and_the_conception_of_the_Volkswagen_Beetle

 

[M'coli]

I think Sloth in a bowl got it right - standardised controls. Before these you could have brakes on a stick and gears on the floor in one car and brakes on the floor with gears elsewhere in another - once standardised to foot operated throttle, brakes (and clutch if need be) - and with brakes and throttle in that order left to right, any person who could drive one model of car with that could jump into any other vehicle with those controls and drive it without having to learn where these vital things were. It probably took a war somewhere to do this, so that anyone could drive anything that an army used.

 

Other than that, the heated rear window, so your hands stay warm when you're pushing it.

[Doctormop]

The slightly smaller socket especially when used in conjunction with a hammer.

[cort16]

soft close jesus handles

[chaseracer]

Ditto fully-damped soft-feel origami cupholders (see 1998 Audi A6...)

[Sloth in a bowl]

Automatic windscreen wipers.

 

No, really.

 

There is nearly one billion people, who don't have enough to eat, but our engineers have nothing else to do, than come up with something, that saves an obese First Worlder the effort of having to flick a switch when it rains. It's just gleefully decadent.

Automatic windscreen wipers are last years pointless brain wasting device. They have been surpassed by auto dipping lights. Living in a city then firstly I never use full beam and secondly the early versions are set-up to blind oncoming drivers until the last second. This will force them into a ditch and take them off the road thus becoming a major contributor to road safety.

[Junkman]

Those daft auto dipping lights have been around since 1958 though. So if any of the two is last year, I suggest it's them.

[richardthestag]

Lucas

 

Where would we be without the Prince of darkness?

[M'coli]

Now THERE'S an automotive component supplier history challenge...perhaps deserving of its own thread, too.

 

Just who else did supply electrics and wiring smoke before Lucas became ubiquitous in the UK?

[Ghosty]

Vegetable oil.

[Taff]

self parking, automatic, column stalk controlled internittent wipers.

 

 as opposed to the old fashioned way of having your non-parking wipers controlled by a dash-mounted switch which was identical to all the other switch's on there.

 

I've already upgraded my Galaxie to a self-parking electric wipers. If I can get a colum switch that deson't stand out like a sore thumb, I'll be all over it

[Taff]

Automatic windscreen wipers.

 

No, really.

 

There is nearly one billion people, who don't have enough to eat, but our engineers have nothing else to do, than come up with something, that saves an obese First Worlder the effort of having to flick a switch when it rains. It's just gleefully decadent.

 

I've banged on about this before, but in the grand old days the wipers (usually non parking, I'll add) were controlled by another switch on the dash, which was usually identical to all the other switchs on there. Trying to find it in low light conditions was dangerous.

 

auto wipers is for winners, fact.

[Lacquer Peel]

Don't you favour automatic transmissions, Junkman? DECADENT.

[Junkman]

Yes, I have reached a state of gifferness, where badermatic is a basic requirement.

[Vince70]

Disc Brakes, cable ties and the magic tree and the in car cigarette lighter for me plus of course K Seal