Over the past few years, automotive laws (especially in Europe) regarding emissions, loudness, as well as safety regulations have never been this strict. All of these laws, while some may be well in reason, but are boxing in auto manufacturers over the globe. Their creative limits have been burdened since different countries across the world's laws are unique (and sometimes weird), crash tests are more brutal than ever, and there has been a new light shone on pedestrian safety.All of these strict regulations have led to unique features, which once were showcased in classic cars, to become banned, and also limit what modifications may be done to your own car. These rules impact everything from exterior design elements to interior quirks and sometimes even some mechanical components.Worst of all, the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) wants to prohibit racecars from ever existing again, and that includes customizing your rides at home... but luckily for us, we're part of an incredible community. So to give you a glimmer of hope, the RPM Act is here to save us.
10 Car Phones
Usually, reminiscing at old cars and their features we are overwhelmed with nostalgia, but this feature was just downright idiotic. Surprisingly, talking over a cell phone while driving was only considered to be a traffic violation in the year 2001, and before that, some car manufacturers actually encouraged drivers to conversate while behind the wheel.
Some prestigious automakers like BMW offered their top-tier models with huge handheld devices in the center console, just so the driver can take calls on his branded brick phone. Never have we heard of something more problematic than this.
9 Manual Fender Mirrors
Most common on JDM sports cars and sedans, fender mirrors had no other reason to exist other than to look cool. The name fender mirror is extremely self-explanatory since it literally refers to small mirrors placed on top of front fenders, but they could not make use of cool styling in order to make up for the visibility it gave drivers - or well lack thereof.
Not to mention the manually adjustable aspect made them even more useless than they were because now there was no easy way to adjust them without having another person help you.
8 Huge Chrome Bumpers
Plastering your car's front and rear end with a shiny coating used to be for purely aesthetic appeal, but as the years moved on, so did safety measures. Bumpers were required to withstand much harsher impacts in the '70s than ever before, leading to complete bumper redesigns and plastic covers starting to rise in popularity.
By the end of the '80s, it was near impossible to adopt a huge chrome front end into your design without falling short of legal requirements, so they were replaced by plastic covers and strengthened by attaching steel or aluminum structures neatly behind them.
7 Ashtrays & Cigarette Lighters
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In order to enforce the law where no person may smoke inside a car with a child aboard, car manufacturers joined forces to ban this combo-package in their new cars in an effort to put an end to smoking in cars.
In the year 1994, Chrysler broke the ice by no longer offering their cars with ashtrays, and other brands soon joined the bandwagon. Incentives by manufacturers differed, but one brand that came up with a genius cost-effective idea was Hyundai; they repurposed what once was a cigarette lighter with USB ports.
6 Car TVs
Sure, some luxury cars have the option to add TV screens inside of the front seat headrests, so rear passengers can enjoy a movie when going on a long drive. However, some carmakers took it a bit too far by implementing an option to tune into live tv or play a DVD through the central infotainment display.
In retrospect, this was like a horrible idea, which just distracts the drivers constantly. It might sound like common sense to us, but in some states like Montana, watching TV while driving is perfectly legal.
5 Slim A-Pillars
Cars had to be able to withstand harsher impacts and more intense crash tests, so in pursuit of passing their tests, automakers had to increase A-pillars in width in order to strengthen a vehicle's overall rigidity, and of course, prohibit its roof from crushing your skull in case of a roll-over-accident.
By enlarging these pillars there was one huge drawback associated with it... huge new blindspots appeared that were never there before. Brands had to prioritize safety over visibility and style, unfortunately, and diminished cars' appearances with these new thick A-pillars.
4 Black Cars
Yes, there is a country that banned a color altogether, the Turkmenistan government. They even go out of their way to impound the black cars they see in public. And no, there are no other colors, even the wacky attention-grabbing ones that get the same treatment.
There have been no official reasons given as to why Turkenmenistan's leaders are so sickened by black cars, but all citizens had to either repaint or sell their black cars, no matter when or where the cars were built.
3 Rumble Seats
Also known as dickey seats, or mother-in-law seats, rumble seats were a type of compact fold-up bench neatly hidden away in the back of a car, specifically designed to assign to passengers you'd prefer to sit as far away from you as possible (hence the nicknames).
Rumble seats were extremely dangerous since they were basically just accomodating a human inside of a catapult squeezed inside the trunk without any form of the seatbelt.
2 Exhaust Sound
It really breaks our hearts that we have reached a stage where rev limiters have to be mandatory in all production cars in order to reduce the amount of pollution given off. Obviously, if exotic cars come from the factory with a disappointing exhaust note (and basically no pops and bangs unless you have a Hyundai N car), modifying your exhaust system is illegal, and don't even think about straight piping.
The legal limit for a vehicle's noise output is marked at 95 dbA in California, and most factory-installed exhaust systems - no matter what car - may not exceed 75 decibels.
1 Pop-up Headlights
Whether you live and breathe cars, or if you don't know the difference between blinker and brake fluid, you have a soft spot for pop-up headlights. There's just something so undeniably cool and timeless that wants us to give a pair of pop-ups on every single car out there, but as all good things are, they had to come to an end. Pop-up headlights had to face their ultimate demise when stricter European pedestrian safety laws claimed them to be too harmful to pedestrians in case of an accident.
We do however wish some polymath finds a way to resurrect these pops-ups in a pedestrian-friendly way. The silver lining to this cloud is that Donut Media has paid its respects to pop-up headlights with their song, Pop-Up Up and Down Headlights.