Depends how you define it. Mercedes debuted the “smart key” on the Mercedes S-Class, back in 1998, but you did have to put the key into a slot and rotate it as though it was a true bladed key. The 2003 S-Class had the first true proximity key, but it was a piece of shit (it was designed to fit in the credit card slot of a wallet) and kept breaking. Weirdly, the Chevy Malibu of 2004 seems to have been the first car with a proper keyless system.
In the late 70’s and early 80’s when manufacturers moved the high beam switch to be activated by pulling the blinker arm toward you, a common joke was:
*Did you hear about the Aggie that died in the car accident recently?
He got his foot stuck in the steering wheel switching his headlights to high beam. *
My mum had a 1984 Triumph Acclaim (essentially a badge-engineered Honda Civic) with a manual choke. I distinctly remember having to pull the choke handle myself on cold mornings while she drove me to school, as she would be preoccupied with steering and braking and so forth. It was a handle you pulled towards you, with a symbol kind of shaped like || but with a more slanted backslash part.
My 1965 Pontiac Bonneville had one of these mounted above the dashboard and aimed out the front window.
It’s an automatic headlight dimmer. It utilizes a vacuum tube which requires testing and replacement occasionally. By the late 1970s when the car was mine, no one had any replacements for that particular tube, so I never got to have it in working condition.
I convinced some of my passengers that it was a phaser and that my car could remove offending vehicles from in front of me.
The actual filler neck was smaller, so you couldn’t stick the giant leaded nozzle into the ‘new’ cars. Go look at the gaping holes in the old stuff that you used to put those big, old nozzles in to remind yourself.
Who would have thought Teslas are retro. The charge port is hidden in the rear tail light assembly. (To be pedantic, it is behind a side reflector which is next to, and visually a single unit with, the rear tail lights.)
Another bit of tech that made it well into the 90s, if not later, before thankfully vanishing is the 3-speed automatic. 4-speed automatics on new cars are still around, but are also disappearing. With those are also going the PRND2L type shifter. I still see it on some newer cars, but many now require putting the car into manual shift mode and then using buttons to select a particular gear. That is a pain when downshifting in the mountains. Otherwise I’d so much rather have a modern 8 or 10 speed than an old slush box.
Applicable old technology lasts another generation or two on motorcycles compared to cars. So somebody could be riding a 15 year old bike, and still be dealing with a manual choke, carb needles, aux tank, and gravity fed fuel lines. If the Europeans hadn’t brought in new emission standards for motorcycles, you could probably still buy one new that was using 1960s tech.
Riding mowers have key switches, chokes and a clutch. A lot of teens learn to drive on them before anything else.
It’s a big tech leap to a modern car.
Guess it takes awhile to learn raising up off the seat won’t kill a car’s motor.
