We’re not just talking about having your passenger give you sketchy direction out of a slightly outdated fold-out map either.
Today Honda celebrates the recognition of its 1981 gyro-based navigation suite as the world’s first in-car navigation system and official technological milestone.
What’s a gyro-based navigation system I hear you ask? Well imagine what GPS was like before flat screen and wide-spread commercial use of satellites was a thing.
You end up with this. The Honda Electro-Gyrocator. It looks like a bond gadget (think the Goldfinger DB5), is operated like one (just look at all those buttons) and probably cost as much as one too.
Thanks to its ancient CRT screen design and the need to feed it A5-sized film overlays of the actual map it looks like more pain than it was worth. At the time it would have been revolutionary, though. It was created 10 years before commercially available GPS units (the 1991 Toyota Soarer had the first commercial in-car GPS) and Honda engineers managed to reduce gyroscope designs at the time from over 200 parts to just 8.
It was fitted as an option to the 1981 Accord, but may have been hard to justify given that it cost 25% of the car’s total sale price.
Do you have an archaic or bizarre option fitted to your car? Tell us your story in the comments.
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