Hidden Features Inside Cars You’ve Probably Overlooked
Perhaps in a nod to the car’s “flower power” heyday, for many years the Volkswagen Beetle came from the factory with a tiny, partially hidden flower vase, known as a “blumenvasen,” attached to its dashboard. If you weren’t a flower fan, it was a handy place to store pens, toothpicks, lipstick or anything else that could fit in the small space.
“Though we’re sad that the little flower vase is no longer available for the Beetle, it doesn’t mean that the iconic model doesn’t still retain elements of its past. Though the flower vase made way, extra storage has been made available with the Kaferfach glovebox, another nod to the past,” wrote a Volkswagen dealership in Santa Monica when the vase was discontinued.
Lots of economy cars are small, but many models have hidden load space. For instance, the Honda Civic and Jazz boast a “Magic Seat” system, which lets you fold up the back seat bases to increase load space. This lets you transport anything from beach chairs to a large potted plant, as demonstrated on the Meridian Honda website. The 2018 Honda Fit, shown here, made it possible to sit in the back seat and have maximum legroom, thanks to the Magic Seats in front folding down.
Car designers are constantly trying to find new ways to improve a car’s performance and safety. To improve braking performance in wet weather, BMW came up with the Brake Drying system, which is activated by the windshield wiper‘s rain sensor. It moves the brake pads closer to the rotors to keep them dry and improve stopping power in wet weather conditions. You might not even realize your “bimmer” (yes, this is the correct nickname for a BMW automobile) has such a nifty feature included.
Having the correct tire pressure improves your vehicle’s performance but it can also save you money on gas. Yet many drivers probably don’t even realize that their car is fitted with a tire pressure monitoring system, which has actually been a legal requirement on all cars since 2008.
Every manufacturer has its own system and Nissan’s Easy-Fill Tire Alert is particularly cool. You simply start adding air and when the tire reaches the ideal pressure, the vehicle’s horn goes off. And if you over-inflate a tire, the hazard lights will flash three times to let you know you need to release some air.
Heated seats are a well-known feature of lots of modern cars, but some manufacturers take their commitment to driver and passenger comfort even further. Several BMW models, such as the 4 Series Convertible, offer neck warmers, which are available with different heat settings and integrated, independently-controlled air outputs. Mercedes-Benz also offers neck-warming via its Airscarf system, which the company says is “designed to extend the so-called ‘convertible season’ beyond the summer months.”
For the more impatient drivers out there, waiting for a traffic signal to change can feel like forever. But Subaru came up with a neat solution. The automaker’s EyeSight Driver Assist Technology uses a small beeping sound to tell the driver when traffic starts moving again. It also automatically adjusts your speed to maintain a pre-selected distance between you and the car in front, and detects objects in front of the vehicle that you are likely to hit — a feature that more and more modern carmakers are starting to integrate.
Even if you take regular breaks and have a steady supply of coffee on the go, you can still struggle to keep your eyes open during a long drive. That’s fine if you’re a passenger, but a drowsy driver is a very dangerous person. Several car companies, including Nissan, Honda, Mercedes, Toyota and Volvo, have developed their own drowsiness detection systems to detect the onset of sleep. For instance, the Mercedes Attention Assist system vibrates the steering wheel when it senses the driver is swerving and guides the vehicle back into its lane.
Normally, vacuuming a car isn’t the most enjoyable chore. The electric cord isn’t long enough, and the style of the vacuum itself might not work for all those nooks and crannies where dust and debris accumulate. And how do you get between the seats? Well, the Honda Odyssey has tried to solve the problem with a hidden, built-in vacuum with a long-range hose. To empty the HondaVac, as it’s called, you simply press the button on the face of the vacuum, pull out the canister, pop the tabs holding the lid and remove the filter.
The materials a car is made of make a huge difference when it comes to energy efficiency — which should be just as much of a concern these days as fuel efficiency. One of the best ways to make a vehicle more energy efficient is to make it lighter. Because aluminum can be forged to be just as strong as some steel, but at a much lower weight, it’s often chosen by automakers today.
Ford’s 2015 line of pickup trucks are a good example, as they were 700 pounds lighter than the previous year’s F-Series models. According to Ford, its lighter F-150s were up to 29% more fuel-efficient than the models they replaced, depending on the engine variation.
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