10 Features You No Longer See in Cars

If automobile innovations have seen farther into the future, it is only because they stand on heaps of failures. Here are the crème de la crème.

Self-Locking Seatbelts
After Ralph Nader, the auto industry raced to protect its good name. Their solution was automatic seatbelts, which doubled as straitjackets for tall drivers. Once the auto industry widely implemented airbags in the 1990s, the jailbreak was on.

Mini-Bar
The 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham had a feature that would drive MADD crazy: a glovebox mini-bar, complete with magnetic shot glasses. Included were two drinks: One for you, and one for the officer who smelled your breath a half-mile away.

Spare-Wheel Parallel Parking
In the 1950s, Brooks Walter made enemies of joyriders everywhere. He invented a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption of hydraulic pumps that pushed out the spare wheel from the rear underside of the car, where it would roll sideways to guide the car towards the curb, forever eliminating the 12-point turn of shame.

Ash Tray
Once the public realized that the former young men in cigarette commercials were neighbors to grandpa in the hospital, ash trays quickly fell out of favor. Cell phones were the last nail in the coffin.

Hood Ornament
Automobile hood ornaments are following the way of their ancestors, ship figureheads. After the pedestrian safety regulations laid down by the European Union in 2005, auto makers – sans Rolls-Royce – have been forced to remove hood ornaments because, in a collision with a pedestrian, they may double as a narwhale’s tusk.

Third Headlight
The svelte 1948 Tucker Sedan heralded today’s cornering headlights. It had a third eye, a headlight set squarely in the center of the front fascia, where it quickly became known as the “Cyclops Eye.”

Vinyl Record Player
Before the in-car CD-changer, automobiles had in-car vinyl record players. Chrysler had a built-in phonograph with special records, which skipped at every speed bump, pothole and dead squirrel.

Wrist-Twist Steering
In 1965, Ford unveiled the biggest cause of carpel tunnel syndrome since the typewriter: the experimental Wrist-Twist steering system, which replaced the steering wheel with a pair of five-inch plastic rings. Unfortunately, you couldn’t drive with your knees.

Rear-Facing Seats
Ye olde station wagons often had two rear-facing jump seats in the back, where unsecured children could commingle with the groceries. Today, Average Joe has more cargo than kids, and thus the beloved backward seats have also grown up and retired.

Keys
Though perhaps premature, today’s CNC-cut keys are quickly giving way to transponder fobs that speak in electricity, not cogwork. Perhaps keys will be on this list come 2030?