What Was The Last Car With a Certain Feature? Autopian Asks

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For every automotive first, there has to also be an automotive “last.”

Many car features began with great popularity and fulfilled a common need, to then disappear only a few decades later.

Column-shifted manuals are a great example. From their introduction in the 1930s to help fit more people on the front seat, they were largely on the way out by the early 80s and gone from most markets by the 1990s with a couple of holdouts. They can be fun to row through the gears, keep the floor clear and pair nicely with a bench seat for a trip to a drive-in movie. The downside is that they get temperamental when the linkages wear out and so they went away eventually, along with the front bench seat in most markets.

Now that manual transmissions in general are becoming endangered, will the final vehicle with ‘row-your-own’ be a rough-and-tumble commercial vehicle, or a rare exotic, destined forever to live in a glass case?

Cassette decks are another feature that is all but gone, largely wiped from new vehicles in Western countries by around 2010 with the Lexus SC430. The G50 Toyota Century held onto the long-passed technology until 2017 and the model series ended, due to the music that older Japanese listen to being available still on cassettes. Apparently cassette tapes are back once again in Japan, so maybe the current-gen Century sedan and New Century SUV will also be rockin’ the tech again with the next refresh!

Vent windows were supremely common and on almost every vehicle up until the early 1970s as standard. The feature started disappearing as air-conditioning became more common and was largely also gone from most vehicles by the early 1990s. A simple pivoting mechanism with some spring tension so they would stay open at highway speed, they work great whilst in motion and mean you can still have fresh air and some cooling without lowering the main door glass.

As both of my Valiant utes don’t have a heater/blower motor, these little windows also make for half-decent demisters during wet weather, at the expense of some water sometimes dripping onto your leg!

Vent Window 1

Sometimes the mechanism wears out, so you gotta get a bit agricultural!

There is a good chance that the 70 Series Landcruiser will be the last vehicle on the market with these little pivoting windows, having just been refreshed to remain on market for another few years.

This feature only appears to still be available on the base-model utility in single-cab configuration along with manual window winders (!), if the A/C dies I’m sure the Aussie farmers would appreciate the directional airflow!

(check 2:45 on the video above for some footage of the little chromed beauties!)

I know the Autopian Hive Mind is absolutely loaded to the gunnels with automotive trivia, so here’s your chance; what car or vehicle had the last of a certain feature?

 

Photos by author unless noted.

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154 thoughts on “What Was The Last Car With a Certain Feature? Autopian Asks”

  1. The JL Wrangler was the last US market vehicle available without AC (until partway through the run)

    The Ram HD held onto an optional manual much longer than any other full size truck.

    I predict the Blackwings will be the last sedans of any kind available with three pedals.

    1. The one I’m curious about is the last vehicle with an old school analog odometer. I’m not sure I’ve seen one from after ~2005, but there was probably a weird holdout or two.

      1. I expect manuals to be able to hold on in expensive cars longer than cheap ones in general (the Miata being the last manual overall is nonsense, it will be Porsche or someone who can hide the cost of certifying the transmission in a high MSRP).

        Subaru going to a CVT-only WRX in the near future doesn’t seem far fetched to me whatsoever. I believe they have already done so in Japan.

        1. CVT-only WRX is certainly a possibility, but the take rate on those manuals is still quite high so I wouldn’t bet on it this generation. Given the state of the sedan market in the US I just don’t see Cadillac hanging on to the Blackwings once they get some more Ultium crossovers rolled out. I would love to be proven wrong on this, but I don’t have a lot of faith in GM.

          I do agree on Porsche being a likely candidate for the very last manuals though. I’m sure they’ll have them available for special order until the heat death of the universe assuming emissions regulations don’t kill the ICE stone dead at some point.

  2. I don’t know the answer but what was the last car that said “Unleaded fuel only” on the fuel gage?
    I know it goes at least until 2004 with the Buick Regal.

      2. The full size trucks are available with bench seats, but some people split hairs and don’t consider them true bench seats because they’re split into three pieces, with an individual seat on each side, and the center console being replaced by a small folding seat in the middle as well. In practice, it’s a bench seat, but since it isn’t one big giant unit, some people don’t count it.

        None of the mid sized trucks are available with a bench. Which is a shame, because I really like the new Frontier, but I require a bench seat and a column shifter in my pickemup trucks.

  4. More of an anti-feature but I was wondering what the last North American minivan you could theoretically bought without a driver’s side sliding door was.

    Looks like the Chrysler trio and the Sienna both went two sliding doors standard after the 2000MY. Windstar, Odyssey, the GM U’s and Quest/Villager before that.

    If we include the Astro/Safari, that went to 2005 so I guess that’s probably the winner unless someone wants to talk primarily unibody, FWD minivans.

    2. This was my thought too

      You could buy the ford windstar until 2001 with only 1 door. 2 doors was standard in 2002.

      But I’m going with the Astro.

    1. My Mazda RX-3 of about the same age also still had manual choke, but it was a fancy version – there was a little device that held the choke knob in position once you pulled it out, and when the rotary got up to temperature it released its grip on the choke cable and let the knbo pop back into the dash.

    4. Rubber bumper MGBs in the US had a Zenith-Stromberg carb that I think had an electric choke. But the Mazda RX-7 had a manual choke until they switched to fuel injection, in maybe 1981 or so.

    6. My ’92 Peugeot 205 have (had) a manual choke. Since the cable is broken, when I need it, I have to pop the hood, turn it by hand, fire the engine, then turn it off and close the hood…
      I’m lucky, the temperature were I live is never low enough to need it.

    8. 60 series land cruisers had a manual choke in the US market. I don’t know what year they discontinued that, but the first year of the 60 series was 1980! I thought it was pretty wild the first time I drove one. I also love that they have a little fan that blows on the carburetor for a while after you park, to help cool it down/prevent fuel boiling. Very strangely, my early 80 series landcruiser ALSO had a little fan that would flow on the fuel rail when it was hot outside. In a fuel injected rig…

    2. And 2002–2012 Chevrolet Colorado can be fitted with the “fleet headlamp option” (a.k.a. sealed-beam headlamp capsules). Even Jason Torchinsky was gobsmacked and wrote an article about it.

  7. The last US market car with a carburetor was the 1990 Subaru Justy.
    The last full sized pickup with flip out rear side windows was the 2003 Ford F150, unless the 2004 F150 Classic was available as a Super Cab.

    1. Flip out rear side windows as in they fold out in the rear while hinging on the front? My 05 super duty still has them which means they went to at least 07 on the SDs. Can’t confirm if the 2008-up had them as our 2010 is a four door.

  9. Last car with a carburetor was the GM B-body station wagons with the 307 Olds V8 in 1990.

    That thing was a slug, but it sure was torquey.

    1. US-market specific, because Canada absolutely got carbureted Ladas through the mid-90’s (they might’ve switched to fuel injection by the very end in ’97, but I’m certain they ran carb’d through at least ’95), and the Nissan Micra kept the carb through ’91 or so.

        1. A European would have to chime in, but I believe a ton of their cheaper stuff lacked fuel injection into the 90’s as well, although I’d be impressed to see if anything beats your 1999 (maybe Brazilian marked VW Buses – it’s not clear if the carb stuck around to the end of air-cooled production in 2005).

          1. Euro 2 emission regulation in early -93 probably killed most of the carb specials, even the rwd Lada got fuel injection in the end. Also, by that time it had become obvious that even simple single point FI is way better than some semi-electric carb contraption.

  10. Don’t know that I’d call it a feature, but the 1987 Trans Am was the last to offer the Screaming Chicken hood decal as an option. For a decade and a half it was synonymous with Pontiac’ s top Firebird. The Trans Am motored on for awhile more, but without its coat-of-arms. Probably what ultimately killed the brand. Kidding. Killed the fun, though.

  11. The Lada Niva could be started using a hand crank until 1998. The Citroën GSA introduced in 1979 was supposedly the last car to be introduced with a hand crank.

  12. Check out mid-70s Popular Mechanics and Popular Science reviews and reader opinion polls on cars if you want to see much wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding the lack of vent windows. My guess is that the backlash was driven partly by sub-par flow-through systems and partly (mostly?) by the prevalence of smoking in cars.

    Tubeless tires, flow-through ventilation, electronic ignition, and – worst of all! – seat belts really got people worked up.

  13. A pretty minor feature, but my ’06 Exploder has a lock/unlock button in the back near the tailgate. I know the next two Exploder gens don’t have it and I’m not sure if anything else has it.

      1. I guess the current Explorer actually has something similar, though it’s only to lock it and not unlock. Does the Cherokee’s unlock?

    3. 4Runners still have this. My 2018 has it and I use it with some frequency. Holding down the unlock button lowers the rear glass, too.

  14. Toyota Tercel (base 2-door sedan only) had the last 4-speed manual transmission on the US market. It was at least 1996, maybe ’97. Last 5-speed was the Chevy Spark whose last year was 2023. My bet is that the last manual overall will be the Miata.

      1. Unless it was kept well under wraps, that didn’t run a Miller cycle and there have been a decent number of other supercharged engines since.

        The Previa was a real oddball, though, as I can’t think of another vehicle that had a drivetrain that was AWD, longitudinal mid-engined, with a transmission instead of a transaxle. At one point, I wanted to use that for a front mid engined car using a shorter driveshaft in the front. Yeah, the nose would have still been pretty long.

        1. Nope. I’ve just seen it mentioned here and there on the internet, so believed it without looking it up. Could very well be wrong. In my defense it seems believable, considering everything else about those vans is weird and frigging awesome.

      2. TIL that had a supercharged I-4, but no mention of Miller cycle. Even if it did, the contemporary Previa ended production (97) long before the Millenia did (02)

  17. For those of us in the states, the SN95 Mustang offered what I think was the last pull-out headlight switch, something once nearly standard in post-war domestics.

    1. Is there still any car with a high-beam switch that you pull back to turn on and pull back again to turn off, as opposed to pushing out to turn on and pulling back to turn off? My second–generation Volvo S60 is the former (release at the first detent to flash, pull to the second detent to leave on), but they changed it to the latter in the 2019 redesign.

      1. No idea there was even such a switch – sounds very Scandinavian-funk. My family had a 240 eons ago, and I’m trying to remember what its was like.

    3. 2nd gen W body had pull out switches too, and ended production in 2005. At least my Century did and I remember a discussion where others had this too.

    1. My mom had one of those! I loved those vents, but it was kind of a pain to turn them on, wait till they were in a position you wanted, and then turn them off again if you wanted air blasting you in the face non stop.

    2. We picked out a 98 626 for my now-ex’s sister. I really liked that car, particularly with the V6. But those swing vents were fantastic, I wish more cars had them.

  19. The last vehicle in the US to use lens–optic headlights, as opposed to a clear lens with the reflector doing everything, was likely the 2006 (or 2007 “classic”) GMC Sierra.

    The last vehicle to use the 1980s-1990s “9004” headlight bulb (introduced on the 1984 Lincoln Mark VII) was the GM Montana/Venture, discontinued in 2005. (The Uplander/SV6 used a more modern design.)

    The last vehicle to use a separate ignition and door key was probably some GM product as well. I know the 2002 Camaro did but perhaps there’s another 1990s GM product that ran until 2005 or so that may have used it.

    The last vehicle to use a “Torchinsky 4” trigger door handle design in the US was probably the 1998 Volvo S90/V90 or the 1998 Porsche 993. (Someone will say Mini Cooper, but in my personal opinion, those are “Torchinsky 6” squeeze handles.)

  20. God, I’d love to have a Century.

    We almost got rid of AM radios here in the US but lobbyists made sure that Americans still have their vital, valuable life line to conservative talk radio, Christian radio, and conservative Christian talk radio.

    1. I used to love listening to old KGO back in the early 2000s. They were based in San Francisco and I could get signal nearly all the way up to Tahoe. The talk shows ranged from ultra left wing to right wing.

      These days it’s a road trip tradition to find the most bizarre channel we can on AM radio when we are out in the middle of nowhere.

      1. If passing through Fort Stockton Texas early in the morning, the sole radio station will broadcast the lunch menus for both the school and the old folks home. They’re mostly the same menu.

    4. AM is pretty useful in rural communities. Weirdly, I heard that they wanted to do away with AM because electric cars didn’t pick it up very well? Some sort of interference. My Volt doesn’t seem to have this issue, I pick up AM just fine.

  22. Last short wheelbase minivan available in the US could be argued as the Mazda 5 in 2015 or the 3rd gen caravan (replaced by the journey) in 2007.

    Single side sliding door on a minivan is, I THINK, the Astro van, discontinued 2005. That against the wall seat was the best spot.

    1. Oh, another one. Gmt800’s were the last domestic SUV’s with barn doors. They’re still on full size vans, but I’m completely unable to find anything for any other domestic SUV’s with them.

      1. Right? Could lean against that wall, pop out that window, and mom and grandma were short, so guaranteed leg room when they were driving.

  23. Column-mounted shifters for automatics are back, at least at Mercedes-Benz. Since it’s all electronic, there’s no issues with the linkage any more.

    Station wagons are all but gone here in the US. I think Audi, Subaru, and Mercedes are the last ones. My 2023 E450 also is the last that I know of with the fold-away rear-facing kids’ seats (gone in 2024).

    1. Mercedes column-mounted monostable drive selectors are certainly better than the dial-a-drive that many other manufacturers use.

      1. I worked for MBUSA when they came out and I thought it was a terrible idea. Within days I was putting the wipers on in my Passat every time I left work. It’s a perfect implementation.

    2. Mercedes-Benz design isn’t that intuitive and doesn’t do what many of us with muscle memories do (shifting through P-R-N-D-S-L). Some of us had to retrain our muscle memories NOT to pull the stalk up for P. That’s what happened to this lady and her Mercedes-Benz ML 350 that rolled down and got hit by the train. She instinctively pushed the gear selector up, thinking it would shift to P, instead of pushing the button at the end of stalk for P.

  24. Toyota with the 4 speed automatic, which they still had 4 speed autos in the time even Hyundai had a 6 speed in the Elantra in the early 2010s.
    This may not be a feature but more of a lack of innovation from Toyota.

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