Here’s How Japanese Automakers Put Apps In Cars Long Before Mercedes Put TikTok In The New E-Class

Mercedes has released images of the next E-Class’ interior and the big news is that the German automaker is launching its own app store. If you spec your new E-Class with the entertainment package, you’ll be able to download apps like WebEx and TikTok directly to your car that can make full use of a selfie camera built into the dashboard.

I’ll admit, part of me wants to grumble that passengers should be happy to just listen to an audiobook, play on their phones, or stare out the damn window, but I suppose that app integration is something customers actually want and that apps in cars aren’t actually anything new. In fact, they’re a rather old concept that predates Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. Oh yes, we’re kicking things back to the Limewire era when Japanese automakers were rolling out features E-Class owners only dreamed of.

Back in 2004, Acura announced that it was putting the Zagat Survey restaurant guide in every 2005 RL sedan. If your paycheck in 2004 didn’t have at least six figures in it, the Zagat Survey restaurant guide is basically JD Power but for restaurants. Back in 2005, a quarter of a million diners in 70 cities completed a surveys that could give local restaurants a maximum of 30 points. In theory, higher scores meant better restaurant experiences. In short, not only could the Acura RL navigate you to a restaurant, depending on that restaurant’s location, it could tell you if that restaurant was any good. Keep in mind, this was more than two years before the first iPhone launched, so outside of software developers and business types with Palm Tungstens, most people didn’t know what a mobile device app even was.

However, the RL definitely wasn’t the only car to include digital functionalities outside of a normal navigation system, and one earlier attempt was substantially more advanced. Back in 2002, Toyota started making Japanese-market cars that had something called G-Book, an incredibly powerful infotainment system for the turn of the millennium. Stock market information, emails, your bank balance, and the weather could all be accessed through G-Book. Video games could be downloaded to the infotainment system and even karaoke could be beamed directly into cars with G-Book. It almost sounds too good to be true, but it’s real and Toyota even put out a promotional video that shows some G-Book functions.

Wild, right? I assume beaming emails to your car probably wouldn’t fly now that we know more about distracted driving, but this is an incredible piece of technology for 2002. It held memory on SD cards when many navigation systems still used CDs, required a subscription just like digital features in many cars today, and essentially previewed the software-defined vehicle. Car And Driver seemed equal parts impressed and infuriated in a 2003 road test of a WiLL Cypha equipped with G-Book, writing that “The Cypha’s radio is approximately as complex as the tax code.” Complex, certainly, but also astounding.

Nothing happens in an instant, and that’s especially true of Mercedes putting TikTok in an E-Class dashboard. People who’ve been nerding out about in-car infotainment for the past two decades probably saw this eventual change coming, and it’s likely only surprising to everyone else. You can draw a direct line from Toyota beaming emails to dashboards to Mercedes putting Angry Birds in an E-Class, so it’s almost amazing that it took this long. I wouldn’t be surprised if more manufacturers put social media apps in cars soon as the art of passing time on road trips continues to evolve.

(Photo credits: Mercedes-Benz, Acura, Toyota)

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