70 Years of Wheels: Predicting the future of motoring

Turning 70, I’m led to believe, can be a fairly cheerless occasion. Fortunately, it’s a bit rosier when something like a magazine turns 70.

Often, there’s the temptation to not only look back on the previous 70 years, but to try to predict the next 70.

However, only a fool would dare predict the mainstream vehicle of 2093 – by that point, most of us will be talking heads in jars. It’s much easier to take a few low-blow potshots at those who, in the past, dared predict the far-away future themselves. (Their fault for putting heads above parapet.)

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Beginning with a bit of healthy self-scrutiny, the December 1955 issue of Wheels took perhaps this title’s biggest-ever punt by describing, in detail, the future cars of 1985.

It got a good bit correct – cars “may be equipped with electronic devices which would give obstacle warnings [and] braking control” and that “an electronic ‘eye’ will slow the car down instantly when obstacles appear in the way.” Amazingly prescient for 1955.

The same article predicted that all-wheel-drive would be common in everyday passenger vehicles – decades before any four-wheel-drive Subaru or Audi Quattro.

As often happens with such long-range predictions, the article got the speed wobbles and declared steering wheels would vanish, and that cars would be turbine-powered. If you glaze over those bits – and that it took a lot more than 30 years for some of this stuff to come true – we have to give ourselves a pat on the back. (And hire this Nostradamus bloke more often.)

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In 1958, another article imagined a future of electric cars and, amusingly, bemoaned how they “weighed a tonne and a quarter with batteries accounting for half their weight!” Something we still begrudge, a mere 65 years later.

Electric cars are a curious theme in past predictions about the future in Wheels – especially from the car companies themselves. “GM’s ELECTRIC FUTURE” shouted the headline from our November 1980 issue. “Before you yawn and say you’ve heard it all before … the world’s biggest car maker has given itself a 1984 deadline for mass-production of electric cars.” Can we yawn yet?

In our October 1991 issue, an article about the Frankfurt Motor Show reported that “electric cars are inevitable now California has insisted two percent of all cars sold in the state from 1998 are emissions-free.” The inevitability part was correct, I guess.

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In the same article, Volkswagen chairman Carl Hahn admitted to our own Peter Robinson that “cars have reached their peak weight”. We’ve thought similar things while staring down at electronic body scales, circa age 40.

Looking back over the Wheels annals, another clear theme of future predictions – whether made by us, or others – was to make them with an almost awkward, unflinching confidence. While many claims did come true, if there’s any lesson it’s to take with a small rock of salt any panicked predictions about the automotive future being made right now – no matter how certain.

As for me, the only thing I’d dare predict, based on current trends, is maybe a dashboard-sized touchscreen and artificial intelligence that replaces beeps with computerised shouting whenever you leave your lane. But that’s about as much as I’m dare going to give you, dear future readers, reading this from your nuclear-powered space ute.