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.Â
2024- We can use driver assist technology to shut down a car if the driver is intoxicated.
1957- We can use magnets to make drinking while driving easier than ever!
With UBI and Self-Driving cars, there’s no good reason why future generations should have to be sober at any time and at least the same number of reasons why they shouldn’t. That’s the kind of future I’m proud to help create for the kids of tomorrow!
You get it! We’re only a little more technology and some legislation away from living like founders intended: Happily unemployed and day drunk.
My 2008 Saturn Astra still had the shallow one molded into the inside of the glove box. It was also the only cupholder in the front of the car. There was one at the back of the center console that was reachable from the front, and another 2 in the back seat. Was that the last car that had one molded into the glove box?
Wife abhors the cupholders in our 2005 MDX as they all slightly too small for the thermoflasks she takes everywhere. I remember rarely ever using cup holders back when I was single, and was happy if they held a coffee or Lipton tea bottle on a road trip. How hydrated must modern society be.
Don’t drink while driving. I don’t just mean alcohol; anything. Keep your hands on the wheel, for Pete’s sake.
So the glove-box lid depressions are actually just fine.
This is great advice but back in the 80s I didn’t wake up early enough to eat breakfast before school so I’d have to drink a can of Coke while speeding like a mad man across the county so I wouldn’t be late and since I didn’t have any cup holders in my 80s car with a manual transmission that meant I quite often had zero hands on the wheel, for Pete’s sake.
Back in the day if you didn’t care what your truck looked like, you went down to the nautical supply store and bought a couple of these gimbaled babies:
https://www.amazon.com/attwood-Attwood-Standard-Beverage-Holder/dp/B001O0D6D8
Every once in a while I think back to those 80s travel mugs where you stuck a disc down to the dashboard that had a clip that the base of the mug slid into. Invariably the mug would be lost and you’d be left with a useless disc on your dashboard.
Back in the day if you didn’t care what your truck interior looked like, you went down to the nautical supply store and bought a couple of these gimbaled babies:
https://www.amazon.com/attwood-Attwood-Standard-Beverage-Holder/dp/B001O0D6D8
I unironically think about this maybe once a week. It’s crazy how the rise of drive-thru culture (plus the 7-Eleven diaspora) has affected car interior design.
There are only two places drinks containers should be stored when you’re not hand holding them: between your thighs as the good Lord intended and in the bed of your truck when they’re empty. If you don’t have a truck bed, you can throw them out of the window, but really you shouldn’t be drinking and driving if you don’t have a pickup truck.
If you throw it out the window, you’ll make an Indian* cry. Keep America Beautiful.
*Indian portrayed by an actor of non-Indian descent.
Good ol’ Iron Eyes Cody.
“Burnard W. Byford,” the name of the inventor of the automobile seat article holder from 1949/1953 makes one wonder what would’ve happened if he was friends with Bertrand R. Brinley who wrote the Mad Scientists’ Club stories originally published in Boys’ Life magazine in the 60s. Given Brinley’s interest in invention and technology as evidenced in his stories there’s more than a zero chance that those two people could very well be the one and the same.
For those of you born more recently (ha) fortunately those stories are still in/back in print: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mad_Scientists'_Club
A lot of fun to read but with a bit of a caveat, the stories are annoyingly androcentric with virtually all the characters being male (yeah, not altogether unexpected with most of the stories being published in the Boy Scouts magazine titled Boys’ Life) and one of the books, The Big Chunk of Ice, has just two female characters, two identical and interchangeable college students named Angela and Angelina, good grief. Still, again, a lot of fun to read.
Airplane tray “cup holders” say hi!
Not only were they horrible cup holders, but by placing them there there was a very real risk of soaking your registration and insurance card in whatever you had in your cups.
worried about your drink spilling?
JELLO-SHOTS!
problem solved (and onward to the next problem…)
I’ve found that jello shots tend to cause many more problems than they purport to solve.
This is the 21st century. Edibles are the way now.
Even when I was like 4 years old I didn’t understand what the use was for the ones on the back side of the glove box on my dad’s 1989 Silverado.
I beg to differ, a proper traditional indentation is quite sufficient for the vacuum flask and the requisite small cup!
“Little round depressions” sums them up pretty well.
I may have some plastic drink holders that go into the window channel in my garage from decades ago. As an old, the cars I had until my early 30s did not have real cup holders.
Not only does that article holder appear to hold cigarettes, to me those are baby bottles on either side.
Is it possible to miss something you didn’t experience?
My 90’s Audi wagon is a pretty funny example of German thinking toward drinks in the car until they had to cater to the US market. The vehicle theoretically can seat 7 (has rear facing 3rd row), and has 2 cup holders total. These cup holders are “conveniently” placed below the flip up center arm rest, so you can either store a drink or use the arm rest. Also they are only sized for cans, and not a monster energy sized, your plain jane 12oz can. My wife struggles to figure out what to do with all of her giant waters.
I have an 07 A4, and it’s not much better. The earlier (02-05) b6 has a terrible little fold out thing above the radio, but the upgraded b7 (otherwise the same interior) has 2 actual cup holders in the console. Except the forward one is right by the shifter, so anything taller than a soda can is really in the way on a manual, and the rear one is under the arm rest like yours, so you need to flip up the arm rest if you have 2 drinks
98 BMW Z3: the rear flip-up in the center has two shallow holes. I really question this design as the M Roadster was supposed to be a track-ready road car. I learned not to do anything near spirited driving with more than half of a 12oz can there. Also learned that my little 3-legged dog really likes Coke—and should not be allowed to have it. That was a long day
I give you the Volvo 240 glove box door drink holder & coke mirror (the answer is yes!)
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/0fMAAOSwbe1dWD9O/s-l960.webp
The 240 had some pretty good cup holders that slid out from the arm rest
https://hotcrowd.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/240armrestcupholder.jpg
I had a 240 turbo that had drink holders that folded into the door.
D-I think they’re a hack using an armrest from a 740, maybe available in Europe, but not in North America, not really sure tho.
Way back, a friend’s older brother’s car had a little vanity mirror—secured flat on the glovebox door. Wasn’t for looking at the headliner, let’s say.
One of the small reasons I refuse to upgrade from a 15-year-old Nissan Altima: one of the center cupholders is sized to securely hold a Nalgene (and can be reconfigured to hold three to-go coffee cups).
Forget Carplay/AA, Nalgene-compatible cupholders are the real killer feature.
Good riddance to the awful driveshaft hump hugging aftermarket plastic cupholder caddies (with slots for your change, cassettes, and two cups). Those also gave the illusion of being secure until you took a turn too hard and the whole works would fly and tumble across the floor, scattering coins, a couple Def Leppard tapes, Executor key fob sound effect thingy, a broken switchblade comb, and releasing whatever remained of your super-sized Coke onto your coffee-stained and cigarette-burned carpet.
The one in my 80s Town Car gripped on pretty well, but that carpet was somewhere between David Lynch’s hair and Alaskan Malamute fur in terms of thickness, so the plastic edges just sank down into it
The more pop that spills out of it, the better it holds from the layers of sugar glue.
Somehow those things always seemed to collect the nastiest stuff. I remember finding coins stuck in layers of dried soda and then trying to use them in a pay phone. Fun times.
Yep. 1am, broke down, desperately spitting on the quarter & trying to scrape the gunk off enough to get the phone to accept it.
We always had something similar for the Suburbans. The ones my Dad preferred came from Rose’s; they had two cupholders in the front, a neat little flip-top container in the back (typically used for trash), and a cutout just in front of the container for a specific size of Kleenex box. The proximity of the cupholders to the Kleenex meant that you never got to use more that a few before they were soaked, either from drink condensation or accidental spills. I don’t remember it ever tipping over though.
The 1990 Suburban came with a giant center console that had two square-shaped cupholders in the front, and two more square-shaped holders in the underside of the console lid. The idea was that you flipped the lid completely back, giving the rear passengers a little tray. In reality, the lid didn’t actually swing all the way back, leaving your drink at what I estimate to be a 15° angle and making the tray part useless. I’m also pretty sure the manual – and the tray itself – had instructions noting that the tray wasn’t for use in motion. (I still miss that truck though.)
Those indents didn’t hold cups so much, rather they just collected condensation into a pool and dumped it all over the contents of the glove box when you close the lid.
Picture it … 1997. I scripted a satellite learning broadcast on Design FMEA using a “universal cupholder” prototype as an example for discussion.
At this point, automakers had started including cupholders – they worked for some containers, but not all.
Today, 27 years later, the situation is unchanged.
Out of all of the used cars I have bought, cup holders were never even a consideration.
For surprisingly many new car buyers, the type and placement of cupholders alone will determine the purchase.
I think that’s a used vs new difference. Used, I’m primarily shopping based on condition and seller quality. Although the fun flippy cupholders did briefly did turn me into a Saab guy. New, you typically are comparing 4-5 very similar models and things like cupholders can make a real difference.
These days there isn’t a car without cup holders like there was back in the days of these glovebox indentations.
I don’t shop “for cup holders”, but if you told me the 2025 CR-V had zero cupholders and the 2025 RAV4 had cupholders, that would probably rule out the CR-V. We take it for granted today, but I need a place to put my coffee in the morning.