Fashions come and go, and technology quickly goes out of date, so it'll be interesting to see exactly what our future selves will look back on and laugh at...
1. Drift charms
This all started up in the mountains of Japan, with drifters attaching toys to their rear bumpers. As they got sideways, the gravitational forces acting on the toys would make them ‘levitate’, which was a cool way for drivers to show off how much speed and angle they could carry through corners.
A cool concept, but unfortunately it became a symbol of JDM culture, and has made its way onto any old front-wheel drive ‘scene’ car that wants to be a bit more Japanese. We already look at these and roll our eyes, so this is definitely on the list of things we’ll deride in 10 years.
2. Stretched tyres
Anything that doesn’t enhance the performance of your car runs the risk of being a fad that will eventually die out. Stretched tyres probably won’t do any harm in normal driving conditions, but if you’re driving your car hard it can start to get a little dangerous.
The only reason anyone really stretches tyres is for style, and as fashions change, even the guys who are doing this to their tyres today will look back and cringe.
3. Gaudy puddle illumination
To be fair, puddle illumination can be pretty useful. A lamp inserted beneath the wing mirrors shines a light on the ground so that as you walk near the car you don’t step in anything you wouldn’t want to.
For some reason, manufacturers of premium cars seem to take this opportunity to plaster their logo across the floor. Our recent excursion to the Nurburgring in a Land Rover Discovery resulted in derisory laughter as we pulled up beside the rest of the crew and proceeded to blast the Land Rover logo across German soil like a pretentious Bat-Signal. I’m sure our future selves will have found new ways to show we’re douchebags, just so long as it’s not like this…
4. Night vision
Or at least night vision in its current form. So far, it has been implemented using an infra-red camera that feeds a screen either in the centre console or between the dials - basically it requires you to not be looking through the windscreen.
Since the advantage of night vision is that it lets you see dangers further in advance than with headlights alone, to really see the benefit you have to be going pretty fast - at which point you probably don’t want to be looking anywhere other than forward, really.
Night vision has great potential, and will likely be implemented in wearable tech, for example in a virtual reality headset. At the moment, it’s a bit pointless and is merely an option designed to sound cool on spec sheets.
5. EV anxieties
Electric cars are becoming more and more popular, but they won’t go totally mainstream until ranges increase and recharging times come down. You can already go more than 200 miles on one charge in a Tesla, and recharge most of the battery in about half an hour, but until that technology reaches inexpensive city cars, it’s a luxury most of us can’t afford.
With scientists working on fascinating new lithium-oxygen batteries that are expected to hit the market in about 10 years, the next decade should see EVs with range outstripping that of ICE cars, without the current drawbacks of heavy batteries or long charge times. It’ll be funny to look back at our puny 200-mile Teslas…
6. Attention-seeking wraps
In certain circles it’s more important to have an attention seeking car than a car that you actually like the look of. Thanks to the rise of YouTube celebrities and Instagram fame, wrapping cars in ludicrous colours just so that people film you has become the norm.
The novelty of all this will wear off pretty quickly, so hopefully supercars in gaudy colours will become the exception, rather than the rule.
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