The ten innovations that changed the car

The leap forward in quality arrived with the internal combustion engine which in every respect outclassed the steam engine, where the combustion is external and serves to generate the steam which moves the pistons. The idea can be attributed to Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci, from Lucca, who patented it in 1853, but its formal development had to wait until 1875, with Nikolaus August Otto, in partnership with Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. The Otto Cycle engine, much lighter and more compact, allowed Karl Benz, in 1891, to propose his Benz-Motorwagen, an “automobile” which was much more user-friendly and lively than Cugnot's cart.

An equally important development was that of the monocoque, or load-bearing body, conceived in 1922 by Lancia for its Lambda. The leap forward compared to the classic body shell on side members was a notable one: the integration of reinforcements and folds in the external “shells” of cars introduced a more rational, lightweight and easy -to-build structure. However, it is Citroen that we must thank for the first utilisation for a car of a closed bodyshell (the Lambda was a convertible) with its introduction of the legendary Traction Avant (front-wheel drive), manufactured in 760,000 units from 1934 until 1957.

Supercharging is almost as old as the engine itself (compressors with mechanical activation were applied to combustion engines as far back as 1878 and their first use in the aviation industry dates back to 1910), but their activation with a turbine in place of gears or belts goes back to the 1960s. Vehicles adopted them in the following decade and the definitive consecration of the “Turbo” took place when they were used in Formula 1 racing cars with effect from the 1970s. 

The first systems were invented towards the end of the 1800s but the widespread use of fuel injection occurred around a century later. The carburettor resisted for decades, but already by the 1930s, the NACA (the predecessor of NASA) was studying injection engines for aircraft, which during the Second World War were using the injection of a mixture of water and methanol to prevent knocking and to increase power. Anti-pollution standards led to many changes in the design of carburettors, which became electronically controlled, but the precision and efficiency of injection definitively pensioned them off.

First seen in the 1900s and advantageous because it minimises the loss of heat through the head and allows for the positioning of two large valves, it became a cult item when Chrysler publicised its use in its classic, roaring V8 engines, which were manufactured in three different versions from 1951 until the last one in 2003. ‘Hemis' – the jargon word which derives from “Hemispherical” and describes the shape of the roughly hemispherical combustion chamber – were also in the V6 and 4-cylinder in-line engines. Other manufacturers also used this architecture, developed during the Second World War for aircraft fighter engines. The complications resulting from the adoption of four or more valves per cylinder led to its abandon from manufacturing 

Today's electric motors can work “in reverse”, by generating power (by harnessing the kinetic energy from the forward motion of the car) instead of absorbing it. This power generational functionality translates into an increase in the power available to make the motor slow the vehicle, which goes well beyond simple mechanical frictional braking effects. In conjunction with the inertia of the vehicle, it thus behaves like a brake which holds back the rotation of the wheels and this physical phenomenon can be used to slow down and stop the vehicle itself. The principle dates back a good while – it was already being used by the railways in 1886 and in the Krieger electric landaulet around 1890 – but all the talk we hear today about regenerative braking derives from the modern widespread availability of electric cars.

The idea of using the brakes to improve the stability of a vehicle (ESP) comes from the Mercedes engineer Frank Werner-Mohn, who ended up in a ditch during a test drive on snow in 1989. Its first practical application was on the S Class of 1995 and since then it has been extended to vehicles of every category and price. It is a “child” of the ABS anti-lock braking systems, which were experimented in mechanical form in the aircraft of the 1920s pioneer Gabriel Voisin and which arrived in electronic format on Concorde. The pioneers of ABS on cars were Chrysler, Ford and Mario Palazzetti from Fiat's Research Centre, whose antiskid patent was sold to Bosch.

The slender tyres of the first cars were perhaps not too difficult to steer but very soon their weight and size, which were growing quickly, forced manufacturers to design a system which would “assist” the driver in the task of moving the steering wheel. This requirement led to several attempts at servo-assistance as early as the late 1800s, but the leap ahead in quality is attributable to Francis Davis towards the middle of the 1930s, with its definitive consecration in the heavy vehicles used in the Second World War, which led to the widespread use of the system after the end of the War.

Let us take two mechanical sets of gears, let us link them to the engine via two separate clutches and let us use one for the even-numbered gearsets and the other for the odd-numbered ones. In this way the gearchange could be really rapid, given that the cogs of the next gear (up or down) would already be turning and it would suffice to engage one clutch and disengage the other. The inventor of this concept was the French engineer Adolphe Kégresse in 1939, but until the Golf VR6 of 2003 its adoption was sporadic and limited to racing.

Its large-scale production, albeit limited as it was almost pioneering in its nature, can be traced back to the electric BMW i3 of 2013. The light weight of composite materials, primarily those made of carbon fibre, has allowed the same powertrain to generate improved performance in these vehicles. Progress in manufacturing techniques, such as for the sophisticated Forged Carbon from Lamborghini, is allowing increasingly higher numbers to be manufactured, albeit still in relatively small runs. The need to limit the weight of electric vehicles could give a further boost to this technology.