Smith Ford Body Shop

Greatest Inventions in Automotive History

At  Smith Ford Body Shop, we know all well that our cars are extensions of ourselves and the average person in the U.S. spends an average of 290 hours in their vehicles every year. So, yes--we love our vehicles here in  Conway, AR for sure and also like fixing them for our customers.  We were recently pondering about the greatest inventions and innovations that have taken place in the history of automotive transportation, so here we go.

·         Independent Front Suspension

Appearing for the first time in a six-cylinder Mercedes-Benz vehicle in 1931, independent suspension made riding in a car smooth while previously it was more like riding a horse. It must have been a huge hit, because more than 30 carmakers copied the design. In the U.S., General Motors began integrating independent front suspension in its 1934 line of cars, but weren't found in Fords until l 1949.

·         Disc Brakes

There was a ton of competition as innovators rushed to get the first disc brakes on the market. The concept of a caliper clamping down on a disc to stop a vehicle was brilliant and that's why cars still have disc brakes. The first commercial disc brakes were made by a company named Crosley in 1949. Unfortunately, the first disc brakes did not wear well under heavy use, so many people went back to using drum brakes over time. Eventually, Crosley and a handful of other companies worldwide were able to refine the design and get them back into cars all over the planet.

·         V8 Engine

The first V8 ever made was designed and built by engineer Leon Levavasseur in France, when he patented it in 1902 and named it “Antoinette”, after the daughter of his banker. Initially, V8s were being used mainly in boats and aircraft, but the design made it into cars prior to 1910. Darracq, Rolls-Royce, De-Dion Bouton and others built V8s in modest quantities after that. Levavasseur’s name has been lost to history over the decades, but he does need to receive major kudos for designing this engine that changed the automotive world in a powerful way!

·         Cruise Control

Cruise control first appeared in the 1958 Chrysler Imperial, New Yorker and Windsor, shortly followed by Cadillac two years later. Ralph Teetor, the genius behind the creation of cruise control (at the time it was called  “Speedostat”) never got to drive himself, because he was completely blind. Cruise control allows drivers to use less fuel while maintaining the same speed, thereby  also avoiding speeding tickets on long road trips.

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Sources: Popular Mechanics, Biz Insider and Yahoo