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Original story first published in Drive on 5 December, 1997
From the rise of hybrid cars and keys that immobilise a vehicle; from the advent of rudimentary satellite navigation and the failure of the world’s first electric vehicle from a mainstream manufacturer, Drive’s 1997 list of good and bad ideas in the world of cars provides an interesting insight into what was on the horizon in the world of automotive.
As this list reveals, some ideas were on the money while others, well, they’re perhaps best left in the past. Standard equipment nail clippers anyone?
The best innovations of 1997
The Mercedes-Benz A-Class rewrote car design rules by packing medium-car space into less than mini-car length, along with big-car crash safety. Very clever. There was only one problem (see Top 10 Bad Ideas)…
The new VT Commodore may not be perfect, but its array of safety technology is impressive. Its seatbelt pre-tensioners activate in minor bingles; the car's airbags join in only if the accident is serious enough. And the front end can absorb above-average impacts, not to mention uniquely Australian hazards. Holden created a variety of crash-test kangaroos during its development of the car.
We've heard for years how hybrid petrol-electric cars can double fuel economy. Energy, usually lost during deceleration and braking, is recovered as electricity; this free charge supplements the petrol engine, so efficiency soars. Less pollution, less greenhouse effect, brilliant. Now, at last, a hybrid is heading for mass production – Toyota's Prius goes on sale in Japan next week. Honda is set to follow.
Throw away the street directory, slide a CD-ROM map into your car's sat-nav system and have a computer guide you to your destination. Listen to the computer-generated verbal instructions or watch the directions displayed on a small LCD screen. Other countries have had sat nav cars for years. Australia had to wait until '97 for the first CD-ROM maps of our capitals to be completed. Available only in upmarket BMWs at present, but others will follow.
Mercedes-Benz has produced a key for the next millennium. It's not a key, in the conventional sense – it's more like a Drive Authorisation Device. The electronic key-like thing communicates via an infra-red link with the car's computer before allowing start-up. The key and the car must first agree on the answer to a complex mathematical computation. The combination is practically unbreakable, says Benz.
Whiplash isn't only painful, it's expensive, too. The NRMA estimates $80 to $100 of the price of annual green slip premiums is spent on whiplash victims. Saab's Pro-Tech seat is a simple, effective solution. It uses body movement to thrust the headrest forward, arresting the vicious neck bending that causes whiplash. Simple, entirely mechanical and reusable.
A brilliant idea, literally. The new generation xenon car headlights work on a similar principle to domestic fluoros. They cut a super-bright path through darkness, yet need less electricity than conventional headlight globes.
Though it won't reduce greenhouse effect, Honda's new zero emission engine technology, revealed in Tokyo this year, reduces tailpipe smog to almost nothing. It will go into some '99 model Hondas.
Ford Australia is trialling it, Volvo builds a car to use it and Honda thinks it's a fuel of the future. Clean-burning natural gas is gaining support. Australia has gas reserves to last 100 years.
The smartest of America's Big Three car makers believes plastic has a future in car bodies. Plastic cars are cheap to make, don't need painting and are Airfix simple to assemble. Perfect for super-cheap small cars. To prove the idea is feasible, Chrysler built the CCV concept car (below).
The worst innovations of 1997
Mercedes-Benz's pillow-soft suspension for one of three A Class models came unstuck in a major way. Good for comfort, the squishy springs were a major contributor to the revolutionary car's roll-over in a moose avoidance test by a Swedish magazine. Production of the car has been stopped for three months; thousands of customers have cancelled orders.
Maybe Holden thought no-one would notice its new VT Commodore was about 150kg heavier than the old VS II. The first visit to a service station was a dead give-away if you hadn't already noticed the leisurely performance.
Rover, presented with a clean sheet of paper and the chance to design a clever, forward-looking and chic small car for the 21st century, came up with the new Mini. It's an uninspired pastiche of the old one. "Never have so many had so few ideas," Churchill would have said.
VW cranked up its factory to begin building the new Golf. Oops. The first 4000 Golfs lacked links – namely a vital weld for strength. All had to be scrapped. Red faces, a rushed redesign job and begin all over again.
"The intelligent 4WD" was the slogan for Ford's Explorer 4WD, portrayed in a television advertisement driving up an outsize example of Rodin's Thinker. Auguste Rodin died in 1917, roughly the year in which the Explorer's rear suspension was designed.
Boofs were baffled when they tuned in on Sunday, October 5, to find BMWs, Audis and Volvos blasting round Mount Panorama. The Commodores and Falcons raced there a fortnight later. It was the ARL and Super League thing all over again.
BMW's reputation for elegant design took a dive when the dust sheet came off the Z3 coupe. It looked like a low-slung bread van, penned by someone a slice short of a loaf.
VW, forgetting its place, decided to take on the German luxury car experts with V8 and W12 limousines. From people's car to plutocrat's carriage? The world will take some convincing.
Holden Special Vehicles, supplier of hot Commodores to the self-made, replaced the cupholders in its new models with a little compartment containing a small Swiss army knife, a tiny Maglite torch and ... wait for it .... nail clippers. We wonder why, too.
Car buyers in California could lease an electric car in '97. But GM's EV1 has flopped. From millions of potential customers, only a few hundred have elected electric. The two-seater volts-wagen is expensive and has a limited range between recharges.
Drive was remarkably prescient in 1997, our nominations for the best and worst of 1997 standing up pretty well in the intervening 27 years.
The original Mercedes-Benz A-Class may have had moose-test problems, but it survived through two generations in its first iteration before the third-generation (2012) heralded a more conventional direction for the model. By 2021, Mercedes-Benz had sold over 3.3 million of its entry-level compact across all three generations.
We lauded the advent of the hybrid era, Drive’s scribes excited about the imminent arrival of the Toyota Prius. Today, hybrid technology is mainstream, with most manufacturers offering some form of hybridisation within their vehicle line-ups. Last year in Australia, hybrid vehicles accounted for eight per cent of total new car sales. This year, the fuel-saving technology is on track to almost double that market share, hybrids accounting for over 14 per cent of all new car sales in Australia to the end of October.
Inserting a CD-ROM for route guidance might seem quaint today, but it was groundbreaking in 1997. But thanks to smartphone technology, everyone has the full gamut of the world’s maps in their pocket.
Of the not-so-great ideas, Rover’s last hurrah with the Mini was soon to be eclipsed by BMW’s first effort as the new custodian of the storied British brand. The new Mini launched in 2001 and was exactly what it should have been, a reimagining of the original but with enough nods to the famous nameplate’s heritage to make it instantly recognisable. It remains in production today.
Volkswagen’s foray into the luxury limousine arena culminated with the launch of the Phaeton in 2002. Available with a choice of engines including a 4.2-litre V8 and a monstrous 6.0-litre W12 (which would go on to serve time in other VW Group cars like the Audi A8 and Bentley Continental Flying Spur), the Phaeton garnered praise for its engineering, its unashamed luxury, and its “all-round brilliance”.
But with pricing at Mercedes-Benz S-Class and BMW 7 Series levels, the Phaeton’s biggest hurdle proved near-insurmountable – convincing buyers that Volkswagen was a luxury brand. It did fond its buyers though, the German giant producing a total of 84,253 Phaetons over its 15-year production life from 2001-16. One notable customer was the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, who chose the Phaeton as his official state car from 2002-05. Stately indeed.
And finally, while the General Motors EV1 was a car ahead of its time, yet ultimately doomed to fail, it did inspire two Americans – Martin Eberhard (above) and Marc Tarpenning – to start their own electric car company in 2003. Its name? Tesla Motors.
So, which innovation from 1997 have you found the most useful today? Let us know in the comments below.
Rob Margeit is an award-winning Australian motoring journalist and editor who has been writing about cars and motorsport for over 25 years. A former editor of Australian Auto Action, Rob’s work has also appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Wheels, Motor Magazine, Street Machine and Top Gear Australia. Rob’s current rides include a 1996 Mercedes-Benz E-Class and a 2000 Honda HR-V Sport.
