Why do some cars have wires embedded in their windshield?
Have you ever sat in the front seat of an older car and noticed a pair of tiny wires snaking around the border of the windshield? I’ll bet you donuts to dollars that car was a General Motors product from the 1970s or early 80s. How do I know? It seems only one automaker experimented with an in-windshield radio antenna. And that experiment didn’t last long.
General Motors has tried some weird stuff over the years. The 1960 Chevrolet Corvair was a unique, mass-produced rear-engine car–a swing at the Detroit 911. But that obviously didn’t pan out. Pontiac tried an aluminum overhead cam I6 in 1966, abandoning the unpopular engine by 1970. Chevrolet and GMC trucks messed with independent front suspension and coil springs in the 80s, which they would later abandon for decades. But one of the most intriguing innovations has been radio antennas embedded in the windshield.
Which General Motors cars had a wire in the windshield
As far as I can tell General Motors first tried out in-windshield radio antennas on Cadillacs. By the early 1970s, this was a common feature across General Motors’ lineup. Vehicles from Buick cars to Chevy SUVs had the option.
Jason Marker of Jalopnik encountered multiple GMs with wires in the windshield. ” I remember my dad had a ’70s Chevy van and a late-’70s Chevy Suburban, both of which had those wires in the windshield. I’m pretty sure my mom’s ’80 Buick Regal, an American family car that is now dead, had an in-glass antenna, too, but my ’79 Sedan DeVille, one of the first cars you might have truly hated, didn’t.”
So why embed the radio antenna in the windshield? There are a few reasons.
A radio antenna in the windshield might have been more aerodynamic. It might have also just been more aerodynamic-looking, for that space-race cool factor.
Many drivers may have considered embedded antennas more durable, as radio antennas were constantly breaking off cars. But the problem is when an embedded antenna does fail, you might need to replace your windshield to fix it.
By the early 1980s, General Motors did away with its embedded antenna feature. Perhaps it was just too expensive to maintain, or maybe it was too costly to make. Maybe vehicle style just changed. See the windshield antenna wire for yourself in the video embedded below:
