UNITED FRONT
HANGING AT SLAMMED SHOW DRIVE, JAPAN
5. MONOCOQUE CHASSIS
Far from the crackle of anti-lag on a world rally stage, Subaru’s first offering was a humble little four-door affectionately known as ‘Lady Bird’ but officially as the ‘360’. First released in ’58, the humble two-stroke two-banger focused on keeping weight to a minimum and used lots of lightweight construction techniques from the company’s earlier endeavours in aviation. More important, its construction featured a monocoque shell that Subaru had pioneered in its P1 concept.
4. COMPOSITE BODY PANELS
While you’d probably think this honour would be bestowed on an exotic car, it’s actually BMW’s 2015 i8 hybrid that lays claim to being the first mass-produced car to utilize composites. BMW even opened its own plant to produce the carbon fibre used in the main body of the i8 to attach to the alloy chassis. It’s not the most exciting car at all, but it led the way to many more exciting models making use of the strong and lightweight material and will become more and more prevalent in years to come.
3. TURBO BOOST
You’d expect the Europeans or the Japanese to have been the first to turbo a production car; in fact, it was Chevrolet in 1964, with its Corvair Monza. Featuring 185hp (138kW) — basically double that of the non-turbo version — it was a sports car capable of embarrassing its competition. Built in response to the smaller Japanese cars coming into the US, it was a huge departure from anything that Chevrolet had done before, being a rear-mounted flat-six 159-cubic-inch (2600cc). It was wrongly accused of being a death machine and fell out of favour with the public, but what could have been!
2. ELECTRONIC FUEL INJECTION
Electronic fuel injection (EFI), developed by Bosch, first appeared in ’67 in the VW 1600, and was dubbed ‘Jetronic’. It used no microprocessor; instead, manifold vacuum was measured by a complicated instrument, with a bunch of transistors converting the information to then adjust the fuel mix to suit. Despite its rudimentary — by today’s standards — design, Jetronic was reliable and quickly paved the way to almost all cars becoming fuel injected. The first Japanese car to feature EFI was the ’79 Toyota Supra.
1. MACPHERSON SUSPENSION
Although the basis of the design itself can be traced as far back as Fiat in the early ’20s, it was only in the late ’40s and early ’50s that the industry-standard front-suspension design for monocoque chassis first appeared in a Chevy concept known as the ‘Cadet.’ That car never made it to production, so the honour of being the first production model to feature it goes to the 1950 Ford Consul. The first Japanese car to feature it was the Corolla, in ’66. MacPherson suspension can now be found in the front suspension of the majority of passenger cars.