Cup holders are, at this point in human cultural development, pretty ubiquitous in cars. We accept that cars will be crammed full of these cylindrical cavities, which we will then happy fill with cylindrical volumes of liquid, constrained to that shape by a thin paper shell. Then, we pour those liquids down our alimentary canals, where our kidneys eventually process the liquid into urine, which we eject from our urethras, and the cycle begins anew.
But! Even before we took drink holders for granted in our cars, we still had the desire to drink liquids, and our cars had a sort of half-ass solution for this: little round depressions on the inside of the glove box door.
I’ve always been fascinated by these because they seem like the absolute least amount of effort and thought one could expend to attempt to find a “solution” to this problem. You know the kind I’m talking about. These:
A huge number of cars from the, let’s see 1940s to 1990s, maybe into the early 2000s, had, on the inside of their glove box doors, between one and three of these little depressions, perfect for precariously holding a cup of liquid safely at speeds of up to and including zero mph, give or take zero mph.
I mean, I get why they exist; things like drive-throughs made eating in your car A Thing in the 1950s and on, and to use those your car would be stationary, at least ideally.
And the glove box door is an ideal little flip-down table area. In a stationary car, even a flat glove box door would have worked fine for holding a drink, since gravity is generally always available to help pin that drink down to the glove box door. And that always makes me wonder what these little depressions are for, really?
They suggest where you can or should place your drink, though in doing so, they limit where that drink can go, since if you don’t get them exactly in the shallow round divot, they’ll tip over. Some can be just deep enough to give the very false illusion that they could hold a drink if the car is in motion, which they very much can’t.
They’re a token gesture, and they hint at what could work – find someplace and make deeper holes and you’ve basically got a real cupholder – but they don’t actually go that far.
It’s not like people didn’t have the need for real cupholder before the Modern Era – they did, and there were all sorts of attempts to add cupholders, like this questionable 1953 design that just kind of crammed in between the seat bottom and backrest:
“Article holder” is a great non-committal name, too, in case you’d rather put other cylindrical things in there, like cans of peas or some big capacitors. Also, is that midde part for a pack of smokes?
Companies that stood to gain from you drinking things while you drove stepped up, too, like this McDonald’s-branded door-hanging drink holder that was a free giveaway:
Those door-hanging cupholders weren’t great, but they were a hell of a lot better than those shallow little circular depressions that just kind of teased cupholder-dom.
There was one glove-box-door-based cupholder solution that wasn’t garbage, though. Sure, it required special cups, but the whole thing was so elegant and lovely I can’t fault it for that. It was, of course, the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham glove box mini-bar setup:
Magnetic tumblers! Shiny chrome and elegant little bottles of booze! Easily the classiest way to drink and drive ever.
Uh, Torch, you know a cycle implies a complete circle. Exactly what liquids are you pouring down your alimentary canal?!?
When these cars were built we were generally not eating AND driving at the same time. The restaurant drive through only really started in the mid 1970’s and took a while to get going.
Considering all the plastic waste we now produce for the mere convenience of mobile beverages, maybe we never should have attempted a solution better than the simple drink divot. It worked perfectly in conjunction with a Stanley thermos w/cup lid.
My wife would not accept this. She brings a 32oz bottle of water everywhere she goes. Which I would tease her about, until I had to eat crow after repeatedly asking if I could have some of her water.
So yeah guys, cup holders are nice. You can put a drink in them! Sometimes you’re driving for a long time, or maybe where you’re headed, doesn’t have beverages. In my case, even though I don’t drink my coffee during my commute (because it’s still scalding holt) I still need a home for it as I drive. And if for whatever reason you have a freakish aversion to the concept of having a drink nearby, you can still use cupholders to hold a phone, or any number of other things you might want handy.
As much as a lot of people make fun of the vast number and size of modern cupholders, damn near all of you would be pissed if the car you bought neglected to give a crap about forming some of the negative space available into a useful pocket.
Infuriatingly pointless those things! Much like all the flimsy “pop out” style cup holders from many 80s-90s cars when confronted with a cup that actually had liquid in it. I swear the OEMs must have been testing those with empty daisy cups.
They were to hold the stainless and green plastic cup from your Stanley thermos will you ate ham and cheese with mustard sandwiches at a rest stop while driving across the state.
I vividly remember the fossilized remains of a spilled Burger King chocolate shake in the glove box cup holders of our family station wagon. It remained there for 10+ years until the vehicle was junked!
80s Subarus had no cup holders. I ruined several driver’s inner window-scrapers hanging those plastic cup holders off them
The glovebox cup holders were perfect for drive-in movies. That was the only time we ever used them back in the 70s
Funny enough the Astra has one of these in the glove box door for some reason. Made a nice tray to hold fasteners when doing a glove box swap but that’s about it.
While my ’85 Ford LTD doesn’t have these, this reminds me that I really wish I had a decent cupholder solution for it. Tomorrow I’m taking it to Radwood LA, leaving at like 6am and I can’t bring a cup of coffee with me because I have nowhere to put it! I’ve tried a cupholder like the McDonalds one here and it’s pretty precarious. If I had the skills I’d try to make a 3D printed solution.
1995 Nissan regular cab truck with a 5spd and a bench seat. No cupholders to be found or center console cubby to wedge one into in a pinch. I got very good chilling my genitals while using one hand to steer and one hand to shift.
Aren’t they just for use when the car is not in motion?
And for that purpose you’ll feel a lot more safewith them, than not having them at all.
You know I never expect to read the word “urethra” when learning about car stuff but that kind of thing is why I keep coming here.
Tell me you’re reading a Torch article without telling me you’re reading a Torch article. 😀
This could be a fun game, similar to the streaming video history last week. Obscure lines from each writer are pulled, and we have to guess who wrote what. To make it extra challenging, they could pull from content that was edited out, so we couldn’t just google the results….