"The Car of The Future"

Writers have often come up with weird and wonderful observations on how the car of the future might look, and what mind-bending features they could possess. In the 1950s, automobile day-dreaming was often inspired by the excitement of the space race, and the wonders of the new fangled jet engine, with car designs, especially in America, obviously drawing on styling cues found in these areas of aeronautic development.

Going back further in time, to the early 1930s to be precise, and we have this series of illustrations, suggesting to young impressionable children how the motorcar may continue and develop in the years to come. Of course no-one knew back then that the nations of Europe and further afield would be dragged into another world war, stifling all thoughts of progress in the design of the car for many years.

This illustration was found in the Every Boy's Hobby Annual for 1932, which was written sometime during 1931. The text alongside this vision of motoring's future reads as follows:

"Our artist's idea of the lines which motor-car designs may take in the near future appears in his sketch on the opposite page. Streamlining (to eliminate wind resistance) will certainly be adopted widely in the car of the future, for it is wind-resistance that limits very high speeds more than anything else. The engine of a modern super racing car speeding along at about 200mph expends 95 per cent of its power in overcoming wind-resistance, and only the remaining 5 per cent is used up in other ways. With the coming of better streamlining, cars will also be built with lower bodies, for low bodywork makes a car more stable and not easy to overturn. Another suggested improvement is front wheel drive, which has already been adopted by many manufacturers. This arrangement does away with the present long driving-shaft which makes very low bodywork impossible. Front wheel drive also makes for surer, safer cornering.

Why, perhaps you will wonder, has front wheel drive not been adopted on more cars already? The reason is that the idea is only just out of the experimental stage. Besides, cars with front wheel drive are liable to get badly damaged in collisions that would be small affairs to rear-drive machines.

Another big improvement in cars that the future is sure to bring forth will be unpuncturable tyres. Probably they will be similar to unpuncturable Sorbo balls. At present, Sorbo tyres would be too heavy and not sufficiently durable.

A big increase in comfort will be brought about by independent wheel springing. This will allow a car to be driven over deep potholes in the road without the least suggestion of a jar, since all shock will be damped out by the springs."

Whoever wrote this, back in 1931, had obviously given this some thought - their thoughts on the adoption of front wheel drive, streamlined coachwork, and independent suspension were pretty close to the mark, reading this now with the benefit of hindsight. Unpuncturable tyres however have not caught on as yet, despite occasional nods to the idea over the years - run-flat tyres have appeared over time, for example the Dunlop Denovo tyre, which was an option back in the 1970s on the 1275GT Mini, Austin Princess and sleek new SD1 Rover.

A close look at the drawings will show other ideas that were predicted for the motor-car of the future. The top drawings show how the ride height of cars had been reducing since the earliest cars - In 1890 the first motorcars were 20 inches from the ground, which by 1927 had reduced to 15 inches, and by 1930 down to just 12 inches. The silhouette of a car from 193? suggested that cars later in this decade may only be a mere 8 inches from the road, thanks perhaps to wider use of front wheel drive, as already hinted at.

Below that is a great impression of a mighty diesel powered car - "Diesel engine when reduced in size and weight will not change drastically the outline of a car with exception of larger engine accomodation". Forward vision does not appear to have been much of a consideration with this particular design dream, which appears to me an amalgam of a 1930s Bentley front end, with a 'modern' back end grafted on to show how much more light and airy the modern car will be.

The radical stuff appeared in the largest drawing, showing a very radical looking machine. Looking at it, there are hints of 1930s Tatra in the sweeping rear coachwork, with a short stubby nose housing a V8 (the Tatra was however fitted with a rear mounted V8). Features of the design shown include:

shatterless glass roof - opening when required
petrol tank in centre of car for safety"
perfected engine - 8 cylinder V Type not accessible - not requiring attention
automatic gear change
front wheel drive more efficient than rear wheel propulsion
fierce acceleration to cope with traffic conditions
no footboards
unpuncturable tyres - rendering spare wheel unnecessary
large (brake) drums
hydraulic brakes
independently sprung wheels
stopping distance equivalent to acceleration. Pull up 50ft from 45mph
fierce acceleration to cope with traffic conditions

Some of these predictions would come true, in a fashion. Glass sunroofs have been around for some time now, and petrol tanks have been moved from the extremities of a car into safer locations, usually between or slightly ahead of, the rear axle. Automatic gearboxes are everywhere, as is front wheel drive. Footboards (running boards) have long since disappeared from car design (back in the late 40s they were beginning to disappear), although the desire to not need a spare wheel has yet to be realised.

Large brakes are a feature of recent cars, but usually disc instead of the drum type. Hydraulic brakes are the norm, and independent suspension is everywhere now virtually. The one idea that shows no sign of being a reality is that of the "perfected engine" - an engine, or "power block", that would never need any attention.

The idea of introducing "fierce acceleration to cope with traffic conditions" is interesting. Up to the 1960s, it was assumed that car designs would improve to such an extent that speeds would increase, and roads improve more and more to accomodate speedier personal travel (this was the forward-looking era that brought us Concorde after all). Sadly, planners now seem hell bent on slowing everyone down, introducing 'road calming' (aka driver enraging!) and spreading cameras on every straight piece of road you can imagine. The dream of swift personal mobility seems ever distant in these increasingly regulated and restricted days, something that in the 1930s could not have been predicted I imagine.

The lower drawing shows "lamps recessed in radiator shell for stream lining". This would happen in the 1940s after WW2, when headlamps were incorporated into the front wings rather than stuck out from the wing, or side of the radiator shell. The final innovation would be three-letter numberplates, to augment the two-letter style that would soon be running out.

The swoopy designs of the car in the lower drawings ape some design features that would feature in creations from some of the top automotive styling houses in the 1930s, with the teardrop shaped lamps, low roofline, and faired-in wings and running boards. Whoever drew these pictures came up with many design ideas that would come into fruition in the not-too-distance future, the rest would either come later or are still just a pipe-dream.

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