What Was The Last Car With a Certain Feature? Autopian Asks

For every automotive first, there has to also be an automotive “last.”

Many car features began with great popularity and fulfilled a common need, to then disappear only a few decades later.

Column-shifted manuals are a great example. From their introduction in the 1930s to help fit more people on the front seat, they were largely on the way out by the early 80s and gone from most markets by the 1990s with a couple of holdouts. They can be fun to row through the gears, keep the floor clear and pair nicely with a bench seat for a trip to a drive-in movie. The downside is that they get temperamental when the linkages wear out and so they went away eventually, along with the front bench seat in most markets.

Now that manual transmissions in general are becoming endangered, will the final vehicle with ‘row-your-own’ be a rough-and-tumble commercial vehicle, or a rare exotic, destined forever to live in a glass case?

Cassette decks are another feature that is all but gone, largely wiped from new vehicles in Western countries by around 2010 with the Lexus SC430. The G50 Toyota Century held onto the long-passed technology until 2017 and the model series ended, due to the music that older Japanese listen to being available still on cassettes. Apparently cassette tapes are back once again in Japan, so maybe the current-gen Century sedan and New Century SUV will also be rockin’ the tech again with the next refresh!

Vent windows were supremely common and on almost every vehicle up until the early 1970s as standard. The feature started disappearing as air-conditioning became more common and was largely also gone from most vehicles by the early 1990s. A simple pivoting mechanism with some spring tension so they would stay open at highway speed, they work great whilst in motion and mean you can still have fresh air and some cooling without lowering the main door glass.

As both of my Valiant utes don’t have a heater/blower motor, these little windows also make for half-decent demisters during wet weather, at the expense of some water sometimes dripping onto your leg!

Sometimes the mechanism wears out, so you gotta get a bit agricultural!

There is a good chance that the 70 Series Landcruiser will be the last vehicle on the market with these little pivoting windows, having just been refreshed to remain on market for another few years.

This feature only appears to still be available on the base-model utility in single-cab configuration along with manual window winders (!), if the A/C dies I’m sure the Aussie farmers would appreciate the directional airflow!

(check 2:45 on the video above for some footage of the little chromed beauties!)

I know the Autopian Hive Mind is absolutely loaded to the gunnels with automotive trivia, so here’s your chance; what car or vehicle had the last of a certain feature?

Photos by author unless noted.