“Originality is the fine art of remembering what you heard, but forgetting where you heard it” as I once famously said. The same is true in automobiles. Everyone likes to take credit for being the first, when in reality it’s rarely true.
Do you want some famous examples? People wrongly claimed the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR4 convertible was the first car to feature a fully retractable hard top. No no no, I would correct them. It’s the Ford Fairline 500 Skyliner, a big car with a non-folding retractable roof that debuted way back in 1957, some 40 years earlier.
Non! screams a voice from the back of the room. You’re forgetting the Eclipse! No, not the Mitsubishi. The real first retractable hard top is none other than the 1938 Peugeot 402 Eclipse Decapotable. Those tinkerers in Sochaux got a removable top to work almost two decades before anyone in Dearborn could figure it out and, wait, what’s this? Actually, a small number of Eclipses were built on the 401 chassis, two years before that!
This isn’t even my favorite example of this phenomenon. People love to claim that the RAV4 was the first crossover SUV, conveniently forgetting the AMC Eagle, which debuted in 1979. But the Eagle isn’t even the original and, with its available 4×4, was barely a crossover SUV.
The real honor should go to the Matra (sometimes Matra Simca) Rancho. This is a vehicle that looks like it could be a Range Rover and yet offers almost none of the functionality. Do you want 4WD? I bet you do, but you’re not getting it, because it’s a Simca 1100 underneath, so your only option is a 1.4-liter inline four meekly pushing power to the front wheels.
Departure angles? The departure angle is “please don’t take this off-road” degrees. Even in the photo above, you can see that the “shooters” here are about four inches away from a road, and I think the dog is trying to dig out the front wheel wedged in the mud. If that’s not a template for the modern crossover, I don’t know what is.
Top graphic images: Ford; Thomas Romen/Flickr
Common knowledge is that the first car with an airbag was the Mercedes S-class in the early 1980s, with the 1987 Porsche 944 Turbo being the first car with standard driver and passenger airbags. However, the real first car with any sort of airbag was a limited-run of fleet-issued 1973 Chevy Impalas. And these not only had a driver airbag, but a full-width passenger airbag for both the middle and right-side front passengers. Tests proved that these were successful, and GM released these airbags as an option on a few Oldsmobile and Cadillac models in 74. They weren’t very popular due to their expense, and were discontinued in 77. It’s also interesting to note that these airbags were developed to be replacements for seatbelts, not just as supplements for them, since not many people liked using seatbelts in the 70s. It was thought that if there was a system to protect people that they didn’t have to fiddle with and wear themselves, we would see a decrease in accident fatalities. However, as I said, GM’s airbags were dropped quickly because they were an expensive option, and automakers later lobbied the government against airbag mandates because of the extra cost it would require. Later testing also showed that they weren’t as effective without seatbelts as they were with them, and that’s when the modern system of airbags as supplements to seatbelts were developed in the 1980s.
Dodge was the first pickup with an extended cab 1/2 ton model in 1973. There were 4 door crew cabs before that but they were 1 ton work trucks, marketed towards fleets as a way to get a 6 man crew to a job site. The 1973 Dodge was the first extended cab, two rows of seats marketed towards average joe six pack.
Funny thing is Dodge drug their feet for YEARS after that to offer a proper big 4 door crew cab across their lineup. Dodge stuck you with a smaller extended cab in the 1/2 ton models until 2009, about 9 years after Ford introduced the now common 4 door/short bed format
A few years ago, Hyundai made a splash with their variable duration cam timing on one of their new engines, claiming it was a first. This isn’t remotely true, in the 90s Rover did the exact same thing with their new K series engine that saw a home in a number of MGs as well as the original Lotus Elise. It was highly successful, Rover named is VVC, Variable Valve Control.
It may not be the first “ute” (slapping a bed on a passenger cab had been around for decades) but it grinds my gears that the Ranchero doesn’t get properly acknowledged as debuting the modern “ute” in the U.S., and instead folks refer to the inferior chevrolet offering (and its badge-engineered corporate cousins) that came out years later to compete with it.
I still have my Matchbox Matra Rancho in blue. Didn’t know it had zero offroad skills.
Floppy-hared poet on the right there has clearly never held a shotgun before in his life. He looks slightly less comfortable than if he’s just sharted.
Ahem — Fairlane.
Anyway, my VW 411 gets way too much haterade as VW’s first unibody car, VW’s first four-door sedan, and a much more modernized suspension that was later tweaked and revised for the Super Beetle.
It’s been a whole day, and no correction.
We’re the only proofreaders they have.
The Ford Focus Electric was a genuinely connected car with a mobile app that actually worked and actually controlled important car details…in 2011. Before Tesla. Even today most car apps barely function. MyFordMobile worked amazingly well (I had a C-Max Energi) and also gave an amazing amount of data about your usage.
The McLaren F1 gets a lot of credit for being the first carbon monocoque road car, but that title can arguably go to the Conuslier GTP.