Original subtitles

Howdy, folks! Hank Dunham at Dunham Family Motors.

And today, I'm here with my boys--

Danny and Jeff. Boys, say hi

to the nice folks at home.

Hi.

All right, fellas, what do you want to be

when you grow up? Danny?

I want to run this dealership.

Oh, that's great!

And little Jeff, how about you?

I want to be a ventriloquist.

Son, I've told you before,

you're not gonna amount to anything doing that.

Now put that doll away.

You want to sell cars. That's what you wanna do.

Let's show the folks what we have.

Yay!

Yay.

This episode isn't about what you need in a car.

It's about what you want.

And for automakers, the sky's the limit.

Not just the radio.

- Not just leather. - Ooh.

We're talking options that make you say,

"Wait, that's factory?"

If they could dream it, they could build it.

And they did.

Welcome to the wild world of factory options.

And finally, the crème de la crème

of our dealership this week-- the 1954 Kaiser Darrin.

This is a rare beauty right here.

Wait until you take a peek at those doors.

It'll make you say, "Wow, that's factory?"

Come on down to Dunham Family Motors,

where you're family, too!

- Right, boys? - It's not that bad.

Hey, that was pretty good.

Throughout time, humanity has been obsessed

with getting places using anything but their own two feet.

We've tried all kinds of things.

Until finally, the greatest invention of all time--

the automobile.

Moron!

These are "The Cars That Drove Us."

Ah, the 1950s.

A glorious time when every lawn was trimmed

with military precision,

every fence was white and picketed,

and safely within the confines of that fence

were exactly 2.5 well-adjusted children,

frolicking in domestic bliss.

Yes, sir, the American dream is alive and well.

Vacuum sealed in suburbia and powered by--

A healthy fear of communism.

♪ Duck and cover ♪

But while Dad waxes the Plymouth

and Mom starts the laundry,

something cosmic was unfolding

over those cookie-cutter roof lines--

space. Yes, space, the final frontier,

now featuring Soviet metal beach balls,

like Sputnik beeping ominously

as they orbited overhead.

You are hearing the actual signals,

transmitted by the Earth circling satellite,

Sparking a full-blown American innovation panic.

And that same feverish excitement

made its way back down to Earth,

showing up in kitchens, living rooms,

and, of course, car showrooms.

This new futuristic technology

that you were seeing in the outside world,

you needed to have that stuff in your car.

It was a vision of what the automotive

future could look like.

Fueled by the same engineering bravado

that launched monkeys into orbit,

the automotive space race

often pushed creativity into overdrive,

resulting in designs, concepts, and factory options--

that felt more sci-fi than street legal.

In the early days of the auto industry,

carmakers weren't aiming for the masses.

"Automobiling," as it was called, was a hobby

practiced by rich people.

$12,000 for a car? This you gotta see!

It was seen as something manly,

and you're an automobilist.

"Ooh, he-- he's gone 50 miles an hour. Ooh."

As cars became more affordable,

manufacturers found a new way to cater to the rich.

Options come into the fold right there.

If it didn't involve accelerating or braking,

it probably started as a factory option.

Automatic transmissions, power steering came in,

air conditioning became very popular, very common.

In some cases, paying for options was the equivalent

of volunteering for a test flight.

Volkswagen made a gas heater.

You'd light it with a match, and you would use gas

from your engine to heat the inside of the car.

Yeah. What could go wrong there?

Eventually, heaters became standard.

But, ah, not that gassy VW one, of course.

There were also concepts

designed to meet the needs of the moment.

Some of the car configurations that were developed

were really around the emerging mobility of Americans.

It was a time when, you know, motels were starting to appear,

but there would be long stretches of American highway

where you couldn't really find a place to sleep.

Now, you can sleep in any car, but in 1936, Nash came up

with a way for the whole family to take a nap,

just so long as it wasn't barreling down the road.

You can even get your Nash equipped

with complete twin beds.

So now, on long road trips, you just sleep in your car.

And road trips would be on the rise

thanks to the Interstate Highway Act of 1956.

The suburbs were getting popular.

No one lives in cities.

So now, people were starting to commute to work.

Some suburbanites were even buying two cars.

And at that point, the sky was the limit.

Putting just about anything into a car

seemed like a good idea.

You know what was the big thing?

Plug-in electric shavers for your car.

The GM in-car electric shaver.

Plugs into your lighter.

You can shave while you're driving.

Grooming while driving.

Save time.

I mean, all you're looking in the mirror

and get rear-ended.

That is, if the potholes didn't get you first.

As more Americans got behind the wheel, roads filled up,

and so did the hours spent in cars

that had little to offer in the way of entertainment.

Today, we're used to the concept of having all kinds

of great music in our car,

but back then you pretty much just had an AM radio.

Oh, yes, nothing says I'm driving under power lines

like AM radio,

but for those who could afford a little more,

Chrysler had an alternative--

Plymouth has everything,

even a Highway Hi-Fi record player.

Chrysler had something called the Highway Hi-Fi.

And it was the first time that you could take music

out of your house and put it in your car,

which was at that time, obviously,

an actual record player.

Although you couldn't actually use your own records.

It only worked with proprietary records from Columbia,

so you were also very limited on the music

that you could play.

For those who wanted to hear something other

than the soothing swoon of Percy Faith And His Orchestra,

salvation wouldn't arrive until the 1960 Dodge Polara,

and the dealer-installed Chrysler approved--

RCA Auto Victrola.

What was great about this one was you could pick out

your own records. It's a stack of 14 45s

from your own record library.

Listen to that.

Now that they had tunes,

it was time to focus on the real innovations.

Car manufacturers were simply experimenting.

If somebody had an idea to put something in a car,

somebody said, "Well, let's do it.

Let's put a bar in a 1957 Eldorado Brougham."

Named the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham,

engineers were handed a free rein.

And free-flowing American whiskey all around.

In all fairness, vices in the '50s were different.

Luckies, Viceroys, Camels were just what the doctor ordered.

This resulted in a boom

in aftermarket cigarette accessories.

You're driving along, you press the button,

the cigarette roll down, the thing would light it,

and then, the stupidest part,

it would flick the cigarette up. - Ahh!

And you catch it, you know.

Just the idea that you're in a car-- .

Machine is throwing lit ci-- lit cigarettes.

But nothing goes better with cigarettes than coffee.

Volkswagen enthusiasts know about the esoteric options

that could be had on the Beetle,

one of which is often talked about, is the coffee maker.

Oh, the Hertella-Auto-Kaffeemaschine.

A coffee maker that mounted to the dash of your car.

You're out here engineering portable kettles,

but no one thought just to put in a cup holder.

And while astronauts sip from high-tech Capri Suns,

we Earthlings prefer a place to park

our easily spillable drinks.

So, it's hard to imagine there was a time without cup holders.

After three-and-a-half decades of improvising--

We came up with a doctor of cupology.

We had cupholders that could hold anything

and would clamp it like claws of a crab.

You go to Europe, a cup holder holds a cup.

Here, it's got to hold a 44-ounce Big Gulp.

Now, that's what I call a large.

As Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard became the first men

to voyage into space, their bravery inspired engineers

and dreamers here on Earth to devise

new and exciting ways to traverse the land.

But one car dared to go beyond the land.

With the flick of a switch, it becomes a boat.

The Amphicar was marketed

to the adventurous American outdoorsman.

Lyndon Johnson, the president, made them famous.

He had one on his Texas ranch, and whenever

Khrushchev or world leaders would come,

he'd take them on a ride, and then he'd press the brake,

"Oh, oh-- ah--

"oh, God, we're gonna go in the water!

Oh, my God, the brakes don't work!"

And he would go in the water,

and they would go, "Oh, my God, what's going--"

And then they'd go across the lake, whatever.

Yeah, that was his big trick.

These themed cars were made

for a very specific customer.

But there's another kind of themed car,

one that didn't have a target demo.

In fact, it wasn't even for sale.

Well, a concept car is usually an engineer

or a designer's idea of a vehicle of the future.

We're all set for auto control.

There were a series of three concepts back in the 1950s,

Firebird 1, Firebird 2, and Firebird 3, which were

coincidentally all powered by turbine engines.

Everything had an aeronautical look,

and the idea that you could have an airplane

on the ground that flew at, quote, "airplane speeds,"

well, that was just unbelievable.

While the first Firebird was a single-seater,

the second featured two rows of seats,

perfect for families that wanted to feel like they were heading

into combat together. Then there's the Firebird 3.

Firebird 3 from General Motors with twin plastic canopies.

It was brimming with concepts that would foreshadow things

that are still maybe headed to production.

Get ready for a ride in Firebird 3.

Full autonomous driving.

Want to sit back and relax?

Set in the speed you want to drive

and switch over to automatic guidance.

Release the stick and Firebird 3 is on its own.

Wait, a self-driving car in the '50s?

Good luck with that.

Considering this is what a computer looked like in 1959,

you might be thinking--

It's not possible, it's-- it's physically impossible.

Computing technology, on the other hand,

was coming along in leaps and bounds.

But still, well, in those days,

America's space program

was using something much more reliable,

the computing power of women.

You have a brain. That I can work with.

But meanwhile, the auto industry seemed to ignore

women's intelligence and appeal instead to their vanity.

A bunch of guys figured they'd design a car for women.

Think of it as a series of car options for women

bundled into one lovely vehicle--

Designed entirely by men.

What did the husbands in Detroit name this beautiful car

for their blushing brides?

The Dodge La Femme.

That's great. It's French.

It was just a regular Dodge.

They offered colors like pastel pink and white.

They had a rosebud interior.

It even came with a parasol

and matching raincoat and a purse.

Came with this purse. You open the purse up

and look at the stuff that's inside.

What woman wouldn't love this?

Lipstick-- oh, a lighter, because back in the '50s,

everybody smoked.

The change purse. Oh, oh, and the compact.

I wonder if there's any makeup left in it.

Hold on, let me see. Yes, there is!

It's powder.

OK, there.

I actually did that.

Oh my gosh, what did I do?

There's powder everywhere now!

This is the '50s.

Is it carcinogenic?

Hold on.

As the 1960s moved into the 1970s,

style became important again.

Leading the charge?

American Motors, they were the fourth

largest car company in America.

You know, the big three,

and then there's American Motors.

They needed something to help their brand stand out.

If you had to compete with the three biggest car companies

in America, what would you do?

So American Motors thought, "How can we--

"how can we make these a little fancy?

Maybe we'll get together with some fancy designer like Gucci."

Gucci designed an interior for the AMC Hornet.

It was the perfect blend of European and American.

It was pretty successful.

Turns out, the unlikely pairing

made a lot of sense.

It got a lot of people into AMC dealerships,

so they reached out to other designers.

As a result, the world's greatest designers

weren't headed to Milan, Paris, or even New York.

They were headed to Detroit.

The AMC Javelin, a really outrageous-looking

muscle car, had an interior designed by Pierre Cardin,

and there was an AMC Matador

with an Oleg Cassini designed interior.

On the other end, were the Levi's collaborations

that AMC also did.

So you could get a car

that actually was upholstered with denim.

Well, they look like denim seats,

but the actual denim didn't meet the fire safety protocols.

And so they actually made spun nylon.

So this is dyed nylon. But it feels a lot like denim.

But then look at this. You got the tags,

just like on the Levi's jeans.

And then you got the buttons. It's just goofy fun.

Jeans are all about comfort.

But when you want to impress--

The idea of having leather in your car,

well, you must be special.

And along comes Ricardo Montalban,

the actor.

I know my own needs.

And what I need from an automobile,

I know I get from this new Cordoba.

That voice.

Montalban's voice could make you feel welcome.

Welcome to Fantasy Island!

Or terrified.

This is Ceti Alpha V!

As to the car itself--

It was a big, comfortable car.

It only had two doors because it was for somebody

who didn't have a family

or wanted to pretend they didn't have a family.

That's actually a pretty good tagline.

The Cordoba sold luxury on a budget.

One thing that people wanted were supple leather seats.

But Chrysler didn't line the Cordoba

with just any old leather. They used--

Soft Corinthian leather.

The name was infectious.

Rich Corinthian leather.

Rich Corinthian--

Rich Corinthian leather.

Suddenly, I had to have Corinthian leather.

America was obsessed, begging the question--

Why didn't all cars have Corinthian leather?

One question would lead to another.

What was so special about Corinth that they had these

special cows that made this unique leather?

Yeah, about Corinth.

It was something that an ad agency came up with.

The writer, Jim Nichols, who wrote the commercial

for Chrysler for me, at that time, found--

he wanted to find a-- a word that sounded sort of elegant,

that I could say with a little verb, you know. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

- And, uh, so "Corinthian." - Oh, yeah.

You know what I mean?

- But-- but does it mean anything? - Mm-mm. Nothing.

Yes.

Corinthian leather was completely made up.

It was just standard leather from New Jersey.

Ah, Jersey cows.

The Cordoba somehow turned real leather

into faux leather.

But what came next was really real.

Real, undeniable change.

By the '80s, high-tech and digital-tech

started to invade the automobile.

Please turn off your light.

Thanks, Maxima.

While the formal space race wrapped up in 1975

with the Apollo-Soyuz Test project,

the world's obsession with the stars

was far from over.

We have ignition.

We have a liftoff.

And in 1977, the universe was expanding,

and we were searching for ways to be a part of it.

This was the era of "Star Wars."

Even legendary interior designer, John Shettler,

was captivated by the space drama.

What was the most exciting part of the "Star Wars" movies?

I have you now.

And they were in the starfighter

trying to take down Death Star.

Although John appreciated the sequence

from a certain point of view.

But it was all interior looking to drop that missile.

Great shot, kid! That was one in a million!

The '80s was packed with legendary sci-fi vehicles,

each with their own futuristic interior.

A cue the real-life auto industry

would begin to pick up on.

You had things like digital dashes.

No more were there analog gauges.

Those weren't cool. Those weren't futuristic enough.

While some of the vehicles Hollywood

envisioned were odd,

one would border on prophecy.

Amazing! And it's like mission control.

I'm into gadgets.

When "Knight Rider" came out in '81,

yeah, I thought that was fantastic.

To see the car, you could talk to it.

Come on, KITT say something to the bear.

I'm sorry, Michael, I have nothing to say.

It was wonderful.

While you couldn't banter with the cars of the '80s,

the 1981 Datsun Maxima offered a one-sided conversation.

- ♪ Datsun Maxima ♪ - Datsun Maxima!

Lights are on.

Thanks, Maxima.

"Your door is ajar."

You know, when I was a kid,

"The car talks Dad. That's cool!"

You know, that was the idea.

And then after your third conversation

with the guy, "Hey, shut up."

The 1984 Nissan 300ZX,

I have an affinity for this vehicle,

because this very car right here

is the first thing that the dummies paid for

that was kind of expensive.

I love this thing, because some of the factory options

are great, but the number one is the talking car.

It was one of the first talking vehicles.

For example, uh, let's leave your lights on.

Lights are on.

But the conversation was just getting started.

From advanced technology comes a new kind of luxury car,

the Chrysler New Yorker.

That's right, Corinthian's biggest leather man

was back, and Ricardo Montalban

had become the voice of Chrysler cars.

With electronics so advanced it even monitors itself.

But unfortunately, not the actual voice

of the actual talking Chrysler car.

All monitored systems are functioning.

A real missed opportunity.

Love is the creative energy of the universe.

Without it, life would be hell.

Anyway, the options of the '80s and '90s

brought the focus back to comfort.

Meanwhile, the auto industry took a slightly more

down-to-earth approach, offering features people

actually wanted.

They're old ideas, the technology is new.

The reason why we're putting them in the car

is the same reason that we put record players

in cars in the 1950s.

It was to make the car feel

more like the home.

What else did every home have?

In 1984, Buick actually offered,

as an option, a car phone.

To be able to talk on the phone in your car

really felt like the future.

Now you were a member of the elite.

The name Buick has always stood for automobiles

that are well above the ordinary.

And in some ways, it set the table

for what was going to happen over the next 20, 30 years.

I mean, it wasn't until 2004

that you could finally send a fax from your Audi A8,

just in case your Blackberry was on the fritz.

I think the car industry is most exciting

when there are new vehicles coming,

when they're challenging each other.

The goal is, let's do something that nobody

has ever done before.

They push boundaries. They challenge conventions.

It's an exercise in exploration.

From hybrids to EVs.

Augmented reality windshields and self-massaging seats.

From self-braking,

to self-parking.

- Car parks itself. - It's smart.

It's wicked smart.

Today's cars are packed with tech

once reserved for sci-fi.

Shields at 60%.

Auto manufacturers are still chasing that space-race energy.

Only now it's software over steel

and battery hum over engine roar.

Even what we could have imagined back in the '50s,

the '60s, '70s, the '80s, even the '90s.

The cars we have today, they're not just cars anymore.

They are mechanical and technological marvels.

The mission? Go further.

Do more and spark the imagination.

Ideally, without catching fire.

Kids, don't smoke.

And whichever element we conquer,

be it space,

sea,

or land.

We're all set for auto control.

We'll be there, embracing whatever the future holds.

As long as it still holds a cup.

If you don't have good cup holders,

you don't have a car.

I'll kill you!