Cup holders paved way for interior car design

By Matthew Debord

updated 4:35 p.m. ET July 2, 2009

The cup holder, in its modern automotive incarnation, is about 30 years old. It merits its own Wikipedia entry, which claims it was invented in 1943 by somebody named James Guillow. Well, who knows, really? However, the cup holder as we know it achieved industrial-design celebrity status in the 1980s, and it's been proliferating ever since. Last year, I test-drove a Chrysler Town & Country minivan that had 13 cup holders placed deftly throughout the vehicle. Prior to that, I attended a model debut for the 2009 Subaru Forester in which some of the product development people boasted that they had created a new breed of cup holder specifically designed to accommodate 24-ounce bottles.

Most Americans, regardless of how jaded they are about what cup holders represent (our lifestyle of never-ending, on-the-go consumption, with hundred of sugary, creamy calories never far away, even when driving), have grown to demand them. Moreover, after more than a decade of pushing the envelope with bolder and bolder exterior designs, automakers — prompted by the kind of expectations that cup holders inspired — have taken on the inside of vehicles, with a vengeance.

Despite the seeming simplicity of cup holders, their early deployment was far from ideal. I own two Swedish automobiles that date to the period before cup holder standardization, when European carmakers considered cup holders an annoying afterthought. On the 2000 Volvo, the cup holder is a spidery thing that deploys from the dashboard and blocks the radio and climate controls. It also does a crummy job of holding a cup. On the 1998 Saab, the cup holder is located inside a console between the seats, sort of behind the driver, and doesn't allow a beverage to be easily accessed. I usually revert to the old-school technique of placing my (cold) drink between my legs.

Design arms race
Today, of course, all new cars have two husky cup holders in the center console and usually a pair in both front doors. As you move into the back seat and cargo areas, the sky's the limit. You can have cup holders in fold-down arm rests, cup holders on the doors, and even integrated coolers to keep all those cup holders in a steady supply of cold drinks. Once cup holders escaped their awkward adolescence, when they were purchased at aftermarket stores and clipped to windows, or when they consisted mainly of indentations in the glove-compartment door, intended to hold drinks at the drive-in movie or restaurant, they entered an arms race.

Cup holders showed the automakers that people wanted to do a lot more in their cars than just drive or listen to music. So in the past half decade, a host of new interior amenities have come online. Integrated communications and navigation systems, such as GM's OnStar and Ford's Sync, have transformed cars into rolling cell phones with access to GPS directions 24/7. In-dash navigation systems are standard equipment on most vehicles in the mid-luxury and luxury segments — the automakers want to offer them to customers because if they don't, those customers are likely to buy aftermarket GPS nav units from companies like Garmin. Most family-oriented minivans, SUVs and crossovers come with flip-down video screens. The Town & Country I sampled had two, one for each row in the back. Wireless headsets meant that each of my two kids could watch his or her own movie or enjoy satellite TV, while up front, we could listen to satellite radio over the vehicle's multispeaker audio system.

Or we could plug in an iPod. Or we could pop in a CD. Or we could download music to an onboard hard drive, which also has the capacity to store all kinds of other digital data. Wi-Fi  has also arrived, enabling passengers to surf the Web while rolling along.

My children still speak wistfully of the week we had all this at our disposal.

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