FEBRUARY 7 MYSTAR FIVE FOR FRIDAY: MYSTARCOLLECTORCAR PRESENTS FIVE SUPER-COOL CAR FEATURES FROM THE PAST

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The here-and-now world of 21st century automotive features is a virtual reality of advancements that take drivers along for a ride in a wonderland of technological advancements.

In fact, many new vehicles can drive better than their human occupants, although most drivers make the accomplishment a little on the low side of a high hurdle regarding driving skills. The good news is new age vehicles can make roads less dangerous if their computers run the show.

However, our mandate here at MyStarCollectorCar is simple: celebrate and showcase retro rides, including some of their coolest features. The retro features were cutting edge at the time and have become a unique part of automotive history.

MyStarCollectorCar decided to sift through the pages of automotive history and showcase five examples of ultra-cool features from the past.

The first feature on our list is the swivel seat offered by Chrysler for its 1959 models. The bucket front seats would swivel out to allow driver and passenger an easier route to the outside. Swivel seats were a comfort feature designed to make the exit process much easier for the occupants because these finned Mopars had lower rooflines that added to the style, but made exits a tougher scalp-denting process.

The swivel seat experiment only lasted until 1961 and was likely an overly expensive addition to the Mopar models at the time, but it helped define the last days of the Forward Look cars at Chrysler.

The second addition to our list is the 1949 Nash Airflyte, a very unusual car known as an “upside down bathtub” in car guy circles. The upside to the ’49 Nash’s unusual design was an abundance of interior room, enough for Nash to push the car’s use as a 4-wheeled bedroom.

The car had front seats that folded back to meet the rear seats, something Nash labeled its “Twin Bed” feature. The company even offered window screens to keep out bugs and let in fresh air.

One might assume these cars were responsible for many cases of unplanned teenaged parenthood when Junior borrowed his dad’s Nash Airflyte for a date, but the little car company blazed a trail for their unique approach to interior uses for a car and set the table for every future auto builder who used their game plan.

The third cool retro feature on our list was around long before us, namely the rumble seat. A rumble seat was another way to carry extra passengers if the owner was not obsessed with the trunk concept and people did not mind sitting in the area where trunks were typically positioned on a car.

The first rumble seats appeared on domestic vehicles built in the 1920s and were eventually phased out during the  1930s. It was a tight squeeze in a rumble seat and users were also exposed to the weather, but the rumble seat gained a reputation for romance-probably because people had to huddle so close together in them.

The fourth ultra-cool feature on vintage rides was Studebaker’s retractable station wagon roof found on its Wagonaire models built between 1963 and 1966. The innovative roof separated the Wagonaire from every other domestic station wagon and gave it a sporty convertible vibe.

The non-sporty factor was the roof leaked like a sieve during inclement weather. But the open roof sure looked cool in good weather.   

The fifth and final retro feature on our list is the Tilt-Away steering wheel built by Ford in 1967. Ford had the Swing-Away steering wheel, a system wherein the entire steering column swung away from the driver prior to the introduction of its Tilt-Away system. The big difference is the Swing-Away system pivoted at the steering column’s base while the Tilt-Away system pivoted in a small section at the top of the column.

Rigid safety standards played a role in the newer Tilt-Away steering column, presumably because the older Swing-Away system was more dangerous for users. Either way, a driver was able to move the steering column out of his or her way when exiting the vehicle.

BY: Jim Sutherland

Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section. 

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