Or any car for that matter. As a kid I was always fascinated by the blanked out spaces for buttons on the dashboard. Dad explained they were for controls for equipment that the car didn’t have like extra fog lights, air conditioning etc etc. It was a source of some pride when Dad bought an Accord with air con and cruise control, with the extra buttons to switch them on and off
My question though is related to an article I read a while back (maybe 3-4 years) in a lad’s magazine. A mechanical expert was explaining to a writer that his air con was smelly because of the bacterial in it. He also mentioned as an aside that so many modern cars have it as an option, its cheaper for a manufacturer to include it in all models but disable it in the few that are sold without. Is this true? My Honda Civic for example was available with ABS in all but the bottom end of the range model I own, does this mean its fitted but disabled? The only suggestion I saw of a higher spec was the wiring for rear speakers that I fitted afterwards.
I would doubt very much if your car had ABS but it was disabled. The ABS systems costs several hundred dollars (at the car maker level) to put it in for zero return makes no sense.
Depending on the car, you might have speaker wiring, or fog light wiring, already, but that is due to the ecomony of scale of only producing one wiring harness.
As Far as Air conditioning goes, typically a Japanese car has the heater A/C built in three parts, the fan housing, the evaporator, and the air distribution housing.
The evaporator section fits between the fan housing and the air disribution housing. If you have no A/C this is a hollow duct, if you have A/C the hollow duct is removed, and a duct with the evap is added. A compressor is also added, and the condensor is added to the front of the car. Plumb it up and away you go.
Having a system where the A/C can be easily added is how far the car maker goes.
About the only thing I can think of where stuff is there but disabled is electronics, like a trip computer, or remote lock vs lock and alarm. The same electronics are there, but the car is programmed as no trip computer where the dash displays time/ temp in the window, or add the switch reprogram the car and you have a trip computer.
Same with the alarm on some cars, add the horn, and reprogram the system.
Supposedly the Volkswagen Passat (B5 models, made between 1998 and 2004 or so) have a lot of features “locked” in the North American versions, but which can be easily unlocked with a few tweaks. One that comes to mind is rear fog lights; the wiring is there, and all it takes to activate it is the European version of the light switch, and the actual light itself.
I wonder about consumer electronics, especially radios and stareo equipment. If I hold the LCD display on my clock radio just right, I see indicators for longwave and shortwave bands, none of which it recieves. A stereo receiver I owned several years ago also had shortwave and longwave indicators, but could only receive on the the North American AM and FM bands.
This is likely due to use of a “one size fits all” display, with the various sections connected as required depending on what was actually included in the guts of the radio. The manufacturer saves more on reduced inventory and simpler assembly processes than the probably minimal cost of using the extra features display where not needed.
