History of the Car Heater

Jun. 10, 2024

History of the Car Heater

Are you interested in learning more about Electric Heater for Car? Contact us today to secure an expert consultation!

The history of the car heater goes all the way back to . The inventor of this was Margaret A. Wilcox. She was one of the first women inventors and mechanical engineer. After being born in Chicago, IL she went on the experiment and patent the heater. This was an experimental invention that turned out to be one of the most valuable ones. Besides a car heater, she also invented a combined clothes and dishwasher machine.

History of the Heater

The heater of the vehicle is like a radiator that is used to heat the cabin of the vehicle. The hot coolant from the vehicle&#;s engine is then passed through a tube and exchange heat between the coolant and cabin air. By warming the air, then the interior of the vehicle and cabin can become warm as well. The water valve heating system contains a matrix of sorts. It is a small radiator that takes the hot water from the engine. It then mixes with the incoming air until it is warmed. This makes it able to be heated constantly. As the temperature control opens and closes, it will help blend the heated air with the colder outside air.

If you start to notice that the heater is not working correctly for your vehicle, make sure to schedule an appointment with us. Without it working properly, you and your passengers will be cold. With a heater working correctly, you can ride in comfort. You will want to also check the defroster for your vehicle. The front and rear windshield defroster should be working properly. This will help to warm up the windows when there is frost or ice build up on them. Always remember to scrape the windows fully so you have the best visibility possible when you are driving this winter. This should include side windows and mirrors as well.

Warm Comfort: What Was the Last American Car Available ...

Regular readers of my Cold Comfort series of posts know that I am fascinated (obsessed, really) with automotive air conditioning. Well it is time to see how the other half lives and to start exploring the fascinating history of automotive heaters, starting with the fact that for a very long time (well into the s) a heater was optional, and not standard equipment on most cars.

The earliest post-war American car I could find with a heater as standard equipment was the Chrysler Imperial ($4,664) and Crown Imperial ($5,229). It was a $70 option for the rest of the Chrysler lineup that year. Literally every other American carmaker required you to purchase a heater at an extra cost.

Surprisingly, no other major manufacturers followed Chrysler&#;s lead on making heaters standard equipment until , which turned out to be a (hot) watershed year for standard-equipment heaters, at least among luxury and specialty cars. This year a few manufacturers made a heater standard equipment on their new range-topping specialty models.

Oldsmobile made a heater standard equipment on the 98 Fiesta while keeping it as a $79 option across the rest of the lineup. Buck similarly made a heater standard on just their Skylark model. Packard made a heater standard on their open-top Carribean convertible while being a $97 option across the remainder of the lineup. Kaiser made a heater standard equipment on their upmarket Dragon for .

Cadillac, however, went one step further in and made a heater standard equipment across their entire lineup (the same year air conditioning became an option), from the base Sixty-Two to the range-topping Eldorado. Of course that applies to just the standard single-zone manual heater: Cadillac&#;s multi-zone &#;automatic&#; heater system (about which more will be written in a future post) was almost always still an optional upgrade.

In , Studebaker, sticking their toes in the hot water, released their first model with a standard heater, the President Speedster.

For , the Continental Mark II would be the first FoMoCo product to come with a standard heater, with air conditioning being the only option on offer.

In , the Turnpike Cruiser became the first Mercury to receive a heater as standard issue. Pontiac no longer forced buyers to opt for a heater on their new-for- Bonneville &#; it was standard as well.

If you want to learn more, please visit our website Ptc Heating Elements for Your Home Appliances.

Studebaker-Packard in joined Cadillac in making heaters standard across their entire lineup, from the lowliest Scotsman to the most expensive Packard Golden Hawk. This makes the $1,776 price point of the &#;57 Scotsman (undercutting the cheapest Chevy by over $100) all the more impressive as they essentially gave you something for free (a heater) that Chevy was charging an extra $95 for. Throwing in a standard heater when virtually every customer was willing to pay extra for one (while offering no competitive advantage) must have infuriated the bean counters at Studebaker-Packard, as we shall see.

And here we see the real reason it took so long for heaters to become standard equipment: Charging upwards of $100 for something that virtually everyone was going to buy anyways essentially amounted to a back door tax, allowing manufacturers to advertise artificially lower list prices. Whoever caved first and made the heater standard was going to be at a base price disadvantage, as well as missing out on a revenue-generating opportunity.

So standard heaters trickled in quite slowly, and mostly on luxury makes. In , the Continental Mark III became the first Lincoln with a standard heater (it was still an option on the Capri and Premiere.)

The era of specialty cars with standard heaters was short-lived, and by no Mercurys, Buicks, or Oldsmobiles had a heater as standard equipment anymore. Studebaker also backed off from making heaters standard across the lineup in , making it $71 option on the Lark. Pricing pressure from the recession likely played a part in manufacturers backing away from standard heaters as well.

By the dawn of the s, it seemed that something as basic and essential as a heater would stay on the option sheet forever, even if it were at this point an option that practically no one skipped. But things would change quickly, and my mid-decade a heater would become standard equipment on virtually every car.

A heater because standard for every Buick and Lincoln starting in , as well as for the Oldsmobile 98. By , if you wanted an Oldsmobile without a heater, you were out of luck &#; it was standard across the entire range.

Standard heaters hit the mainstream in . That year, GM finally said &#;enough&#; to the base price shell game and made a heater standard equipment on every GM car, from the cheapest Chevrolet to the most expensive Cadillac.

Also in , the Thunderbird was the first Ford-branded vehicle to get a heater as standard equipment (it was still optional across the rest of the lineup).

The rest of the industry quickly followed GM&#;s lead. In , the heater became standard equipment across the Ford lineup, although Ford hedged their bets by calling it a &#;delete option&#;, so it was technically still possible to get a Ford model without a heater in if you really wanted. I&#;m guessing that few bothered.

Despite the moves by the competition, Chrysler, alone among the Big 3, soldiered on with a heater still being optional on most of its cars until . In that year, Chrysler finally made a heater and defroster standard equipment on all Dodge, Plymouth, and Chrysler vehicles.

So where was a person to go at this point if they didn&#;t want to pay for a heater? By , if you were bound and determined to buy a new American car without a heater, you had but one choice: Studebaker, who still charged $80 (about $750 in ) for the privilege of keeping warm. Thus Studebaker earns the distinction of being the last American car maker to still offer a car sans a heater.

This was peculiar for several reasons: First, Studebaker was an early adopter of making heaters standard equipment across the lineup in (although they quickly reverted when the competitors didn&#;t follow suit, sensing the pricing disadvantage). Furthermore, by , Studebakers were being exclusively assembled in the Hamilton, Ontario plant, mainly for Canadian customers, for whom a heater would be pretty much essential. I highly doubt any were actually sold without a heater &#; maybe this can be the subject of a future Unicorn Hunt post.

As we all know, Studebaker stopped selling cars after , so it is impossible to know how much longer they would have sold cars with at least the potential of deleting a heater, but I doubt it would have been much longer. FMVSS 103, which went into effect in December of , mandated that all cars sold in the US come equipped with a defroster (and by extension a heater), so we will never again see street-legal cars sold in the US without a heater.

Postscript

Just because heaters have been required in all cars sold in the US since the early s doesn&#;t mean that you still can&#;t get heaterless cars in other parts of the world.

Here is a control panel from a Mexican market Dodge Attitude (basically a rebadged Hyundai Accent) which until recently was still available without a heater and defroster. Perhaps our Rich Baron will find some more modern heaterless cars prowling around El Salvador.

History of the Car Heater