- The automotive industry
is a cradle of innovation and creativity.
And that is how cars have managed to evolve so much
in only 130 years.
There are churches in Europe
that took 300 years to be built.
But here's the thing,
not all inventions are good.
And not all good inventions end up getting made.
In this episode
we're gonna talk about 10 failed car inventions
and also talk about some of the great ideas
which never made it to market.
So expect to hear about a car that can make coffee,
suspension made by a stereo company,
and even a freaking horse head.
Get your number two pencils all sharp
'cause there will be a Scantron test at the end.
This is "D-List".
Number 10, Fiat 500L espresso machine.
In 2013 the Fiat 500L,
I think the L probably stands for latte,
was the first car, surprisingly,
to be offered with its own coffee maker.
Beside the Trans Am that Xzibit pimped out in 2004.
I always say Edison, Tesla, Xzibit.
This optional $300 coffee experience package
meant that between the front and back seats
in the space you'd usually find a cup holder
sat a legit espresso maker.
It had its own power supply
and it would brew you up an espresso in a matter of minutes.
Now I am a former barista.
My foam art game is top level.
And I think this is a terrible idea.
Boiling water in a moving vehicle?
An easy access to mind-altering levels of caffeine?
What could possibly go wrong?
Unsurprisingly, it didn't sell all that well.
And in fact,
it didn't sell over here in the US at all.
Maybe Fiat was scared because Americans sue people.
We got lawyers.
And them lawyers would be hungry for a nice
"I burnt myself on my espresso machine
"and crashed into this kindergarten" case.
Built-in espresso machine,
less coffee stops, more bathroom stops,
which brings me on to this.
Number nine, Cadillac in-car toilet.
This one's awesome.
This is not a joke at all.
Cadillac actually invented a car
with a built-in toilet.
It was designed to help them
complete a 10,000-mile continuous drive
as part of a publicity stunt that they were planning.
But after that success,
Cadillac actually considered fitting it to production cars
and they weren't alone.
Rolls Royce also played with toilet technology
in the early 1950s.
Kids, do not play with toilet technology.
Toilet technology is a tool, not a toy.
The 1954 Rolls Royce Vignale
was a one of one
commissioned by a guy from New York, Joseph Maschuch.
It was a re-bodied long-base silver Wraith.
Maschuch ordered many bespoke features.
The engine block, cylinder head, and carburetor
were all painted in forest green.
The valve covers were chromed.
And there was a toilet built into the back seat.
Now obviously this wasn't ever gonna become
a feature a on production cars
'cause there were two many issues with the plumbing.
But in 1954 Rolls Royce's solution
was to just have the doo doo and pee pee
fall onto the road under the car.
Classy, Rolls Royce.
Very classy.
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Number eight, Mercedes Air-Balance package.
The Mercedes S-Class is the vehicle from which
the rest of the automotive world takes inspiration.
And over the years
so much tech has been seen for the first time
on the S-Class.
I'm talking air suspension, ventilated seats,
seatbelt pretensioners, keyless entry and ignition,
radar guided cruise control
just to name a lot.
But one S-Class advancement, which was a step too far,
was the Mercedes Air-Balance package.
I know, it sounds like a collab
between New Balance and Nike,
but it's not.
It was basically a bottle of perfume
hidden in the glove compartment
that would circulate through the car's air supply
and keep the car smelling fresh forever.
The problem,
oh, it sounds great, couldn't possibly see a problem.
Well, the problem is,
turns out that tons of people all over the world
are allergic to the ingredients that make up most perfumes.
And so despite offering that fresh new car smell forever,
the Mercedes Air-Balance package
gave people rashes and respiratory problem.
And it's a shame 'cause how many times
have you been on a road trip with your dad
and he's just pounding McDonald's breakfast burritos,
just farting, fart, farting,
and you want to roll down your window
but it's the middle of winter and you're in West Virginia
and it's 32 degrees outside,
and you just wish that you had a button that you could press
to make all those dad farts go away?
Number seven, BOSE magnetic ride.
BOSE, yeah, the speaker guys,
had an idea which in my opinion
was totally awesome.
Now the idea was to use magnetics
to adjust the car suspension
in only a few thousandths of a second
after it sensed a bump in the road,
and in doing so kept the car completely flat
no matter what terrain you were driving on.
Active suspension nowadays is fairly common,
but 15 years ago it was a novelty.
BOSE went and took it to another level altogether.
The result of the BOSE system was a super smooth ride
and one of the most soothing video clips
ever to be introduced into the world.
I mean, look at this.
That doesn't even look real.
But it was too heavy and far too expensive
to be offered in a standard road car.
But the idea has been sold to another manufacturer
who's attempting to work out the kinks,
and I hope they do because it sounds freaking awesome
and I want more of these super soothing clips
of just all kinds of cars.
Number six, onboard record player.
Our good friends over at Chrysler pioneered this bad boy,
offering an alternative to the crackle of an AM radio
with this,
the in-car phonograph.
Hey kid, put on your records.
Ooh, you like them wax pressings? (scatting)
This was a real thing, not just a concept.
They actually produced it
in many of their popular 1950s cars.
But it wasn't without its downsides as you can imagine.
Record players need to be completely static to work.
The slightest movement will cause the needle to skip,
or worse than that, scratch the vinyl,
damaging it forever.
And supposedly it was near impossible
to change the record from side A to side B
without having a head-on collision I can imagine.
The beyond that,
the needle was prone to skipping
whenever the car went over a bump,
which on 1950s roads, was every two seconds.
The needle had to be spring-loaded
to make good contact with the record.
This resulted in records being absolutely destroyed
after two to three plays.
Ah man, I would be so disappointed
if my super rare original pressing of "Dude Ranch"
got ruined while I was driving in my 50s Chrysler.
Nolan's actually about to pick up
a 1950s Chrysler Imperial in the next couple weeks.
He's gonna park it at my house and work on it.
So hopefully that one has a record player
or maybe I can source him one
so he can just bump Deftones on vinyl
as he drives through the hood.
Number five, child partition.
Being stuck driving a car for hours and hours
with kids or people you don't like can be a total drag.
I mean, we've all been there.
So would it shock you if I told you
that the answer was actually invented in 1940?
Many auto manufacturers
experimented with sliding partition tech at that time.
It was thought that a limousine-style screen
between parents and children
would lighten the burden on the driver
so they could focus on driving.
The limousine screen itself dates back even further
to the days of the horse and buggy.
Back then the occupants would sit
in sumptuous velvet-coated quilted luxury
while the driver sat on a wooden bench outside.
The sliding partition really never took off
in everyday passenger vehicles.
Mostly due to the concern
for the safety of unsupervised and inaccessible children.
I would've loved to have a partition when I was a kid.
Not to keep me from them to keep them from me.
Number four, horse head.
This one sounds terrifying.
While we're on the subject of horse-drawn carriages,
allow me to introduce to you
the most abstract invention on this list.
Now when cars first started,
you might not know this
if you were born less than 100 years ago,
it was a really scary thing for people.
I mean, cars don't have souls,
they don't have eyes.
That's a thing that people used to say.
I mean, my car doesn't have eyes, man.
Your horse, theoretically,
would keep you from driving it off of a cliff.
And it wasn't just the people who had a problem with cars,
it was horses too.
Horses had a rough time sharing the roads
with these new gas machines.
The solution
to stop the horses from getting spooked was simple.
They would put a life-sized horse's head made of wood
on the front of a car.
Unsurprisingly, it didn't stop horses from getting spooked,
the thing didn't work.
But as we know,
gradually horses were replaced on the roads by cars
and the problem sort of worked itself out.
Turns out the problem wasn't the cars,
it was the horses.
So we got rid of the horses.
However, the days of spooked horses are over.
Because nowadays horses are buff.
If you like buff horses as much as I do,
go to donutmedia.com
and get yourself a new buff horses T-shirt.
This is my favorite thing that we've ever made.
But if horses are too buff for you,
maybe try the less buff version of a horse, i.e. a dog.
And if you want to take your dog on the road with you
without getting a bunch of hair all over your interior
I got a product for you.
Number three, dog sacks.
If you're anything like me
you love your car and you love your dog,
but you can't stand getting hair, fleas, slobber,
bits of food all over your clean car seats.
The solution, dog sacks.
It was basically a canvas sack
with hole a for your dog's head and hooks at the top
that you would hook over your open window
and your dog would just fly on the side of your car.
How insane is that?
Now I don't think it's that bad of an idea honestly,
especially of you have a dog
and you don't have an SUV or a hatchback.
I mean, people carry really small dogs around
in freaking backpacks and handbags
all the time in Beverly Hills,
so what's the difference in this, hmm?
Tell me in the comments.
Number two, disappearing doors.
Now this is another one
that I wish would've been more successful.
The incredible disappearing doors as seen on the BMW Z1.
In a world where gull wing, scissor, Lambo,
even suicide doors are a feature on several different models
the fact that disappearing doors aren't,
that's a crying shame.
That's a crying shame.
Check out how cool these freaking things are.
I could watch that all day.
The system works using a series of motors and belts
which is needlessly complicated and very, very heavy.
But that doesn't stop it
from looking totally freaking awesome.
BMW didn't actually pioneer this technology.
That accolade goes to Kaiser Darrin Motor Company
and their KF-161 which launched in 1953.
And it had doors
that rolled forward into the body work using rollers.
Number one, the fifth wheel.
You ever been on a date with two couples
and you're not a couple
but you're friends with all four of them?
And they just start kissing
and you ain't got no one to kiss?
That's called being a fifth wheel.
But that's not the fifth wheel I'm talking about today.
Parallel parking has always been
one of the hardest skills for average drivers to master.
I mean, I'm really, really, really, really, good at it
but not everybody is and that's okay.
You got to reverse, you got to steer,
you got to try not to scratch your car,
you got to try not to curb your wheels,
you got to try not to hit two other cars.
That's hard.
And parallel parking
has lead to a ton of different innovations
trying to tackle it.
I'm talking curb feelers which are cool.
Those big matte things that go on people's bumpers
to protect them in the cities,
which I think are not cool.
Makes your car look like you're wearing a diaper.
They have cars now which just parallel park themselves
which I think is trippy.
So what did people do before?
It may surprise you to know that way back in 1951
the retracting fifth wheel was the solution
to all your parallel parking needs.
It would drop down
and allow you to steer the rear of your car
directly into the space.
Problem solved, right?
Wrong, okay, wrong.
It didn't solve the problem.
The thing was heavy, it was impractical,
and really, really hard to design a car around it.
And it was prone to dropping down during normal driving,
destroying itself,
or not deploying at all when you were parallel parking
and you actually needed it.
Turns out it was not a very good invention -- practicality.
Now this seems to be
an interesting idea that was poorly executed.
I could think of a few people, Mom,
who could use a fifth wheel for parking,
but I don't want to blow up their spot, Mom.
Now all this research got me thinking
that maybe I could come up with my own car invention,
and in 100 years when someone else is doing a roundup
of failed car inventions on GlorpTube or whatever,
maybe I'll be on that list.
So I thought really long and hard
about what problem I wanted to fix.
And then one night, in the middle of the night,
it hit me like a ton of bricks.
And I got up out of my coffin
and I wrote it down in a notebook.
A lot of cars these days are, let's say ugly.
We can't have angular front ends.
We aren't allowed to have pop up, up and down headlights,
and why is that?
It's because of pedestrian safety regulations.
But let me ask you this,
what are pedestrians doing for car safety?
Nothing, until now.
Allow me to introduce to you
the Pumphrey Pedestrian Accident Safety Suit.
By wearing this revolutionary safety suit
at all times when outside of the outside and not in a car,
I predict that fatalities in pedestrian traffic incidents
could fall as low as 0%.
Problem solved.
Pop up, up and down headlights are back, baby.
(synth cue)
If you enjoyed this video and want to watch another video
having to do with innovations in the car industry,
check out this episode
of my best friend Nolan's show "Wheelhouse".
Thank you guys so much for watching "D-List"
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