Cup holders paved way for interior car design

More demands as commuting grows
This intensification of the auto interior experience has broken through even the resistance of the enthusiast market. There used to be a cadre of car lovers who believed that power windows were a waste of money and that anything other than an AM/FM radio with two speakers was a distraction from the pure thrill of driving. (When I owned a bare-bones 1997 Mazda Miata that I intended to strip down for racing, I counted myself among this group.) No more. These folks have also come to demand the right kind of cup holder, along with the nav system and the hard-drive-based entertainment rig.

Ultimately, cars have become for many people things they don't just get in and out of. If they endure a long commute, they're typically in there for a big chunk of every weekday. They like to have entertainment options. They want a designer or an engineer to have thought about seat ergonomics. If more than one person in a family is driving, they want seats that can remember different driving positions. They want steering wheels that telescope and tilt. Passengers want to be able to customize their temperature zone, be it front or back seat. They want seats that are heated and cooled.

During the late 1990s and the early 2000s, consumers demanded cars that looked cooler and cooler. Sometimes this meant retro design, a cul-de-sac that Chrysler wandered down pre-Chapter 11, while at other times it meant an almost complete re-imagining  of what a vehicle could look like. (The asymmetrical Nissan Cube is a good example.) However, as the 21st century has progressed, cars have begun to develop a more uniform appearance. Engineering, safety, manufacturing techniques, and a general sense among car designers that there's a platonic ideal of auto shape and form—it usually resembles something made by Audi or BMW—has led to a degree of exterior uniformity.

The action has consequently moved inside, to the more intimate realms of the interior. Now, to be sure, over the decades there has been all manner of interior accessorizing and doodaddery inflicted on the car-buying public, from matched sets of cocktail-ware stashed in the dash to custom-fitted luggage. At one point, ashtrays occupied the space that cup holders do today (a Lincoln from the late 1950s had five, with lighters). But interiors have now become environments, in many ways disconnected from the gritty hurly-burly of the road.

This is how we'll know our cars in the future, as distinct from more rudimentary rides, such as the el cheapo, very basic Tata Nano from India (although by the time its gets to America in a few years, it will certainly have grown a cup holder or two). It shouldn't surprise anyone that Johnson Controls, a company that designs interiors, has a market cap of $12.5 billion, while GM deals with bankruptcy and Ford faces a decade of paying off debt. The global market for seats alone is $52 billion.

Inside is the new outside. And to give thanks for this, we only need utter a single, simple phrase: cup holder.

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