In the golden age of Formula 1, there was a no holds barred approach to design. The 1970s and 1980s were pretty much when innovation peaked – and by the 1990s, major restrictions on power, electronics, traction and airflow were introduced.

The now infamous Tyrell P34 had a never before seen 6 wheeled design that won the 1976 Swedish Grand Prix, and a further 14 podium positions out of 30 races run. In the mid 1980s, BMW had an engine capable of outputting a ludicrous 1,500 horsepower.

During these two decades, every team was pushing the limits of physics – creating cars with more power, drastically reduced weight, aerospace grade aerodynamics and unfathomable levels of grip.

Electronics become more complex – with anti locking brakes, traction control, power managed launch control, active suspension and even four wheel steering innovations. The long and short of it is, things got a bit Wild West; with endless R&D budgets, some absolutely batty designs were making it to the track. And in the mid 1990s, a lot of cars were crashing.

And a lot of drivers were dying.

F1 regulations in the 1990s went back and forth, in an attempt to keep racers safe without damping the spirit of the sport. Some innovations were curbed, others introduced. Some tried to “purify” the sport, while others made an effort to make it safer.

Of course, all this innovation eventually made it into family and consumer cars – but in their cases, to make them safer. And F1 still pushes the limits of innovation today, with radical pushes for fuel economy, weight reduction, and parts reliability.

But are we consumers getting any of that?

MODERN CARS HAVE MODERN PROBLEMS

Modern cars are computers on wheels; internet-enabled, actively monitoring and adapting – with an unimaginable level of complexity going on. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (or ADAS for short) have made us safer overall, but they have also introduced countless new failure points on top of the existing mechanical ones.

LEARN MORE – ADAS AND CAR SERVICING

We’re at a point now where tech has infiltrated the auto industry so fully, that car companies are now tech companies, and vice-versa. Apple has CarPlay, Android has Auto, and carmakers have apps of their own. And of course, Tesla is a thing. 

However, the seemingly endless innovations haven’t done much for us lately – apart from introducing new costs.

Some car makers want subscriptions now, to use hardware already installed in the car. Others want to beam data to their servers, or share it with third parties.

Modern cars have all the problems of today’s tech-obsessed, always-on culture, and this is the only kind of innovation we’ve had for a really long time. EVs, and the promises they held have largely not come to fruition – especially in places like the UK, where large portions of the driving population don’t have driveways or garages to charge them in. And the self-driving cars we were promised in 2019 have only gone as far as a handful of robotaxi firms, testing small fleets with mixed results.

So, we’re out of the Wild West, golden era of car innovation. And the promises of tech have sort of turned into a dystopian vision of cars that want you to pay a quid every time you turn the wipers on.

Innovation has absolutely stalled. And maybe that’s a good thing – maybe cars should be going back to their roots a bit.

BACK TO BASICS?

The breakneck pace of innovation was once a testament to the human spirit of exploring the possible – and doing the impossible. In the last decade or so, innovation seems to have focused not on possibility, but on profit.

F1 had to temper its wildest engineering impulses to protect its drivers. Maybe the consumer car industry should do the same – to protect us from evermore complex cars.

Driving has always been a symbol of freedom. But we’ve traded that freedom for convenience and comfort. And we unwittingly left the door open for subscriptions for basic features, constant data harvesting, and complexity that alienates both owners and independent garages.

And we sort of get why things have gone this way; cars are about as mature a technology as we have. There’s only so much more we can do to improve them. But in seeking those gains with every new model released, we’ve forgotten about the freedom of driving, our connection to cars, and the human element of what it should all feel like.

Maybe the greatest innovation we could make today would be to build a car that’s free of all the noise; something built to last, without relying on a data centre in the Americas to turn on, or a monthly subscription for airbag deployment.

Maybe slowed innovation is a good thing. But slowing down doesn’t have to mean going backwards; just choosing a better direction than the one we’re going in right now.

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