It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that all you needed for a successful road trip was a glovebox full of cassettes and an AZ map.
But these concepts are a mystery to many children born in the 2010s, who remain baffled by the gadgets of 1990s classic cars.
This hilarious video shows a group of 12-year-olds trying to pilot a 1992 Toyota Carina E without much success.
Kids have no trouble navigating voice controls, Bluetooth pairing, and apps, but even the simplest pieces of ’90s technology can be confusing.
The video will take you a few minutes to understand how to unlock your car using a non-electronic key.
When given a cassette, some children ask, “Is it a floppy disk?”
Now, how many classic automotive gadgets from the 1990s do you remember?
Hilarious video shows how kids are baffled by many classic car gadgets such as cassettes
cassette
In the video, Toyota asked the children of employees at its Burnaston plant to compare the first car made there 32 years ago with the cars made there today.
During review, the children were challenged to find out how long it would take to play music while driving.
Children in modern vehicles had no problem playing music on their phones, but children in 1992 vehicles found it much more difficult.
The 12-year-olds seemed completely bewildered by the car’s outdated music system and didn’t even seem to recognize the cassette it came with.
In the video, one of the children can be seen trying to force a cassette into the stereo and it quickly gets stuck.
But considering how long cassettes have been obsolete, it’s no surprise that kids seem confused.
For younger readers, a cassette is two tightly wound spools of magnetic tape that can store approximately 90 minutes of music.
In the video, children are ordered to play music in the car. However, when presented with a cassette, some seem completely confused, with some asking, “Is this a floppy disk?”
The tape is coated with magnetic particles that are shaped into patterns that players can read and convert into music.
The first car stereo with a tape player, the Philips type RN582, was launched in 1968, but it wasn’t until the mid-’70s that it became standard equipment in most vehicles.
By the time the Sony Walkman was released in 1979, cassettes were the primary music format for listening to almost all music outside the home.
However, cassettes’ time in the spotlight didn’t last long, as the older, less reliable format was replaced by CDs in the mid-1980s.
By the 1990s, more reliable digital alternatives had taken over the market and cassettes were already becoming obsolete.
The last car sold with a cassette player as standard equipment was the 2010 Lexus SC430.
Considering this car was released two years before my kids were born, it’s no wonder the cassette is a little unfamiliar.
arizona state map
In the 1990s, you couldn’t complete a road trip without consulting an Arizona map. However, the children in this video have a hard time using a physical map.
Most people who took a road trip in the 1990s will remember the frustration of descending upon battered Arizona to find a route.
However, as in-car navigation systems and map apps become more popular, many young people no longer need to use physical maps.
In this video, children are challenged to find their way to Alton Towers Theme Park using old-fashioned paper maps.
As you might imagine, 12-year-olds can barely open a map, let alone know where they are.
While struggling to get directions, one child complains, “You can’t just type it into the navigation.”
The AZ Map, or The Geographers’ AZ Street Atlas as it is officially known, began production in 1932 and is still available today.
Originally created specifically for London, AZ now has 35 maps covering almost every corner of the UK.
These were installed in almost every car until the advent of digital GPS systems.
AZ was first launched in 1932 and became the most widely sold map in the UK. However, the rise of digital navigation systems in the 2000s eventually led to the decline of paper maps.
The first in-vehicle navigation options appeared in the 1980s, starting with the Honda Electro Gyro-Cator navigation unit.
These were much simpler than what we recognize today, using small helium gas gyroscopes to continuously track the car’s direction and speed and calculate the driver’s position.
It wasn’t until the 1990 Mazda Eunos Cosmo that the first true GPS system became commercially available.
For the first time ever, drivers can now use satellites orbiting the Earth to triangulate their position accurately and in real time.
But the real demise of paper maps came in 2004 when Tom Tom released the first in-car navigation system.
It became one of the fastest-selling commercial electronic devices of all time, and the need for AZ quickly disappeared.
By 2012, just as the children in the video were being born, both Google Maps and Apple Maps arrived on mobile phones, putting the final nail in the coffin of physical maps.
key
You might think that car keys are self-explanatory. However, as this video shows, some children are much more comfortable with using apps and electronic keys.
Finally, and perhaps most shockingly, the children in the video seem quite confused by a simple pair of keys.
One group was able to easily unlock their modern vehicle using an app, while others struggled for several minutes with a physical lock.
This may come as a bit of a surprise since keys are by no means outdated technology.
But electronic keys have been around for much longer than you think.
The first example of remote locking being fitted as a default option was introduced by Renault Alliance in 1983.
Similarly, the first proximity keys, which unlock your car by simply approaching it, began to be released in the early 2000s.
In 2016, Volvo became the first car manufacturer to offer a fully digital key that uses Bluetooth to unlock your doors and start your engine.
At the time, Volvo announced that owners would be able to send their keys to friends and family, just like lending their actual car keys.
The first digital keys were launched in 2016, and since then technology to unlock and start your car from your phone has become much more common
Although it hasn’t fully become a reality, app-based locks are becoming much more common across the industry.
However, there are some concerns about security as these apps can be vulnerable to hackers.
By duplicating signals from the key or exploiting vulnerabilities in the app, criminals can trick the car into thinking the real key is nearby.
Cybersecurity experts and police forces across the country have warned that this could make keyless cars more susceptible to theft.
