- 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. - 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. - 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!- 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. - 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.
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