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These Are the Five Most Ridiculous Car Features Ever Designed

When it comes to buying a new car, there are many factors to consider. Reliability, fuel efficiency, and maintenance costs are arguably the most important, but customers also pay a lot of attention to features intended for comfort, convenience, and safety nowadays.
1981 Honda City with Motocompo bike 13 photos
Photo: Honda
1984 Toyota Van1986 HDT VL Commodore SS Group A1985 Holden VK Commodore SSMercedes-Benz granite trim1981 Honda Motocompo1981 Honda City1981 Honda City & Motocompo1981 Honda City & Motocompo1984 Toyota Van ice makerChrysler's Highway Hi-Fi vinyl playerChrysler's Highway Hi-Fi vinyl playerChrysler's Highway Hi-Fi vinyl player
Automakers have developed a massive amount of helpful technologies over the years, but they've also offered features that seemed ridiculous back in the day. Some still feel weird today, but others have evolved into usable features. Here are five of the most ridiculous gimmicks you can find in cars from the past.

Vinyl player

Most modern cars come with internet, Bluetooth, and smartphone compatibility, all of which cover our needs for music entertainment on the road. But this technology is still new. CD players were still the norm a decade ago, while cassette players soldiered on in production cars from the 1960s until well into the 2000s. Before the tape cassette was invented in 1963, the radio was the only provider of music inside the car.

But in the 1950s, Chrysler came up with a crazy idea to create a vinyl player for its vehicles. It was developed by Peter Goldmark during his time at CBS Labs and became available in various Chrysler, Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, and Imperial models as an option.

Chrysler's Highway Hi\-Fi vinyl player
Photo: Stellantis
Called Highway Hi-Fi, it was an innovative feature. A bit different from the usual record player, it was designed to play at half the speed of a regular record and the discs features twice as many grooves. That increased storage capacity from 45 minutes in total to around two hours.

Drivers were no longer at the mercy of radio DJs. They could play their own music on the go. It was incredible. However, the high cost of Highway Hi-Fi, the limited titles to choose from, and reliability issues put an end to the in-car-vinyl after less than two years. RCA introduced a similar player in 1960, but it was discontinued just one year later. If you want to find out more about it, here's a more in-depth look at Highway Hi-Fi.

Ice maker

Some luxury cars from Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Mercedes-Benz come with small cool boxes nowadays, just in case you need to pop the champagne and celebrate your latest business venture. You won't find such a fancy feature in a non-premium car, but Toyota did it back in 1980s when it put an ice maker in a van.

1984 Toyota Van ice maker
Photo: Toyota
Depending on where you live, you might know it as the MasterAce, Cruiser, or Tarago. In the U.S., it was called the Van. The predecessor to the Previa and the Sienna we all know today, the Van was a rather strange layout compared to modern minivans.

It featured a cab-over design, it was rear-wheel-drive, and had a four-cylinder engine mounted under the passenger compartment. If you needed to fix something, you had to lift the driver's seat to access the engine bay. It was also quite compact at only 170 inches (4,318 mm) long. This thing didn't need an ice maker to stand out.

But Toyota decided it could be an advantage over the competition and offered a shoebox-size refrigerator as an option on certain trims. Placed in the center console just in front of the shifter, it was cooled with air-conditioning refrigerant and came with spill-proof trays.

1984 Toyota Van
Photo: Toyota
Since the ice maker wasn't offered for too long, it's safe to say that it wasn't exactly popular with Van customers. But it was a ridiculous feature to have in a family hauler in an era when in-car fridges were restricted to massively long and expensive limousines.

Granite trim

There was a time when a car's interior was mostly plastic, vinyl, and chrome. Along with the need for fancier, more welcoming interiors, some carmakers introduced wood trim. It usually comes with more comfort-oriented models, as sportier cars tend to include aluminum and even carbon-fiber trim nowadays. But at some point, Mercedes-Benz decided to go big and add a granite trim option.

And no, that's not a fancy name for some colored plastic. It's a rock. If you're a stickler for definitions, it's a coarse-grained igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. Fancy, huh?

Mercedes\-Benz granite trim
Photo: Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz offered granite trim in various models in the 2000s and 2010s, most notably the SL and the Maybach series. It was part of the company's Designo program, and it cost more than $2,500 back in the early 2010s. Granted, stone trim looks incredible on a car's center console and center stack, but the very idea of having rocks in my car is as ridiculous as they get. But hey, it's one way to stand out on the premium market.

On-board scooter

Motorhomes are a great way to travel. You can sleep anywhere you find enough room to park your motorized trailer, and you can use that bike attached to the rear end to explore the city without having to worry about narrow streets and the availability of parking spots. Honda took this idea and shrunk it to a subcompact car fitted with a scooter in the trunk.

I'm talking about the Motocompo, a really tiny bike that's only 46.7 inches long, 21.1 inches wide, and 35.8 inches tall (that's 1,185, 535, and 910 mm, respectively). Designed with folding handle barns, seat, and foot-pegs, the Motocompo became a box-shaped package in a couple of minutes, and it was small enough to fit in the City's trunk.

1981 Honda City & Motocompo
Photo: Honda
The latter was quite small, too, at only 134.6 inches (3,420 mm) long. Definitely not the kind of vehicle you'd expect to carry a bike.

The Motocompo was produced from 1981 to 1983 in a little over 53,000 units. It featured a tiny 49cc two-stroke engine rated at 2.5 horsepower and tipped the scales at just 93 pounds (42 kg). Although it wasn't particularly popular back in the day, it has gained a cult following in Japan, and some City/Motocompo combos have been imported in the U.S. since then.

The most ridiculous thing about this ridiculous car feature is how ridiculous you look riding it. Oh man, way too much ridiculousness in one sentence.

1981 Honda Motocompo
Photo: Honda

Healing crystals

Thanks to social media, we are now flooded with less-than-scientific wellness solutions promoted by public figures, but this industry is far from new. Back in the 1980s, a legendary racing driver put healing crystals and magnets in cars, claiming they improved performance and handling through "aligning the molecules."

This ridiculous idea belonged to Peter Brock. Not to be confused with Pete Brock, who worked for GM, Shelby, and led the BRE motorsport team, Peter Brock is arguably the most iconic Australian racing driver. A three-time Australian touring car champion and nine-time Bathurst 1000 winner, Brock was the country's fastest and most talented driver.

Having raced Holden cars almost exclusively throughout the 1970s, Brock developed a special relationship with the carmaker. Initially part of the Holden Dealer Team racing outfit, Brock eventually teamed up with the company to roll out limited-edition, high-performance versions of the Commodore.

1986 HDT VL Commodore SS Group A
Photo: Holden Dealer Team
While both Holden and HDT were doing well financially thanks to their cooperation with Brock, the racing driver struggled with a series of health issues. Tired of feeling sick, Peter got in touch with a local chiropractor who recommended a new lifestyle that combined vegan food and the use of crystals due to their supposed power to heal.

Brock got so excited with the new lifestyle that he began to apply the "powers" of these crystals to everything he got in contact with, including HTD's race cars. In 1986, the company discovered that Brock had been fitting crystals in the cars. When confronted with the discovery, Brock said the small box of crystals embedded in resin was intended to "align" the cars' molecules.

Not only he insisted that the race cars kept sporting them, but he also tried to convince Holden and General Motors to put an Energy Polarizer in every road car. That didn't happen, but Brock took the executive decision to adds the device to the HDT Director sedan as a $480 option.

1985 Holden VK Commodore SS
Photo: Holden Dealer Team
Fearing the consequences of being associated with pseudoscience, Holden ended its partnership with Brock immediately. The Energy Polarizer nearly put an end to Brock's racing career, too, with the Australian driver spending his next two decades racing on a smaller scale.

Now imagine if Peter had access to today's social media platforms. It bet the Energy Polarizer would have developed into the biggest aftermarket scam in history.

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About the author: Ciprian Florea
Ciprian Florea profile photo

Ask Ciprian about cars and he'll reveal an obsession with classics and an annoyance with modern design cues. Read his articles and you'll understand why his ideal SUV is the 1969 Chevrolet K5 Blazer.
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