The five best failed car innovations

Saab Sensonic gearbox

Leaders in the advances of safety technology, Swedish manufacturers were often the first in line when it came to car improvement. One piece of technology that certainly did not improve the driving experience was the Sensonic gearbox. In theory, it seems like an ideal situation. What Saab’s Sensonic gearbox provided was the manual experience with the automatic ease of driving. In basic terms, it was a manual gearbox with an automatic clutch.

This works well on the open road as you slide effortlessly between gears while getting that engaging manual sensation, however it all went out of the window when it came to reverse parking up any kind of hill. As demonstrated by James May in an old Top Gear episode, when reversing up a hill, you can’t control the speed of reverse very easily as you don’t have the clutch control to use to your advantage. Instead, as soon as you lift off the accelerator, the car disengages reverse and you find yourself rolling forward. Not ideal.

Fifth wheel parking

We’ve finally reached a stage of technology where the car parks for you. That’s still something that feels very futuristic despite it being a feature of many cars today. If we rewind back almost 90 years, they were closer to this idea that you’d think. The 1930s fifth wheel parking concept is quite an ingenious one and, to be honest, it’s hard to see why it didn’t become the norm. Especially when you see the amount of marks on bumpers in the major cities.

It was a fairly simple idea as a fifth wheel would push down from the rear of the car at a sideways angle and you can swing the car around in the tightest of spaces. The only real downside we can think of is a tiny bit of scrubbing to the front tyres.

Unfortunately it never took off. Brooks Walker demonstrated his invention on a Packard in 1933 and a second attempt in the 1950s on a Cadillac still resulted in the industry brushing the idea off as too expensive.

Vinyl player

This one may be fairly obvious as to why it never stood the test of time, but the ambition has to be applauded. We’ve seen the 8-track, cassette and CD players slowly become obsolete with the advancement of in-car entertainment connecting to people’s phones and digital music collections, but the in-car vinyl player had much bigger issues than just being outdated.

Car companies managed to overcome the issues of a car’s suspension making the vinyl player needle jump with some counterweighted and cushioned arms, so the playing wasn’t as much of an issue that you’d think. The real problem was that you couldn’t just bring your records from home and play them. They were special records that effectively meant you’d have to purchase your entire collection all over again. The in-car vinyl player was also only an option in new cars and not something that could be bought and fitted, so demand for these records wasn’t high at all. After just one year they were removed and Chrysler stopped its support for the temperamental machines.

Toilet – Rolls Royce

Now this is a rare feature as we understand it to have only been built into one car. A man by the name of Joseph Mashuch of New York ordered a custom coachbuilt Rolls Royce in 1954 that had one interesting feature: a toilet. That’s right, the 1954 Rolls-Royce Vignale had a functioning toilet that would empty the contents onto the road. Now, if like us, you assumed it was under the driver’s seat, you’d be mistaken. Thankfully we can all rest easy safe in the knowledge that there isn’t a Rolls-Royce driver out there that’s driving and relieving themselves at the same time.

This toilet is located in the rear seats, so one would have to pull over before defecating on the M25 and driving off. Thankfully. The owner claims that he only kept the chilled champagne in there, but we’ll never fully trust that statement.

Bose Suspension – Lexus LS400

The audio equipment company isn't the first candidate that jumps to mind to be developing a revolutionary suspension system, but it spent a lot of time on the project and it was actually a technological success. When you watch footage of the electromagnetic suspension in action it is quite incredible. The test car for the suspension was a magnificent Lexus LS400, and is a car that is known for its smooth ride. The luxury car’s suspension does result in some body roll, as you’d expect, when the car is really put to the test over bumps, corners and hard braking. However, when the Bose suspension in the same model is used, the LS400 has absolutely zero body roll. Not even a hint of it. The wheels seem to move as if completely independent from the chassis.

The real party trick of the system was the ability to jump, although Bose said it wouldn’t allow that feature in a final production model. The reason for the system failing wasn’t a technological one, but financial. The system was too expensive to install and a little heavy. The technology is used by Bose today, but in the cushioned seats for long distance truckers. We’ll never get the pleasure of jumping over speed bumps unfortunately.

Rolls Royce image courtesy of Bonhams.