In-Car Phones
Pre-smartphone, remote communication was largely limited to your house by long cables. Enter the in-car phone, chunky devices built into your vehicle that made you feel like a bigshot and your car look like a radio tower. You could communicate outside your vehicle without shouting!
Convertible Hardtops
Although having your car roof retract and fold into your trunk like an alien robot was popular in the ’90s and 2000s, the Ford Fairlane Skyliner actually pioneered the system in 1957. A transforming car is the peak of space age technology.
Pop-Up Headlights
Headlights that rose up out of the car like eyes? Drivers felt like they were living a sci-fi dream - especially when they were paired with sporty-looking cars like the Supra and DeLorean - though many places banned them in 2000 due to pedestrian safety laws.
Cassette Decks With Auto-Reverse
Pre-dating streaming and even CDs, if you wanted to listen to personalized music you had to make a cassette tape and manually turn it over when a side finished, like neanderthals. But then came auto-reverse, and suddenly the cassette deck did it for you. It changed lives!
In-Dash CD Changers
When CD changers became available, everyone knew the digital age was here - no cassettes, just super-advanced, music-bearing discs of magical music, and you could play multiple different ones, navigating with a button touch. You were a cyber DJ with a soundtrack for every occasion.
Talking Cars (Voice Alerts)
Knight Rider fans rejoiced: finally, their car had turned into KITT and it could actually talk! Sure, it was limited to simple things - telling you that your fuel gauge was low, or pointing out the door you had just opened was ajar - but you still had a futuristic robot co-pilot.
Digital Speedometers
When all you had before was needles pointing to a dial, to suddenly have a digital display with glowing numbers on your screen telling you what speed you were going at? It felt space-age, but combine it with a digital dash, and you were driving an arcade machine.
Onboard Computers
Fuel economy used to be a guessing game until onboard computers became a thing, and then suddenly your car had a brain and it was doing the math for you! You had MPG, average speed, range and even the temperature outside fed to you in data; it was mind-blowing.
Car TVs & VHS Players
When cars first introduced built-in TVs and VHS players, it didn’t matter that the screens were tiny; you were still living in a Jetsons-style future where you could keep the kids entertained with cartoons on long road trips without the inevitable “are we there yet” bombardment.
T-Tops
If you ever wished you could drive a Transformer (ignoring the uncomfortable implications) then T-Tops were a dream come true. They were modular roof panels you could remove, and if it rained? Snap them back on! They turned your vehicle into a hybrid roadster with spaceship cool.
Car Alarms That Talked
Why should you have a normal car alarm when you could opt for a Robocop voice that told people to “step away from the vehicle” instead? Some were even more aggressive - Vipers yelled “stand back!” - but they all came with a vibe of a car that could protect itself.
Refrigerated Glove Boxes
Prior to chilled glove boxes, the concept of a cooler in your car meant lugging around a heavy container, but these came built into a compartment (usually the glove box) and connected to your AC - some could even be toggled on or off on demand. It was the height of luxury.
Built-In GPS (Pre-Satellite Era)
Before cars came with satellite technology, a new invention burst onto the scene and threatened to make paper maps redundant: systems that could show where you were using compasses, gyroscopes and map transparencies. While it wasn’t a hundred percent accurate, it was close enough to convince drivers their car was magic.
Headlight Wipers
Commonly found on European sedans, some vehicles came with headlights that could clean themselves with tiny spray nozzles and little wiper blades. It was weirdly adorable, and looked like your car was waking up after a long sleep and rubbing its eyes.
Turbo Boost Buttons
Every vehicle-featuring sci fi movie worth its salt featured turbo buttons, and they started appearing for real in cars… kind of. The button or switch was most often linked to a transmission change, but in the moment you were piloting a futuristic Tron-style vehicle boosting to the horizon.
Power Antennas
More of a functional flourish than a game changer, the power antenna was like a metal flagpole that rose from your car when you turned on the radio, and sank back slickly into the vehicle when you turned it off. You can’t stop the signal!
Dashboard Equalizers
Dashboard Equalizers were a row of sliders on your dash that let you customize your music soundscape, changing the bass, mids and treble - whatever you wanted, really. It gave the impression of a spaceship commander operating their vehicle’s control panel, and the ones with dancing LEDs were even better.
In-Car Fax Machines
Back in the ’80s and ’90s, a fax machine that let you send and receive memos while on the fly felt like a cyberpunk fever dream, but they were real, and often found mounted in luxury limos and sedans. They were slower than snails, but they worked.
Built-In CB Radios
Citizens band radios, or CBs, allowed you to be part of an exclusive group of road warriors, getting traffic updates, talking in code like a trucker and chatting to strangers via shortwave frequencies - and all without a car phone or radio tower.
Retractable Steering Wheels
The height of style was when your steering wheel would raise into the dash to give you more room to exit your vehicle, and maybe even hide itself completely, allowing you to live out a Star Trek-style fantasy at the end of every journey. Until it jammed and cost a fortune to repair.
Auto-Dimming Rearview Mirrors
This technology turned your car into a thoughtful driving companion by detecting headlights behind you - whether through an electronic sensor or chemical gel - and darkening to save you headaches. No more lever-flipping like a chump; your vehicle was looking after you, and it was slick.
Seatbelt Buzzers
While an obnoxious ding or buzzer that yelled at you until you buckled your seatbelt doesn’t sound futuristic to us now, back in the ’70s and ’80s it was another illusion that your car was alive, and that was high sci-fi goals. For some people. Others really hated them.
Night Vision Displays (Luxury Cars)
The 2000 Cadillac DeVille had thermal cameras that detected objects, people and animals beyond headlight range and displayed the results on your dash as an early warning system. You were seeing how the Predator viewed the world, and it was marvelous.
Voice Command Systems (Early '90s)
The idea of your car responding to your voice in the early ’90s was revolutionary, even if the fickle systems couldn’t detect what you were saying most of the time and misinterpreted your commands. But the concept was ahead of its time!
Cruise Control (First Versions)
Cruise control systems aren't new; a blind engineer called Ralph Teetor released them in the 1950s! They were pioneering ideas that were influential to the cruise control and self-driving vehicles of today.
Pull-Out Car Stereos
Car theft was on a high during the ’80s and ’90s, so what better way to stop your car stereo from getting stolen than to pull it out and take it with you? It wasn’t just crime prevention, though - it also gave you a portable boombox.
In-Car Fragrance Dispensers
Many cars had pine trees hanging on their rearview mirror, but actual built-in scent systems that give you a new level of atmospheric control, bathing your cabin in relaxing freshness? It was aromatherapy on the move.
Heads-Up Displays (HUD)
The '88 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme spearheaded the trend of projecting transparent data onto your windshield, and while the displays were usually just simple speed readouts, you may as well have been piloting a mech.
Power Seats With Memory Settings
When your vehicle’s seat adjusts to you without prompting, it’s like welcoming you back from a hard day at work! You could set your preference with a button push, and some models even memorized your steering wheel and mirror positions, too.
Electronic Toll Transponders (Early EZ-Pass)
A small box on your windshield automatically charged your account at toll booths, so you could just pass on through, allowing you to live out your hacker fantasies and fight the system! But not really.
Retractable Rear Spoilers
Function and flair on one smooth package, these spoilers rose from your trunk like a waking kraken and made your car morph when you hit higher speeds, giving you aerodynamics and style.
Automatic Seatbelts
When you turn on the ignition and your seatbelt zips you in of its own accord, you may as well be an astronaut preparing for launch. It could be a bit of a surprise though, and the manual-buckled lower seatbelt made it redundant.
Dashboard Clocks With Analog Dials
You’d think analog dash clocks would feel less futuristic, but when everything was turning digital the feature somehow became more special, adding a touch of class to your glitz and glamor.
In-Car Record Players
While having a vinyl player in your car was a revolutionary idea in the ’60s - and it certainly felt like future tech - the reality was a little less impressive; records skipped and glitched constantly, but the concept was there.
LED Underglow Lights
Why have a normal boring car when you can have one bathed in light as if you were driving a vehicle from TRON? Cars such as the second generation 1995 -1999 model Mitsubishi Eclipse You had a lightsaber on wheels, and it was awesome (although illegal in some states, we might add).
