single bottom trip plow for sale

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1 Bottom Plow Farm Plows

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Used J-Bar 1-14" Plow for Tractors FREE 1000 MILE DELIVERY FROM KY

Nos horse-drawn lynchburg 37ds plow point -2 horse, new titan 6116-gr -1-16 bottom plow for tractors free 1000 mile delivery from ky, single furrow plow without regulation 4farmer, ih model 310 collector plow for tractors free 1000 mile delivery from ky, ironcraft 6112m mini plow for compact tractors free 1000 mile delivery from ky, single furrow plow with regulation 4farmer, master hitch "western" plow for 2011-2018 ford truck w/ mount & electrical arar, bush hog ro-till, cd100 plow point vintage original, kubota snow plow b2765a.

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Listing video, used moldboard plows for sale.

Search John Deere MachineFinder for used Moldboard Plows. All makes and models from John Deere Dealers nationwide.

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Find single or double bottom moldboard plows from Agri Supply® or replace the parts for to your plow. These can help you turn the soil and get your field ready for planting.

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NO SALES TAX WHEN DELIVERED OUTSIDE OF MISSOURI

The Western MIDWEIGHT starting at $ 3949

BIG PERFORMANCE FOR YOUR TRUCK The WESTERN® MIDWEIGHT™ commercial snow plow - It's lean, nimble and provides plenty of muscle. Delivering rugged, pro performance without the extra weight, this plow is built for light commercial use with a "bring it on" attitude.

AVAILABLE IN POLY AND STEEL The 27"-tall moldboard comes in both high-density polyethylene and powder coated steel. The durable 7' 6" poly blade provides a slick surface for enhanced snow-rolling action and a maintenance-free surface, while the 7' 6” steel blade features our high-quality ULTRAFINISH™ powder coat surface.    Read more...

Structural reinforcement six vertical ribs and the exclusive western power bar provide unmatched structural reinforcement, delivering exceptional torsional strength and rigidity to eliminate blade twisting. high-strength steel base channel provides extra support along the bottom of the plow blade. moldboard availability powder coated steel: 7' 6” width  high-density polyethylene: 7' 6" width pivot bolt the 1"-diameter pivot bolt secures the plow in place, ensuring proper alignment and reducing stress on the overall plow assembly. trip blade protection the two-spring trip blade protects your snow plow and truck when striking hidden obstacles. elastomeric bumpers reduce jarring and soften the blade return when tripping occurs, to extend the life of your truck and plow. standard cutting edge a high-carbon steel cutting edge comes standard, reducing wear and extending the life of the blade..

•  Cash discount is available when paying cash, cashier’s check or when using our 6 months same as cash plan. •  Financing is available for qualified buyers! 

Available Midweight models: 

7'6" Steel Medium duty straight blade 

7'6" Poly Medium duty straight blade

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10th Anniversary Sale! - $250 OFF!

The Western PRO PLUS starting at $ 4649

HEAVY-DUTY CONTRACTOR GRADE® PERFORMANCE With a winter workhorse like the WESTERN® PRO PLUS® snow plow on your truck, there’s no holding back. Designed to fit a wide range of vehicles, including skid-steers, this plow is built for the toughest commercial operations. 

PLOW BLADE CONSTRUCTION The robust 12-gauge powder coated steel moldboard is a full 31½" tall and comes in 8', 8' 6", and 9' widths. The PRO PLUS® blade features a 65-degree attack angle, and a high carbon steel cutting edge comes standard, reducing wear and extending the life of the blade.    Read more...

Structural reinforcement eight vertical ribs, a heavy-duty quadrant and the exclusive western power bar provide exceptional torsional strength and rigidity, to eliminate blade twisting even under the most brutal conditions. high-strength steel base channel provides extra support along the bottom of the plow blade. high-strength rectangular tube quadrant built to withstand season after season of commercial use. a-frame construction the 3" square tubing provides strength and durability..

Available PRO PLUS models: 

8" Steel Medium duty straight blade 

8’6" Steel Medium duty straight blade 

9' Steel Medium duty straight blade

Check out our rave reviews on Facebook and Google!

The Western PRODIGY starting at $5549

Get all of the benefits of a winged plow with the simple control of a straight blade with the WESTERN PRODIGY™ multi-position wing snowplow. The wings automatically adjust to provide the most efficient plowing configuration for the job. This model adds versatility to your fleet without spending time training operators on how to use new equipment, keeping productivity and profitability high. 

AUTOMATICALLY ADJUSTING WINGS Wings automatically adjust into scoop or windrow when you change the plowing angle with the control. STRUCTURAL REINFORCEMENT Six vertical ribs and the exclusive WESTERN POWER BAR provide exceptional strength and rigidity across the entire back of the plow blade. Two additional ribs on each wing provide extra reinforcement.    Read more...

Straight blade configuration when the job calls for a large straight blade, the wings can be pinned into a 9' 8" straight blade configuration. trip blade and wing protection four heavy-duty coil springs allow the whole blade to trip if an obstacle is struck. wing protection is provided by heavy-duty coil springs and the cable assembly, which automatically return the wings to scoop position standard cutting edge a high-carbon steel cutting edge comes standard, reducing wear and extending the life of the blade. high-strength steel base channel provides extra support along the bottom of the plow blade. .

Available models: 

PRODIGY 8'6" Winged Steel cutting edge

The Western WIDE-OUT starting at $6499

Clear more pavement than ever before with the new WESTERN® WIDE-OUT™ and WIDE-OUT™ XL adjustable wing snow plows. Offered in two blade sizes, the WIDE-OUT XL model extends from 8'6" to 11' in straight blade mode, making it the widest WESTERN plow for truck applications. The plows are our tallest winged plows at 31", and feature flared wings allowing operators to be more efficient on their jobs by carrying even more snow with every pass. Prepare yourself to take on more snow—even in the depths of winter. 

  HYDRAULIC WING EXTENSIONS Independently position each wing to maximize blade width and move more snow. Wings slide laterally across a structurally reinforced slide box. FLARED WINGS FOR EFFICIENCY The WIDE-OUT plows feature flared wings as tall as 36" to maximize snowplowing efficiency and aggressively cast snow further while windrowing.    Read more...

Structural reinforcement six vertical ribs—eight on the xl model—a heavy-duty quadrant and a dual western power bar provide exceptional torsional strength and rigidity across the entire back of the plow blade to eliminate blade twisting. trip blade and wing protection four heavy-duty coil springs protect your plow and truck by allowing the whole blade to trip when striking obstacles. the wings of the snowplow will trip in any position as well, including scoop. standard cutting edges the standard, ½", high-carbon steel cutting edge on the moldboard and wings ensure a clean scrape on every pass while reducing wear and extending the life of the blade. heavy-duty slide box structurally reinforced slide box is constructed with 3/16" heavy-grade steel. high-strength steel base channel provides extra support along the bottom of the plow blade. .

Wide-Out   8'-10' Expanding Steel

Wide-Out  8'-10' Expanding Steel w/Commercial Mount

Wide-Out XL  8'6'-11' Expanding Steel

Wide-Out XL  8'6"-11' Expanding Steel w/Commercial Mount

*3.99% for 54 months for qualified buyers. Ask about other financing options available. We have multiple financing providers available to help you finance your purchase. Offer subject to credit approval. Some restrictions apply. Ask for details. **CASH price shown is AFTER the Instant Cash Discount has been applied. Only cash or approved check qualifies for the CASH discount. Purchases can be made with credit cards at the regular price.

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Posted 2024-05-27 10:17

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1 Bottom 3pt Plow - $150 (Moscow, Iowa)

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1 Bottom 3pt Plow - farm & garden - by owner - sale - craigslist

For Sale: 1 bottom 3pt plow. Potato plow. $150 Ph

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2022 Western Star 4700 Tandem Axle Plow / Spreader Truck - Detroit, 470HP, Automatic

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Posted 2024-05-24 17:37

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Case 4 bottom pull type moldboard plow - $100

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Case 4 bottom pull type moldboard plow - farm & garden - by owner -...

Used Case 4 bottom pull type moldboard plow. Mechanical trip lower and raise.

Posted 2024-05-29 19:49

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Tractor - 2010 Kubota L2800 Xtra Power - $11,700 (Ozark, AL)

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Tractor - 2010 Kubota L2800 Xtra Power - farm & garden - by owner -...

Tractor - 2010 Kubota L2800 Xtra Power 75 hours - 29 Horsepower Bush Hog Rotary Brush Cutter Single Furrow Plow Bottom Plow Dirt Scoop/Pond Scoop https://www.facebook.com/share/BSd2mFwG6FXsi7Ay/

Posted 2024-05-29 08:41

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Farmall Cub - $3,000 (South China)

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Farmall Cub - farm & garden - by owner - sale - craigslist

1948 Farmall Cub with implements for sale. Cub runs well. Implements include: sickle bar mower, disc, chisel plow and single bottom plow (not pictured).

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Life on Ukraine’s front line: ‘Worse than hell’ as Russia advances

DONETSK REGION, Ukraine – The artillery fire begins just before dawn. A soldier steps into a darkened trench and lights a cigarette, carefully cupping the flame with his free hand. A boom and crackle of outgoing fire sound in the distance.

Viktor, the infantryman, ducks his head under a canopy of camouflage netting and looks up at the brightening sky. The incessant buzz of a drone sounds overhead, moving a dozen meters from one end of the trench to linger just above him.

Viktor swallows. A moment later, the buzzing sound moves on.

“One of ours,” the 37-year-old soldier says, bringing the cigarette back to his lips.

More: Russia opens new front in Ukraine war. Is Ukraine losing the war with Russia?

The sun finally rises and the noise of war picks up. For weeks, Viktor has barely slept as Russian drones and artillery continually target his position. During the day, he watches for attempts by Russian troops to cross a minefield that separates the two sides. At night, he picks up a shovel to dig and fortify his trench.

“They’re constantly firing, constantly probing,” he says. “We have to survive somehow, and we have to hold the line.”

It is the start of another draining day on Ukraine’s eastern front line. Monitoring his scratchy radio, Viktor will try to move as little as possible in a trench less than 800 meters from where Russian soldiers are massed. For seven months, Viktor’s unit has held this sector of the front, repelling a relentless onslaught of Russian assaults.

Now in the third year of full-scale war, Ukraine’s top military leaders openly admit that the battlefield situation on the eastern front has deteriorated. Two years of war have sapped Ukraine’s ammunition and manpower, while the country’s failed counteroffensive last year sank morale.

More: Ukraine war: Blinken visits Kyiv as Russia ramps up military offensive

As Reuters traveled along the eastern stretch of Ukraine’s 1,000 kilometer front line in April, soldiers in infantry, artillery and drone units all expressed exhaustion. They spoke of an acute shortage of ammunition and an urgent need to replenish troops. A new push by Moscow in May near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is likely to further divert precious ammunition and personnel from other sections of the front, stretching Kyiv’s military thin at a critical moment in the war.

Though Congress finally greenlit a long-delayed $60 billion U.S. military package in April, analysts say that a severe worldwide shortage of artillery shells means Ukraine will likely be outgunned by Russia for the remainder of the year as Kyiv’s allies ramp up production. Reuters could not independently establish how much new U.S. weaponry has made it to the front line. On a May visit to Kyiv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured Ukraine that the delayed aid was “now on the way” and some had “already arrived.”

More: Trump reportedly would pressure Ukraine into ceding land to Russia to end war

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said recently there were no reports of artillery shortages . But in an interview last week with Reuters, he called on Western allies to speed up aid, saying every decision they’ve made on military support for Ukraine has been “late by around one year.”

With the possibility of Donald Trump , who has questioned American military aid to Ukraine, returning to the presidency later this year, many Ukrainians fear the continued support of their most powerful ally hangs in the balance.

More: Ukrainian Olympic weightlifter Oleksandr Pielieshenko dies in war with Russia

Russia, meanwhile, has continued to batter Ukraine with seemingly endless resources.

Russian President Vladimir Putin , riding high as he begins his fifth term, has redoubled his war effort. In 2014, Russian-backed separatists staged a battle to control the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. Since 2022, Putin has made clear his aims to annex the entirety of the area, known as Donbas. To that end, Russian forces have made steady advances in recent months. In February, they captured the eastern city of Avdiivka.

Now, Russia is trying to seize Chasiv Yar, a strategic hilltop city that, if captured, would allow its troops to more easily advance toward the remaining cities of the Donetsk region. Russia’s recent incursions in Kharkiv have distracted the world’s attention from the heavy battles being waged in the Donetsk region, Zelenskyy told Reuters.

The Ukrainian armed forces and the Russian defense ministry did not respond to questions for this story.

More: Putin admits 'radical Islamists' were behind Moscow massacre, but still blames Ukraine

Freezing in the trenches

Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion two years ago, Viktor, the infantryman, was working as a window framer outside of Uman, a city in central Ukraine. His wife had just given birth to a baby daughter. (Like all of the Ukrainians profiled in this report, Viktor asked to be identified by his first name only, in keeping with military protocol.)

Viktor received his mobilization notice four months after the beginning of the war. He was quickly sent to an area in northern Ukraine that borders Russia to dig trenches. Later, he was transferred to Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, where mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner group were fighting to capture the city. Last September, Viktor was handed a Browning machine gun and taught how to clean and maintain the weapon. A week later, he was transferred to the front in Donetsk without having fired a single practice round.

When Viktor’s infantry unit first arrived here, thickets of oak and birch trees lined the grassy fields. There were still birds in the trees then and the leaves were just starting to change color. The soldiers dug trenches into the tough black soil but had no time to cover them with wooden planks before the Russian bombardment started. Through winter, the Russians’ near-constant shelling reduced the trees and fields to ashes, leaving only a tangle of charred stumps.

In winter, temperatures in Viktor’s trench fell as low as minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. On warmer days, shin-high water pooled at the bottom of the canal, mixing with the earth to turn into slushy mud, soaking everything. All the while, Russian drones flew overhead, hovering above the open trench and dropping grenades.

At the beginning of this year, Russian forces attempted yet another assault, driving an armored personnel carrier into a field just meters from Viktor’s position. He fired at the vehicle with his machine gun and diverted it to a minefield, where it detonated a mine and exploded.

Several of the Russian soldiers died in their vehicle, Viktor and his commander said. Others survived with serious injuries and tried to crawl through the minefield back toward the Russian positions. One of them, a former convict from Russia’s Buryatia region, was taken prisoner, Viktor says. Immediately afterward, Russian attacks on Viktor’s position intensified.

“So of course the Russians were angry. They lost equipment, lost people, so of course they started shelling with everything they have,” Viktor says.

In the heat of battle, all you can do is pray, he says. Around his neck, Viktor wears silver medallions of the Virgin Mary and the crucifix. But when the situation is truly dire, he will pray to every God he knows.

More: Biden highlights US commitment to Israel, Ukraine in West Point Speech

After Russia’s failed assault, their drones started dropping gas canisters into Viktor’s trench. A colorless, odorless gas would quickly fill the trench as Viktor and his partner fumbled in the dark for their gas masks. Coughing and sputtering, Viktor would crawl into a hole dug into the side of the trench just tall enough for him to crouch in and grab his phone. There, using candlelight, he would flick through photos and videos of his now 2-year-old daughter.

The Ukrainian military says Russia has ramped up its use of riot-control chemical agents to clear trenches on the front line. The U.S. State Department says Russia is deploying a choking agent called chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops, in violation of the international chemical weapons ban. The U.S. allegations were unfounded, the Russian foreign ministry said.

When spring finally came, nothing flowered. All Viktor sees now are the outlines of blackened tree trunks on the horizon.

His exhaustion is palpable – the result of months spent holding the line against an enemy with seemingly endless manpower and weaponry. Death and injury are constant and every day is a reminder of the asymmetry of the war.

More: Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Ukraine president leads embattled nation in fight against Russia

A declassified U.S. intelligence report in December assessed that Russia had lost as much as 90% of the personnel it had at the start of the 2022 invasion, with 315,000 soldiers killed or injured. Despite the losses, Russia is still estimated to have almost 500,000 servicemen in Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, and has continued to replenish its troops, recruiting heavily from prisons and from the general public. Ukrainian officials say Russia is planning to add an additional 300,000 soldiers in time for its summer offensive.

Russia’s new defense minister said there were no plans for a new mass call-up of troops. Russian officials also say Western estimates of Russian losses are inaccurate.

Zelenskyy recently signed off on a long-debated mobilization law to bolster Ukraine’s armed forces, which number around 800,000. The law, passed in April, lowers the draft age to 25 from 27. The government hasn’t said how many new conscripts the law would yield, and how soon they can reinforce the troops already on the front line.

“It’s not like how it looks on a map, with all these pretty lines and arrows,” Viktor says. “I see my friends, what’s happened to them, what we’re fighting. It’s hell. It’s worse than hell.”

'Death can come at any moment'

In February, the constant Russian assaults , sleep deprivation and fear finally got to Viktor. He woke up one morning frozen with terror, physically unable to go to his position.

“I couldn't calm myself down,” he says. “Not even that I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t go. I was physically and mentally tired.”

Viktor was paralyzed by anxiety. What if he failed to do his job properly, what if something went wrong with his gun, what if he let down his comrades, whom he calls his “brothers” and considers his second family?

He shared his concerns with his company commander. Despite a severe shortage of soldiers on the front, the commander gave Viktor a few days of rest and time to talk with a psychologist. That short reprieve saved him and helped reframe his fear of death.

More: Left behind: a volunteer army rescues the animals of Ukraine | The Excerpt

In the past, he used to think of death as a distant possibility. “But in a war, you’re completely unprotected,” he says. “Death can come at any moment. I’m starting to get used to the idea of death … that it can happen, and you can’t escape it.”

“The psychologist said that a person who has faith understands that in death the spirit leaves the body and only a shell remains on earth,” he says.

Viktor’s ideas are blurrier when it comes to what follows death, but he knows, with certainty, that there is no salvation for the Russian soldiers who marched into Ukraine.

“I think they’re churning in hell,” he says.

Viktor’s eyes suddenly flick up. The whistle of incoming artillery makes him duck for cover.

“Get in the hole!” he yells, his voice drowned out by a shattering boom as he flattens himself against the dirt floor of the trench. Another whistle, this time closer, then a sound of impact, of metal meeting earth. The dirt walls of the trench vibrate. Then all is quiet for some time.

A little while later, the exhausted voice of a Ukrainian soldier crackles over the radio, asking for help. The soldier’s position, a few hundred meters away from Viktor’s trench, has been hit by what appear to be Russian suicide drones, which smash into their targets laden with explosives.

“One 200, three 300s,” the soldier says over the radio, using military code: one dead and three wounded.

More: Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping condemn US, pledge closer ties as Russia advances in Ukraine

“What are my instructions?” he asks, panting slightly. The soldier is ordered to hold his position and not attempt to cross the minefield.

“Plus plus,” he sighs, acknowledging the order.

A few minutes later, the same soldier’s voice returns to the radio.

“What are my instructions?” he asks again, audibly out of breath.

“He’s concussed,” Viktor says, noting the soldier’s confusion and slurred speech, signs of possible head trauma.

He slumps against the white sandbags that line the walls of his trench and takes off his helmet. “They’re not going to be able to rescue them until dark.”

Over the radio, the injured soldiers are told to wait until nightfall – more than eight hours – for a medevac team to extract them. From there they could be taken to a stabilization point, a medical facility close to the front line where wounded soldiers receive emergency aid. The commander says another group of men will be transported to hold the position at the same time.

“Do not leave your post,” he tells the soldier on the radio, instructing him to drink water and stay awake.

Several more explosions are heard from the injured men’s position. “They’re trying to finish them off,” Viktor says, as the radio crackles again with the voice of the soldier. Several more Russian drones are swooping on their position and dropping munitions.

More: Vladimir Putin proposes moving Russian defense chief in surprise reshuffle amid Ukraine war

Viktor takes another drag of his cigarette. He’s lost count of the soldiers he’s seen injured or killed. There was a cheerful soldier in his 20s he shared a trench with last fall. He was killed in a heavy mortar attack while Viktor was away from the position for a few days of rest.

Asked for the young soldier’s name, Viktor hesitates and squeezes his eyes shut.

“I can’t even remember,” he says after a pause. “I can’t even remember where he was from.”

More than anything, Viktor wishes he could go home, but he says the chances of another soldier replacing him soon at his front-line position are slim.

The final mobilization law passed in April did not include a provision in an earlier version that would have rotated out soldiers who had already served 36 months of duty. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is now considering a new law that will address demobilization.

More: Russia says it's deploying tactical nukes in drills as Ukraine cries 'blackmail'

Even with the mobilization push, many young Ukrainian men do not want to be sent to challenging front-line trenches like Viktor’s, soldiers and officers in his brigade say.

“No one will trade with us,” Viktor says. “Who would want to come here?”

So, he stands guard at his Browning, listening and watching. For hours, the radio crackles on as the injured soldiers wait for the skies to darken. Viktor, ever alert in his trench, looks up at the midafternoon sky. A deeper buzzing sound can be heard approaching, a sound that resembles a larger drone carrying a heavier payload. The sound comes closer, then hovers, suspended above the trench.

Viktor strains to hear against the wind. The buzzing moves away, toward the Russian position.

“Ours,” he says.

More: NATO troops in Ukraine? French proposal brings a warning from Russia

Drones dominate the war

Drones have been used in wars before, but their use has exploded in the war in Ukraine. Russian and Ukrainian forces are now racing to develop and deploy a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, that can carry out precision attacks, destroying everything from dugouts to multimillion dollar tanks.

Ukrainian soldiers and commanders say aerial vehicles initially gave them an edge over Russia. They now say Moscow is far outpacing their ability to produce them, in particular the lower-cost first-person view drones, or FPVs, which can be laden with explosives and crashed into targets.

One of the most potent weapons in the war has been FPV drones.

They have made it almost impossible for both Ukrainian and Russian troops to move on the battlefield without being spotted from above. These drones, which carry explosives, can be guided to a target kilometers away, and cost as little as $500 to produce. Russia, like Ukraine, aggressively targets soldiers’ positions and equipment with FPVs. Doctors and staff working at medical stabilization points in Donbas now say most of the battlefield injuries they treat are from such drones.

There are no reliable estimates of how many FPV drones Russia is able to manufacture every month. Ukraine plans to produce a million FPVs this year, but soldiers and commanders in drone units say they need to double or triple this number if they hope to keep up with Russian troops.

More: Ukraine president says time of political decisions directly impacts 'real defeats'

To more quickly supply Ukrainian brigades with drones, former jewelers and mechanics sit in a village house near the front line, soldering parts for FPVs that can immediately be deployed. Brigades also collect downed Russian drones, which are then taken apart and examined by army engineers who are desperate to keep up with the pace of development on the Russian side.

“If I see someone is dead, if we’ve killed someone, I have zero moral satisfaction, it’s just like a video game,” says Roman the 38-year-old commander of a drone platoon. Often, he wonders what will actually satisfy the anger and sadness that he feels.

“So your friend is gone. How many invaders do you have to kill to avenge him? 10? 100? 1,000? You’re not going to get your friend back,” he says.

Though he’s not interested in demobilizing and leaving his men behind, Roman agrees that Ukraine needs a way to help fighters rest. Some of Ukraine’s most motivated men and women were the first to volunteer in 2022. Now, so many of them are dead, injured, or exhausted. It’s not enough just to draft more people to take their place, Roman says; they need to be properly prepared and trained.

“You can’t keep the same people constantly on the front line,” he says.

But the decision of Ukrainians like him to continue fighting isn’t really a choice, he says. It’s a question of life or death for his people and his country. And if Russia prevails in Ukraine, he’s convinced no one in Europe will be safe.

“For Europe and the whole world, we’re on the front lines defending it,” Roman says. Putin “will never stop just in Ukraine,” he adds. “If you let him get away with it, he’s not going to stop over here.”

'It's endless'

In an area north of Roman’s command center, artillery units defending Ukraine’s eastern front waited for new deliveries of ammunition to arrive.

Ukraine’s shortage of artillery shells has become a decisive factor in its struggle to repel Russian advances. Russia’s new offensive outside of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine is likely to put further strain along the eastern front, where artillery units have been carefully prioritizing targets and rationing shells. In an April interview, Zelenskyy said Russia was firing shells at a ratio of 10 to 1 to those of Ukraine.

One of Russia’s targets is Kupiansk, a northeastern city in the Kharkiv region that was captured by Russia in early 2022 and retaken by Ukrainians later that year. Today, Russian forces are about 10 kilometers away. Oleksii, a soldier in an artillery unit in the 57th Motorized Brigade, is preparing to return to his position in the city after spending a few days resting in a nearby village house.

Oleksii, 27, volunteered to fight five years ago after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Since then, the town in the Zaporizhzhia region where he grew up has been reduced to rubble. His comrades are all motivated and want to fight, he says, but their biggest concern is the acute shortage of shells.

Related: Georgia defies EU and 'returns to past' with Russia-style law that sparked mass protests

“When you work and when you have enough shells, you can work and you understand you are destroying the enemy,” Oleksii says. In 2022, one artillery installation could fire 40, up to 100 shells a day. Now, the number has been reduced to two or three shells a day, maybe a dozen on a busy day, he says.

In February, Zelenskyy said Ukraine had received just 30% of the 1 million shells the European Union promised to deliver by March. The European Commission did not respond to questions about the shell delivery.

By the time Oleksii arrives at one of the brigade’s artillery positions, a spring storm has started. Rain is falling and thunder cracks overhead. The hulking 2S1 Gvozdika, a self-propelled howitzer, sits hidden under a cluster of branches and khaki netting, while soldiers take shelter in a dugout nearby.

Stirring a cup of tea, one of the soldiers says the monthslong shell shortages have made Ukrainian forces on the front lines exceedingly vulnerable. Without shells, artillery units like theirs are unable to cover for infantry on the front lines.

Related: Slovakia's pro-Russia Prime Minister Robert Fico wounded in apparent assassination attempt

“If the Americans had passed the package sooner, Russians wouldn’t have gotten so close to Chasiv Yar,” says Yurii, the 53-year-old commander. “They wouldn’t have taken so many villages, and we wouldn’t have to fight to take back these villages.”

Russians have factories across their country where they can produce all manner of weapons and ammunition, Yurii says, while Ukraine is largely reliant on the goodwill of Europe and the U.S.

More: Did the pope encourage Ukraine to surrender? Francis rankles many with 'white flag' comment

“Russians can shoot their artillery like it’s a machine gun,” the commander says. “It’s endless.”

As the wind picks up outside, the men argue over the U.S. election in November and what Trump’s possible return would mean for the war.

“But he won’t win!” exclaims one of the soldiers.

“Even if he did, he’ll still have to help Ukraine,” another says. “When he’s president he won’t be able to ignore the opinions of his people.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Reuters that the former president would make negotiating an end to the war “a top priority” in a second term and that European nations need to pay “more of the cost of the conflict.”

The problem, Yurii says, is that even after all of the horrors of the past two years of war, there are still so many people in Europe and the U.S. who do not accept all that Putin and the Russian military are capable of.

The horrific images of civilians slaughtered in Bucha after its occupation, the pulverized cities of Mariupol and Bakhmut. The tens of thousands killed, the endless portraits of dead Ukrainian soldiers shared on Facebook and Instagram, the never-ending funeral processions for fathers and brothers, the videos of children draped over their coffins.

“It’s not possible, I guess, just by looking at the photos” to comprehend the horrors, Yurii says.

The men fall quiet. They sit side by side on narrow military cots, taking sips from their cups. Suddenly, the radio comes alive with an order. The soldiers dash out of their dugout and prepare to fire.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Life on Ukraine’s front line: ‘Worse than hell’ as Russia advances

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CINCINNATI (AP) — Jonathan India and Nick Martini each drove in two runs, and the Cincinnati Reds held off the Los Angeles Dodgers for a 4-1 victory on Sunday that extended LA’s longest losing streak since 2019 to five.

Brent Suter, Nick Martinez, Carson Spiers and Alexis Díaz combined for a five-hitter. Martinez (2-3) pitched 4 1/3 innings of one-hit ball on a bullpen day for Cincinnati, and Díaz got two outs for his 10th save.

It’s the longest slide for Los Angeles since it dropped six in a row from April 8-13, 2019.

Freddie Freeman hit an RBI double in the ninth, stopping a 0-for-22 slide for the Dodgers with runners in scoring position. Freeman then advanced on defensive indifference, but Díaz struck out Teoscar Hernández and Andy Pages swinging.

TIGERS 14, BLUE JAYS 11

DETROIT (AP) — Matt Vierling homered twice, including a tiebreaking, three-run drive off Jordan Romano in the ninth inning that gave Detroit a wild win over Toronto after they'd wasted a five-run lead and recovered from a two-run deficit.

Vierling had four hits and tied career highs with two homers and four RBIs.

Carson Kelly hit a three-run homer and Spencer Torkelson hit a solo shot for Detroit, which led 5-0 after three innings, 8-3 after five and 9-5 after six.

Toronto’s Isiah Kiner-Falefa homered in the seventh off Tyler Holton, and the Blue Jays took an 11-9 lead with a five-run eighth when Bo Bichette hit a two-run single off Jason Foley and Daulton Varsho hit a three-run homer.

Mark Canha tied the score with a two-run single against Yimi García in the bottom half, his third hit.

Vierling, who hit a solo homer in the fifth off Zach Pop, drove a full-count slider from Romano (1-2) over the left-field wall for his first big league walk-off hit. A two-time All-Star, Romano has allowed three homers this year, half his total last season.

RED SOX 2, BREWERS 1

BOSTON (AP) — Jarren Duran had a tiebreaking single in the eighth inning and Boston beat Milwaukee to salvage a series finale.

Rafael Devers had a sacrifice fly for Boston, which completed just its second series win against the Brewers at Fenway Park since 2015. The Red Sox improved to 9-0 on Sundays.

William Contreras’ RBI single drove in the Brewers’ run.

Ceddanne Rafaela led off the eighth with a double into the left-field corner against Elvis Peguero (4-2) and scored on Durran’s single.

Justin Slaten (3-2) struck out the side in the eighth, and Kenley Jansen struck out two in a perfect ninth for his ninth save in 10 chances, the 429th of his career.

NL Central-leading Milwaukee had won three of its previous four.

Red Sox starter Tanner Houck gave up one run in six innings, lowering his ERA to 1.90 — Boston’s lowest after 11 starts since Clay Buchholz’s 1.62 in 2013.

MARINERS 9, NATIONALS 5

WASHINGTON (AP) — Julio Rodríguez homered and drove in four runs, and Seattle snapped a four-game losing streak with a win against Washington.

Ty France hit a two-run homer and singled home the go-ahead run for Seattle, which finished 4-6 on an East Coast trip.

With Seattle trailing 5-4, J.P. Crawford doubled leading off the eighth against Dylan Floro (1-1). Crawford took third on a wild pitch and scored on a one-out single by Rodríguez, snapping Floro’s 22-inning scoreless streak.

Rodríguez stole second and scored when France grounded a single to right. Rodríguez also capped Seattle’s three-run ninth with a two-run single.

METS 4, GIANTS 3

NEW YORK (AP) — Omar Narváez capped a three-run, ninth-inning rally with his first hit of the year at Citi Field after an 0-for-27 start, lifting New York over San Francisco to stop a five-game losing streak.

New York had blown leads from the sixth inning on in its previous three games and had scored three runs in 18 innings before overcoming a 3-1 deficit in the ninth against Tyler Rogers (0-1).

Brandon Nimmo and J.D. Martinez opened with singles and scored on Harrison Bader’s one-out double. Brett Baty was intentionally walked and Narváez, who entered after catcher Tomás Nido was pinch hit for in the eighth, singled on an 0-1 pitch.

Bader had an RBI single in the second and robbed Matt Chapman of a home run with a leaping catch at the center-field wall in the sixth.

New York has five walk-off wins among 11 home victories. San Francisco, which had won four straight, dropped back to .500 at 27-27.

RAYS 4, ROYALS 1

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Brandon Lowe drove in three runs with a pinch-hit triple during Tampa Bay’s four-run seventh inning, as they stopped Kansas City’s eight-game win streak with a victory.

The Rays had lost a season-high six straight.

Kansas City’s Michael Wacha (4-5) lost his perfect-game bid in the sixth, and was pulled after Harold Ramírez singled and Isaac Paredes had a double to start the seventh. John Schreiber then hit Randy Arozarena and permitted a fielder’s choice grounder before Lowe delivered on the first pitch he saw.

It was Lowe’s second hit in 17 at-bats since returning from a strained right oblique.

Garrett Cleavinger (4-0) got three outs for the win, and Pete Fairbanks handled the ninth for his fifth save in six chances.

Batting with the bases loaded, Bobby Witt Jr. bounced to second for the final out of the game.

BRAVES 8, PIRATES 1

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Ronald Acuña Jr. left Atlanta’s 8-1 win over Pittsburgh after he tore his left ACL , as they won behind Chris Sale.

Acuña opened the game with a double to right-center field against Martín Pérez. With Marcell Ozuna at the plate, Acuña started toward third on a stolen base attempt and his left knee gave way. The reigning NL MVP remained down for several minutes while being treated, pointing at his left leg before walking off under his own power.

The Braves’ initial diagnosis was left knee soreness. But the team announced Sunday night that an MRI showed a complete ACL tear that will require season-ending surgery.

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Sale (8-1) struck out eight while pitching seven innings of one-run ball. It was another impressive outing for the 35-year-old left-hander, who has regained the form that earned him seven straight All-Star selections from 2012-18 before a string of injuries.

RANGERS 6, TWINS 2

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Corey Seager homered twice and Nathaniel Lowe had two hits and two RBIs, helping Texas beat Minnesota.

Josh Smith and Leody Tavares had two hits apiece for the World Series champions, who had lost six straight and 12 of 14 overall. The Rangers scored more than four runs for the first time since a 12-11 victory at Oakland on May 8.

Carlos Correa had two hits and an RBI for the Twins, who had won four in a row. Max Kepler had a run-scoring double.

Minnesota right-hander Pablo López (4-5) was tagged for six runs and seven hits in 4 2/3 innings in his third consecutive loss. His ERA increased to 5.25 on the season.

Rangers starter Gerson Garabito permitted one run and two hits in 3 2/3 innings in his major league debut. The 28-year-old right-hander had 10 seasons, pitching in the Royals and Giants organizations and in independent leagues, before getting called up from Triple-A Round Rock to make the start.

Jonathan Hernández, Jacob Latz (1-1) and José Leclerc limited the Twins to one hit over 5 1/3 innings. Latz and Leclerc combined to retire the final 13 Twins hitters.

ROCKIES 5, PHILLIES 2

DENVER (AP) — Ryan McMahon hit a go-ahead, two-run homer in the first inning, and Colorado sent Ranger Suárez to his first loss of the season in a victory over Philadelphia.

Colorado, last in the NL West at 18-34, took two of three games and ended a streak of 15 straight winning or tied series for the major league-best Phillies (38-16), Philadelphia’s longest streak since 1983-84.

Suárez (9-1) allowed season highs of five runs and four walks in six innings, while giving up four earned runs and three hits with eight strikeouts. His ERA rose from 1.36 to 1.75.

Cal Quantrill (4-3) gave up two runs and three hits in six innings.

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McMahon’s team-leading 10th home run of the season put the Rockies ahead, and Colorado boosted the lead to 5-0 in the second. Hunter Goodman hit an RBI double, Brendan Rodgers hit into a run-scoring forceout as third baseman Alec Bohm threw wildly past first for an error in trying for an inning-ending double play as a second run scored.

Suárez retired his final 13 batters.

ASTROS 5, ATHLETICS 2

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Ronel Blanco held Oakland in check for seven innings in his return from a suspension and Kyle Tucker hit a two-run homer to lead Houston to victory.

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He struck out five of his first eight batters and allowed only four hits, including a solo homer by Max Schuemann, before turning the game over to the bullpen. Houston improved to 8-1 in games started this season by Blanco, who has allowed only 33 hits in 54 1/3 innings.

Shea Langeliers added a solo homer in the ninth for Oakland against Josh Hader.

ORIOLES 4, WHITE SOX 1

CHICAGO (AP) — Kyle Bradish struck out 11 in seven no-hit innings, and Baltimore beat Chicago for a sweep of their four-game series.

Bradish (1-0), who missed the start of the season because of a right elbow injury, walked four in his fifth start this season. He threw 103 pitches, 63 for strikes.

Danny Coulombe was inserted for the eighth, and Danny Mendick led off with a pinch-hit drive to left for Chicago’s only hit of the game. It was Mendick’s second homer of the season.

Adley Rutschman and Colton Cowser homered for Baltimore, which closed out a 4-3 trip. The Orioles were swept by St. Louis before their successful stay in Chicago.

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MARLINS 3, DIAMONDBACKS 1

PHOENIX (AP) — Ryan Weathers threw six dominant innings, Jake Burger hit a two-run single with two outs in the seventh and Miami beat Arizona.

The surging Marlins took two of three from the Diamondbacks for their fourth consecutive series win. Miami has won nine of 13 after starting the season 10-31.

Weathers (3-4) continued his breakout season with another stellar performance, giving up four hits, walking one and striking out seven. The 24-year-old left-hander has given up just one earned run in his past three starts, spanning 21 innings.

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The Marlins took a 3-0 lead in the seventh, taking advantage of shortstop Kevin Newman’s throwing error that allowed Nick Fortes to score the first run.

GUARDIANS 5, ANGELS 4

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Ben Lively pitched seven innings of two-run ball, and Cleveland beat Los Angeles for their ninth consecutive win.

It’s the longest win streak for Cleveland since it won an AL-record 22 in a row from Aug, 24 to Sept. 14, 2017. It matched the franchise’s best 53-game start at 36-17, also accomplished in 1920, 1954 and 1995. The team reached the World Series in all three of those seasons, winning in 1920.

Lively (4-2) allowed four hits, struck out five and walked two. Emmanuel Clase got three outs for his 17th save in 20 chances.

Matt Thaiss homered for the Angels, who lost for the fourth time in five games. Reid Detmers (3-5) struck out eight in five innings, but he was charged with three runs and four hits.

Cleveland star José Ramírez walked twice and drove in a run after going deep three times in the first two games of the series. He was robbed of a homer when Jo Adell made a leaping catch in right in the eighth.

PADRES 5, YANKEES 2

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Luis Arraez and Fernando Tatis Jr. had consecutive RBI singles in the four-run sixth inning and San Diego beat New York to avoid being swept in consecutive home series.

Joe Musgrove pitched well for the Padres in his second start back from the injured list and Jeremiah Estrada (2-0) struck out five straight batters for the win.

Alex Verdugo homered in the ninth off Robert Suarez, the Yankees’ sixth long ball this series. Suarez was summoned in the eighth after Wandy Peralta walked two with two outs, and punched out Aaron Judge. Suarez allowed his first run since March 28 but remained perfect in 15th save chances.

The Padres trailed 1-0 entering the sixth and scored four runs on three singles, an error and two walks. It was their first lead at home since beating the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-0 on May 12. They never had the lead in being swept by the Colorado Rockies — who have the NL’s worst record — from May 13-15 before losing to the Yankees 8-0 and 4-1.

The Padres’ sixth-inning rally began with an error when second baseman Glyber Torres let Jake Cronenworth’s grounder go between his legs. Starter Clarke Schmidt (5-3) walked Manny Machado and made way for Victor González, who loaded the bases with a walk to pinch-hitter Donovan Solano. Jackson Merrill hit into a forceout that brought in Cronenworth, and Ha-Seong Kim’s bunt single brought in Machado for the lead.

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Groundbreakers: the cars that did it first

Posted: 2 January 2024 | Last updated: 2 January 2024

The car as we know it today is the result of thousands of innovations over the years.

Since Autocar has been around since  1895 , we’ve covered nearly all of them in detail across our history. But in nearly every case, a particular innovation that moved the automotive world on a step arrived in  one particular production car  for the first time.

In this latest edition of our long-running series, we’ll tell you about the first car to have a  V8 , to have  an electronic parking brake ,  air conditioning , and even that  tiny but oh-so-useful arrow  which reminds you which side your fuel filler cap is on. For this update we’ve dug up a whole bunch of new and interesting innovations to savour and dropped a few of the less notable.

As usual, we’ve rated all of them with a  groundbreaker score  out of 10 – this rates the long-term impact of the technology: the higher the number, the greater the impact. It’s not a rating of the car itself, or how successful it was; indeed, some of these cars proved too ahead of their time . But they all started something, and usually something that made driving better. We salute them all. It’s quite a journey, so  climb aboard:

FIRST CAR: Benz Patent-Motorwagen (1886)

We can’t help but start here in 1886, when Karl Benz (1844-1929) gave us what is generally acknowledged as the world’s first motor car. Powered by a single-cylinder 954cc engine, it managed around 10mph. He was helped by his wife Bertha (1849-1944, pictured in a modern re-creation); when she took it on the the world’s first long car journey in 1888, she fitted leather onto the brakes and thus invented the brakepad in the process.

She also stopped to refuel at a chemist, thus making it the world’s first (unwitting) petrol station in the process.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 11 - of course

MASS-PRODUCED CAR, SPEEDOMETER: Curved Dash Oldsmobile (1901)

Time to explode a myth: the Ford Model T was not the world's first mass-produced car. It was the world's first mass-produced car to sell in really big numbers, but it was the Curved Dash Oldsmobile that was the first car to be built using mass-producion techniques. However, just 19,000 or so examples were made between 1901 and 1907, whereas more than 16.5 million Model Ts were made between 1908 and 1927.

This Olds was also the first production car to get a speedometer.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 10 – the reason even quite poorly-off people can afford a car today is because mass production makes them much cheaper to make and thus to buy. Speedometers are quite useful too.

ELECTRIC STARTING: Cadillac (1912)

American engineer  Clyde Coleman patented the electric starter in 1903. He then sold his patent to Delco, later purchased by General Motors, which gave its Cadillac division the distinction of being the first car maker to sell a car with an electric starter, with its  1912 Touring Edition . The feature was nothing less than revolutionary, quickly spreading across the automotive industry during the 1910s. Even Ford’s bargain-priced Model T came with a starter motor after 1919.

In 1916, Cadillac went still further with its Type 53 – it needed a key to start the engine.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 10 – cranking your car to start it today would be seriously tiresome, and the key was extremely useful too.

ALL-STEEL BODYSHELL: Dodge (1913)

Philadelphia businessman Edward Budd set up a company in 1912 to fabricate steel components and within a year he'd got a contract from Dodge to build 70,000 bodyshells. At the time, many cars incorporated wood in their construction and outer panels were often made of fabric, but an all-steel bodyshell was strong and rigid yet still relatively light. Before long Budd would also be making steel panels and/or bodyshells for Cadillac, Chrysler, Mercedes, Citroën and Ford, among others.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 10 – crashing a steel car is no fun but imagine crashing in a wooden one? And steel makes cars much easier to shape and bond.

V8 ENGINE: Cadillac (1914)

Although Rolls-Royce was theoretically the first car maker to offer a vehicle with a V8 engine, only three examples of its 3.5-litre model were built. At this stage all engines were hand-cranked to get them started and eight cylinders meant a lot of effort, so Cadillac's introduction of the electric starter in 1912 allowed it to introduce a truly mass-produced V8 car in 1914. In just one year the company sold 13,000 examples of its 5.4-litre V8 model. Cadillac has mainly been about V8s ever since.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – truth be told, the car world could survive without V8s in it today - but we for one wouldn’t like it much .

V12 ENGINE: Packard Twin-Six (1915)

At a time when few car makers were using powerplants with more than four cylinders it seems incredible that US car maker Packard was introducing a V12 engine. Displacing 424 cubic inches (6945cc), the Packard's incredibly smooth and tractable powerplant was rated at just 88 horsepower which was sent to the rear wheels via a three-speed manual gearbox.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – in a world dominated today by downsized turbocharged engines, few things can beat the smooth, increasingly rare, majesty of a modern V12. Well done Packard, and rest in peace.

SERVO/BOOSTER-ASSISTED BRAKES: Leyland Eight (1920)

John Parry-Thomas , who would go on to build the land speed record car Babs (in which he would be killed on Pendine Sands in Wales) came up with the design for a working brake servo. This vacuum-operated contraption took the effort out of braking and it was first fitted to the heavy and luxurious Leyland Eight, of which just a handful were built in the 1920s thanks to an astronomical price tag.

By the end of that decade, brake servos were beginning to be more widely adopted, having already become popular in commercial vehicles.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 9 – without this technology, only the truly strong would be able to quickly stop a car, which would have serious implications for road safety, as well as making driving profoundly tiring .

REVERSING/BACK-UP LIGHT: Wills Sainte Claire (1922)

Childe Harold Wills (1878-1940) was an early Ford employee but his relationship with Henry Ford deteriorated and was paid a lot of money when he left the company, enough indeed to set up his own firm. He got fed up of reversing into things at night, so his new company Wills Sainte Claire decided to do something about it. To that end he incorporated a reversing light into the nearside of his A-68 Roadster of 1922, which came on when reverse gear was selected. The car was expensive and sales were small, and the firm closed in 1927.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – not very glamorous, but still extremely useful.

ALLOY WHEELS: Bugatti Type 35 (1924)

Aluminium is lighter than steel, so the fitment of alloy wheels helps to cut overall mass as well as unsprung weight. The latter helps to improve ride quality as well as handling, which is why Bugatti came up with the world's first alloy wheels for the tour de force that was its Type 35. Alloy wheels wouldn't become popular as factory-fit equipment until a long time after the Type 35 arrived; by the 1960s independent wheel makers were offering magnesium alloy wheels to cut weight even further.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – quite apart from the weight thing, they usually make cars look a load better.

CAR RADIO: Cadillac La Salle (1929)

Debate rages over which was the first car to feature a factory-fit radio. The 1929 Cadillac (and its La Salle offshoot) was available with a dealer-fitted Delco-Remy unit, but it seems British firm Crossley was the first car to feature a factory-fitted AM radio, in 1933.

Radios were a standard feature by the end of the ‘30s in America. The development of the transistor after the Second World War enabled radios to be much smaller and more reliable, and Chrysler became the first company to fit them, doing so in late 1955 for 1956 model year cars. Higher sound quality FM receivers were progressively rolled out from the 1950s onward.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 9 – a change for the better.

METALLIC PAINT: Chevrolet (1932)

There's much debate about when metallic paint was introduced. By the end of the 1930s many US brands offered it. Cadillac listed it from 1933 and Hupmobile from 1934, but it seems they were both pipped to the post by Chevrolet, which allowed its cars to be finished in metallic paint from as early as 1932 .

Paint mixed in with roughly 2% powdered metal , it makes cars looks better than those with solid colours, and tends to resist fading for longer. All of this tends to help your car retain its value better.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – if you have it on your car, be pleased.

HEATER: Nash (1933)

Crude heaters were available as early as the early 1920s, although they were always aftermarket items rather than factory-fit. It wasn’t until 1933 that a relatively compact and efficient factory-fitted heater was available, when America’s Nash introduced its new range.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – a major improvement to vehicle comfort.

OVERDRIVE: Chrysler Airflow (1934)

Overdrive maintains long distance cruising at lower engine-revs, aiding fuel economy, and was introduced several years before the Second World War on the innovative and influential ill-fated Airflow .

Developed with the help of Orville Wright (yes, that one), the Airflow’s aircraft-inspired design and overdrive were among the early efforts to focus on fuel economy. Ahead of its time, the Airflow was axed in 1937, after just three years on sale, but its influence was enormous.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – the start of the journey of greater fuel efficiency.

WINDSCREEN WASHERS: Triumph (1935)

The first cars to feature windscreen washers as standard were the 1935 Triumph Gloria and Vitesse. It was a vacuum-operated system rather than electric, and only closed versions of the car got such technology – presumably those who bought an open-topped car were expected to just stick their head over the top of the screen to see the way ahead.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – very handy.

DIESEL ENGINE: Mercedes-Benz 260D (1936)

Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913) developed the engine that bears his name in the 1890s, and it was initially used in ships and submarines, and the first diesel truck appeared in 1908. Making the engine smaller and lighter proved a challenge, but car companies worked on the problem after World War One.

Mercedes launched the first proper diesel-powered production car with the 260D; it output 45bhp giving the car a respectable 59mph top speed… eventually. Mercedes would eventually help solve the key problem of diesel cars – their sloth – but it would take 40 years or so (stay tuned).

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – it’s seen as less important now that concerns over its impact on air quality are klling it off, at least as far as cars are concerned. But the food you eat today was almost certainly delivered to the store in a diesel-powered truck, and that will continue for a while yet.

AUTOMATIC GEARBOX: Oldsmobile Series Sixty (1939)

The Oldsmobile Hydra-Matic of 1939 was enormously important. While using a manual gearbox today isn’t too much work, that wasn’t the case in the 1930s when it was something of a skillful chore. The arrival of a four-speed gearbox was a major change, and the automatic would go on to become the dominant transmission type after the Second World War in America, especially. GM's parts arms would sell the Hydra-Matic to many other car firms, including Nash , Hudson , and England's Rolls-Royce , while Oldsmobile's GM siblings quickly adopted the technology too.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 9 – A very notable groundbreaker indeed from General Motors.

FLASHING INDICATORS: Buick (1939)

For the first few decades of the car's life, drivers were expected to signal their intentions by sticking an arm out of the window and indicating if they were turning left or right, or slowing down. Before WW2 trafficators became more popular; these were orange-illuminated arms that popped out from the side of the car and some car makers stuck with these until the early 1960s.

But years before this, in 1939, Buick fitted flashing red lights to the back of its cars to act as indicators; within a year, Cadillac, Hudson and LaSalle had followed suit.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – a big plus for road safety, especially at night.

POWER CONVERTIBLE ROOF: Plymouth (1939)

Plymouth was the only division of Chrysler to offer open-topped cars in 1939, and while rivals were also selling convertibles, none had one on its books with a power-operated roof. The car pictured is a 1939 Plymouth Deluxe convertible, which was powered by a 201ci (3292cc) six-cylinder engine.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – a wonderful added luxury.

POWER WINDOWS: Packard Custom Super Eight One-Eighty (1940)

The Packard Super Eight One-Eighty became the first series-produced car equipped with power windows when it made its debut. Called Automatic Window Control, it was hydraulically operated. The model just beat Lincoln, whose 1941 Continental included vacuum-operated power windows.

The Packard system used brake fluid to move the windows up and down. It was slow and prone to damaging leaks when not properly maintained. A huge and very primitive air conditioning system also made its debut as an option on this truly groundbreaking car.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – important, but not the end of the tale as you’ll see…

DISC BRAKES: Chrysler Crown Imperial (1948)

It would be another decade before most car makers would discover disc brakes but as early as 1948 the Chrysler Crown Imperial featured them, on all four wheels. Even today some economy cars still feature disc brakes only at the front. Disc brakes have a number of advantages over drum brakes; chiefly, they have more stopping power.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – a vital improvement.

SAFETY CELL: Saab 92 (1949)

For years Saab and Volvo competed with each other in building the world's safest cars; this is where it started when Saab introduced the world's first safety cell in its 92 , which was also Saab’s first ever model.

This development was of profound importance; it established a very strong structural zone around the passenger space, protecting them from crash impacts; the rest of the car is designed to absorb those impacts, in effect by sacrificing itself, not the occupants. PICTURE: Saab Ursaab, the prototype vehicle for the 92

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 10 – a life saver.

ELECTRIC WINDOWS: Imperial (1951)

As already mentioned, the first power-assisted windows were fitted to a 1940 Packard, but a hydraulic set-up was used. It wouldn’t be until 1951 that electric-powered windows were fitted to a series production car; the Chrysler Imperial was the first to feature them, though it seems that certain high-end Daimlers in England may have got them in small numbers as early as 1947.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – very hard to buy a car today without them.

POWER STEERING: Imperial (1951)

Until Chrysler's Imperial lineup started to offer power assisted steering (PAS) on its 1951 models, drivers just had to accept that driving heavy cars in town was a pain. PAS made a profound impact; prior to that, a driver’s physical strength, or lack of it, was a key consideration when buying a car.

Imperial’s system was called Hydraguide , but it didn’t have a monopoly for long; GM quickly followed suit, and by 1956 25% of all cars on US roads had the feature; today the figure is virtually 100%.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 9 - today, even the largest cars can be driven by anyone.

RADIAL TYRES: Lancia Aurelia B20 (1951)

Radial tyres were first developed by Michelin in the late 1940s; they had different tread-patterns from traditional cross-ply designs, delivering better grip (especially in the wet), greater durability , and less rolling resistance , thus aiding fuel economy . Some say that the 2CV from Michelin-owned Citroën was the first car to get the new type of tyre as standard in 1948. However, Michelin itself states the first recipient was the Lancia Aurelia B20 , in 1951. Other European manufacturers followed suit with their sportier models over the next couple of decades.

Perhaps because the US has rather different road topography to Europe, it took a while for American makers to follow suit; the first US car to get them as standard was the 1970 Continental III, from Ford. Radial tyres are now more or less universal.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 9

AUTOMATIC HIGH BEAM: Oldsmobile (1952)

This technology is fairly rare today, but Oldsmobile introduced headlights that dim themselves as far back as 1952. It was called Autronic Eye , and consisted of a light-detecting switch installed in a housing mounted on the driver’s side of the dash. It automatically dimmed the headlights when it sensed light from oncoming cars; the option cost around $500 in today's money.

However many people complained the system was unreliable and too sensitive to other light sources like billboards. GM fine-tuned it and offered it on more cars, including several Cadillacs and Buicks. Today, much more sophisticated systems are reasonably common; the best of them adjust headlights to avoid blinding oncoming cars while at the same time optimising illumination as far as possible.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 4 – useful, but even today’s systems don’t work 100% reliably.

AIR CONDITIONING: Nash Ambassador (1954)

As mentioned, Packard offered air conditioning on its cars in 1940-42, but the system was very costly and grossly inefficient; it also took up the entire boot space. Chrysler’s AirTemp system of 1953 was better, but again was imperfect, while various GM vehicles launched in late 1953 had a large Frigidaire -based system using boot-based equipment.

Nash overcame such hurdles aided by its sister company, refrigerator manufacturer Kelvinator . Using that firm's know-how Nash was first to offer an affordable and practical fully integrated heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system from the 1954 model year, in its Ambassador. The rest of the industry swiftly followed suit with this very important advance.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 9 – one we can all be grateful for.

POWER (CENTRAL) LOCKING: Packard (1956)

The introduction of power locking isn’t very well documented, but it seems that Packard was there first, introducing a power door lock system on its 1956 range. Today, it is present on virtually every car on sale.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – very useful.

CRUISE CONTROL: Imperial (1957)

American roads have long been the perfect environment for cruise control, but until Chrysler’s Imperial brand introduced the feature on its 1957 models, you had to control the throttle yourself. Cruise control transformed long-distance driving for the better, so long as the traffic wasn’t heavy; we had to wait a few decades for a solution to that problem.

The arrival of cruise control in this Imperial highlighted what a prolific period  the 1948-1960 years were for Chrysler, pioneering not just cruise but also electric windows ,  disc brakes , power steering , and, on the 1956 Imperial, the world's first factory-fit transistor radio .  PICTURE : Imperial LeBaron

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – a boon to the automotive world.

AIR SUSPENSION: Cadillac Eldorado Brougham (1957)

A feature that even now is fitted to only the most luxurious of cars, Cadillac introduced air suspension on its top-of-the-line models for the 1957 model year, giving a true magic carpet ride. It also improved body control and handling. As with many pioneers, this particular journey wasn’t straightforward and the system initially proved unreliable.

GM threw everything at this flagship car; another first notched up by the car were memory power seats . It cost $13,074 – twice the price of a standard Eldorado, and the equivalent of $121,000 today – and was even pricier than equivalent Rolls-Royces. 704 were built in 1957-1958.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – a step up in comfort for luxury cars.

FIRST CREW CAB PICKUP: International Harvester Travelette (1957)

Useful for hauling stuff they may be, but some early users of pick-ups wanted to haul more people ; plenty of coachbuilders added seats to Ford Model T pick-ups in the 1920s , for example. But International Harvester was the first company to offer a factory-built crewcab as we might understand it today, complete with one extra door on the passenger side and seating for six. A fourth door arrived on the model in 1961 .

The Big Three took a while to embrace the concept: Dodge in 1963 , Ford in 1965 , and Chevy as late as 1973 . Today crew cabs dominate the US pick-up market, as drivers understandably love a vehicle that can work for work during the week, and then haul families as well as leisure gear at weekends. PICTURE: 1958 model

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – helped make pick-ups the best-selling vehicle class in America.

ELECTRONIC FUEL INJECTION: Chrysler 300D, 1958

Electronic fuel injection technology got off to a rough start. American Motors Corporation (AMC) purchased an early system named Electrojector from Bendix with the intention of offering it as an option on the 1957 Rambler Rebel . It proved unreliable in testing and wasn’t sold to the public.

In 1958, Chrysler made a small number of 300Ds equipped with Bendix’s system, and sister brands Plymouth, DeSoto and Dodge also offered the system on some of their cars. Electrojector rarely worked as intended, forcing the firm to issue a recall campaign in late summer 1958 to retrofit Electrojector-equipped cars with carburetors. Bendix’s patents were later sold to Germany’s Bosch , which perfected the technology to great success with its long-running Jetronic system; it was sold to car makers practically everywhere.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 9 - it made engines much more reliable and refined, especially in cold weather.

THREE-POINT SEATBELT: Volvo Amazon (1959)

Volvo is renowned for its work in making cars safer and the introduction of the three-point seat belt in 1959 has arguably saved more lives than any other safety feature. To the company’s eternal credit, it allowed the technology to be used by other carmakers at no patent cost.

Seatbelts do not just stop you flying through the windscreen in a sudden deceleration. While this is important, the vital thing is that they’re part of a wider system: they keep occupants in their allotted position in the interior of a car, inside the safety cell, even in a situation involving high impact speeds. As such seatbelts allows the safety cell to do its job of protecting you. If you are not located where the car thinks you should be in a critical situation, and instead are flying around the cabin or indeed thrown out of the car entirely, all bets are off. In the UK, 1-in-4 people who died in a car accident in 2017 were not wearing a seatbelt. Please buckle up .

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 10 – the saviour of millions.

TURBOCHARGED ENGINE: Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire (1962)

The Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire was the world's first production turbocharged car. With a Garrett turbo unit added to a 3500cc V8, it boosted engine power by 16% to 215bhp, allowed this large car to perform 0-60mph in 9.2sec, a full five seconds faster than the non-turbo version, and. A turbo was also fitted to the Chevrolet Corvair’s six-cylinder engine later the same year.

However, the Jetfire's engine proved unreliable, and ultimately only 3765 examples were sold in the two years it was on sale. The engine was nearly identical to a Buick V8, the design and tooling for which were later sold to Britain’s Rover and used in a wide range of its cars including the original Range Rover, though never in turbocharged form.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 - turbos are now extremely common, allowing decent power and torque even from very small engines.

CLIMATE CONTROL: Cadillac Sedan de Ville (1964)

After the Nash breakthrough in 1954, air conditioning rapidly became a must-have item for cars in America, and then the battle was on to improve it. GM got there first, fitting automatic ‘ comfort control ’ air conditioning on the 1964 Cadillac Sedan de Ville among certain other models – the driver set the desired temperature, and it did the rest, in theory at least.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – while not as huge an advance as air-con itself we still welcome this one.

HEATED SEATS: Cadillac Fleetwood (1965)

GM’s Robert Ballard patented the heated seat in 1951, but it was 15 years before the feature made its way to a production model. In 1965, the 1966 Cadillac Fleetwood became the first car to offer heated seats; the option cost $500 in today's money.

Today in cold climates on cold mornings we can all be grateful for this feature. Fancy a massage too? Then you had to wait until 2000, when they first appeared in a Cadillac DeVille , as well as the Mercedes-Benz S-Class at more or less the same time. In 2001, Saab offered ventilated seats on its original 9-5; it relied on a pair of flat fans integrated in the seat to extract the warm air trapped between the passenger’s body and the upholstery.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – we’re all grateful for this one every winter.

SEQUENTIAL INDICATORS: Ford Thunderbird (1965)

In America in the 1960s, turn signals and stop lights shared the same colour: red. Engineers hypothesised that drivers faced a barrage of red lights in heavy traffic, and it wasn’t always clear what they meant – did a car braking and unbraking ahead mean they were wanting to turn, or slowing down? Ford came to the rescue with the world’s first sequentially flashing turn signal, ‘zooming’ in the direction its driver wanted.

Nowadays these are pretty common, though ironically some fitted by some European firms like Audi can’t be used in America; regulators say some of the lights don’t emit enough light.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 –  always fun to look at

PICTURE: 1966 model Thunderbird

ANTI-LOCK BRAKES: Jensen FF, Mercedes S-Class (1968, 1978)

Although anti-lock brakes are now mandatory on all new cars, such technology seemed fanciful when Jensen introduced the mechanical Dunlop Maxaret system on its four-wheel-drive Interceptor derivative, the FF (pictured). It was very expensive, and the car was a commercial failure.

The first modern four-channel fully electronic anti-lock braking system (ABS) arrived in 1978 when Mercedes offered it as an option on its range-topping S-Class W116. This more efficient and quicker-reacting technology rapidly replaced mechanical ABS. ABS has been mandatory on all new cars sold in the European Union since 2004; it became obligatory in the US on cars sold after September 1 2013.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – immensely important.

INTERMITTENT WINDSCREEN WIPERS: MERCURY (1968)

Although patents for intermittent windscreen wipers existed as far back as the 1920s, it wasn't until the advent of solid state electronics in the 1960s that they became a production reality. The engineer and academic Robert Kearns (1927-2005) developed a system and offered it to Ford. Ford rejected it, but installed a similar design on 1969 Mercurys.

Kearns then spent much of the rest of his life in litigation with Ford and other companies, eventually winning around $30 million in compensation, a tale recounted in the 2009 Universal Studios movie Flash of Genius ; it's well worth a watch.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – quietly useful.

HIGH LEVEL BRAKE/STOP LIGHTS: Oldsmobile Toronado (1971)

The first rear brake/stop lights in the 1920s had to be operated manually, which was nearly useless. Automatic ones followed later. Rear-end impacts in traffic are one of the most common types of road accident and at speed, the result can be serious. Rsearch suggested that a brake/stop light nearer the line-of-sight of a following driver could help reduce crashes and save lives.

Supplemental brake lights were offered as an option on the 1968 Ford Thunderbird , which situated lights at the sides of the rear window. But the fitment of strip stop lights on the trunk of the 1971 Oldsmobile Toronado (circled in image) gets the title here as they clearly signalled where this important technology was going. High-level lights became mandatory on all new cars sold in the US from September 1985 and in the European Union from 1998. PICTURE: 1972 Oldsmobile Toronado

ELECTRONIC TRACTION CONTROL: Buick Riviera (1971)

Buick introduced a primitive version of today’s traction control systems on the 1971 Riviera . Named MaxTrac , it used a hub-mounted sensor to measure the speed of the left front wheel and a transmission-mounted sensor to monitor the speed of the rear wheels. The system relied on a device Buick called a ‘miniature transistorized computer’ to compare the two values and reduce the engine’s output when it detected the rear wheels were spinning.

The driver could turn the system on or off with a switch on the dashboard. Several other Buick models received MaxTrac for the 1972 and 1973 model years.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – a vital contribution to safety.

FAST HATCHBACK: Simca 1100Ti (1973)

We've included this one simply to explode a myth – that the Volkswagen Golf GTi was the first fast hatchback. If the Mini Cooper had been a hatchback, or the BMC 1300 (specifically in 1300GT form), the Brits could have claimed the first hot hatch.

But it was actually the French, in the form of the Simca 1100 Ti that pipped VW to the post. With its 82bhp twin-carb 1.3-litre engine the Simca could manage 105mph along with 0-60mph in under 12 seconds, which wasn't as quick as the Golf GTi that came three years later.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – where would European car firms be without them?

CATALYTIC CONVERTERS: multiple brands (1974)

In 1974, Ford, Chrysler, GM and AMC all announced that a slew of their models would be getting catalytic converters as standard for the 1975 model year, in a bid to make America's air cleaner. The tech would slash the amount of pollution generated but it would require investment in new fuels, and specifically the ready availability of unleaded petrol . To ensure leaded petrol wasn't used by mistake, cars equipped with a catalytic converter got a narrower filler neck, so only an unleaded nozzle would fit.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – it helped our air, and killed off lead in fuel in the process.

AIRBAGS: General Motors range (1974)

The engineer John Hetrick (1918-1999) invented the airbag in 1952 but it wouldn’t be until the 1970s that there would be widespread usage of this ‘supplementary restraint system’. GM was the first to offer the technology in its full-size Buick, Cadillac and Oldsmobile models of 1974. It was known as an ‘Air Cushion Restraint System’. PICTURE: 1974 Oldsmobile Toronado

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 9 - i n 2018, America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that frontal airbags have saved the lives of 50,547 people in the US alone.

DIGITAL INSTRUMENTATION: Aston Martin Lagonda (1976)

LCD-based instrumentation is fast becoming the norm, although it's far from universal. However, when fitted it still invariably mimics traditional analogue gauges. The first car to feature a digital dashboard using LED technology was the Aston Martin Lagonda of 1976, although making the electronics reliable proved such a mammoth task that production didn't really get going for another three years.

The LEDs were dumped in favour of cathode ray tube based screens in 1986, but these proved even less reliable.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – the start of a trend, however shaky.

TURBODIESEL: Mercedes-Benz 300SD (1978)

Diesel powered cars are very efficient compared to ones powered by petrol, but they were very slow in comparison. Adding a turbo could help, and Mercedes did it for the first time in S-Class (W116) 300SD. With America shocked by soaring fuel prices, the model was only available in that market.

The engine was a 3-litre straight-five cylinder unit, and despite the turbo, power was only 111bhp , with 168lb ft of torque. A decent 28,634 examples were sold until 1980, though the engine in more powerful forms returned in the new W126 S-Class series that arrived that year; once again, it was sold in the US only, up to 1985.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – today it’s almost impossible to buy a diesel without a turbo, and you really wouldn’t want to, trust us.

TRIP COMPUTER: Cadillac Seville (1978)

The first analogue trip computer was to be found in the Saab GT750 of 1958; the 1978 Cadillac Seville introduced us to the concept of the electronic trip computer. Today, they’re so common that we hardly even notice them.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – useful, even if we don’t use them as much as we should.

CYLINDER DEACTIVATION: General Motors (1980)

Short-lived Boston-based firm Sturtevant built the first known cylinder deactivation system in 1905 (pictured inset, below right). It invented a set-up that let the driver shut down three of the six cylinders while cruising; the technology didn’t catch on and Sturtevant shut down in 1907.

73 years later, a spike in fuel prices inspired Cadillac to bring cylinder deactivation back on stage when it bravely made the technology standard across its entire 1981 line-up. V8-6-4 - a name which indicated it could run on eight, six or four cylinders – however didn’t work properly, thwarted by primitive electronics. Many dealers quietly told owners to switch the system off and to run as a V8 permanently, and the system was dropped after just one model year.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – the technology has come back into vogue now engine management computers are so much more powerful.

REMOTE LOCKING: Renault Fuego (1982)

We've got used to being able to lock and unlock our cars from afar, but the Renault Fuego was the first car to get remote central locking. The system was called Plip, in honour of its French inventor, Paul Lipschutz .

In America, the Fuego was sold by AMC dealerships, since Renault owned most of AMC at the time. It operated using a coded signal sent via a radio transmitter in the fob. AMC models got the technology shortly after.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 - nearly all cars have this today, and it’s undeniably useful.

DIESEL PARTICULATE FILTER: Mercedes 300D (1985)

California has long led the way in clean air legislation. In 1985, as production of its W123 was drawing to a close, Mercedes introduced a diesel particulate filter (DPF) on its 300D. However, the system was offered only in California and it wasn't reliable which is why Mercedes soon gave up on it. It would be another 15 years before a reliable DPF was available, this time from Peugeot which introduced a DPF with regeneration capabilities, on its 607 2.2 HDi of 2000. DPFs are mandatory today on diesel cars sold in Europe and America.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – a useful contribution towards air quality.

HEATED FRONT WINDSCREEN: Ford Granada/Scorpio, Ford Taurus, Mercury Sable (1985)

Rear-window heating has been with us since the late 1960s. Ford went to work to develop one for the windscreen. It fitted an early effort to the 1974 Ford Thunderbird and the 1974 Lincoln Continental Mark IV , powered by a separate 110V alternator. The system proved unreliable and was dropped. Ford went back to the drawing board and developed its Quickclear heated element system in the early 1980s. It was first fitted to the European Ford Granada in 1985 (pictured top), and the Taurus (pictured bottom) and Mercury Sable got it the same year in the US market.

Ford is justly proud of this technology, which can clear frost off a windscreen in under 60 seconds. Other brands’ cars now feature the technology, but Ford is still flying its flag. It’s widely fitted to its vehicles today, even those with a modest overall specification.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 - put that credit card away.

POP-UP SPOILER: Lancia Thema 8.32 (1986)

We've got used to active aerodynamics, with pop-up spoilers now par for the course on high-performance sports cars. But it was Lancia that was the first to build a car with such tech as standard, with its fabulously bonkers Thema 8.32 (8 cylinders, 32 valves). Powered by a V8 derived from the one seen in the Ferrari 308, the left-hand drive-only Thema 8.32 had just 212bhp – which wasn't much more than the 185bhp of the far cheaper four-cylinder Thema 2.0 Turbo.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 5 – becoming much more common.

FUEL GAUGE ARROW: Ford Escort, Mercury Tracer (1989)

In 1989 Ford introduced an arrow on the fuel gauges of its Escort (pictured) and Tracer, to show which side of the car the filler flap was on. It came about after its designer Jim Moylan had to refuel a car in the pouring rain and he didn't know which side of the car the filler was on.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – little things can make a big difference.

AUTOMATIC ROLLOVER BAR: Mercedes-Benz SL-Class (1989)

Government regulators have long worried about the fate of convertible occupants in the event of a rollover. The prospect of a total ban on them in America even led some manufacurers like Porsche to develop the ‘halfway house’ Targa-roof option on its 911.

Mercedes addressed the issue head-on when it launched its R129 SL convertible SL. A bar strong enough to support the full weight of the car (together with the windscreen pillar) would lie hidden behind the seats. If sensors detected a roll-over was imminent the spring-loaded bar would shoot up in 0.3 seconds , and would also deploy if the roof was up or the optional winter hard-top was in place.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – very clever.

HEAD-UP DISPLAY (HUD): Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme (1988/90)

The advantages of reflecting important information onto a driver’s line-of-sight was learned from military aviation, where they first appeared as early as the 1940s. The first car version was developed by GM Hughes Electronics and fitted to the limited edition Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Convertible Indy 500 Pace Car , 50 of which were offered to selected customers.

HUDs became available on the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme sedan (pictured) as a cost-option in 1990; it showed the car’s speed in a digital display. Still a fairly rare and pricey option today, it would be better if they were more common. One US study revealed that if a driver's eyes wander off the road for more than two seconds the chance of an incident doubles. Two seconds might not sound long but, at 70mph, you'll have travelled over 200 feet - about the length of 14 cars.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – one day, all cars will have this.

SATELLITE-NAVIGATION: Mazda Eunos Cosmo (1990)

The idea of an in-built navigation system has been around since the 1950s but it wasn’t until 1990, with the arrival of the Mazda Eunos Cosmo , that the tech became a satellite-guided reality, operating via Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites operated by the US Air Force (now US Space Force).

However, the system was vague in precise location by design, as the military feared that a more accurate system would be used and abused by terrorists. However, there were workarounds available, and in any case in 2000 President Clinton signed an executive order to make GPS as accurate for civilians as it was for the military. Today the most advanced GPS can pinpoint one’s location to the nearest 30cm (12in).

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – a massive change for the better.

BACKUP/REVERSING CAMERA: Toyota Soarer (1991)

Although the 1956 Buick Centurion concept featured a rear parking camera, such tech wouldn’t appear on a production car until 1991. First to get it was the Japanese market-only Toyota Soarer ; a spoiler-mounted camera fed a signal to a colour screen on the dash.

Accidents are common in low-speed parking scenarios, and when they involve small difficult -to-see children, are extremely dangerous even at low speeds. Rear-facing cameras have been mandatory on all new cars sold in the US from May 2018 and will become compulsory in Europe in 2021.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – a useful addition to your own eyes.

XENON HEADLIGHTS: BMW 7 Series (1992)

Jointly developed by Hella and Bosch, High-Intensity Discharge headlights, otherwise known as xenon lights, were first fitted to the 1992 BMW 7 Series; in BMW parlance the system was called Litronic . However, only the low-beam lights were xenon; it took until 1999 and the arrival of the C215 Mercedes CL for the arrival of bi-xenon headlights, or high-intensity discharge lighting on both dipped and main beams.

Xenon bulbs last around three times longer than halogen ones, use around 30% less energy, and illuminate more of the road ahead.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 7 – shining a light for safety.

ELECTRONIC STABILITY CONTROL: Mercedes-Benz CL600 (1995)

Electronic Stability Control (ESC) and similarly named systems helps reduce crashes – they can rapidly detect a loss of control and brake wheels accordingly to counter oversteer (rear-wheel skidding) and understeer (front-wheel skidding). The first car to get it was the top-of-the-range Mercedes CL600 .

In 1997, Mercedes would also apply the technology to its new Mercedes A-Class – ESC cured it of the unfortunate dynamics the car could encounter in a high speed direction change, as shown in its famous failure of the Swedish ‘elk test’ that year. It has been mandatory on all new passenger cars sold in the USA from the 2012 model year onwards and in the European Union from November 2014.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 10 – It’s believed that ESC and similar systems have saved tens of thousands of lives since its introduction.

MODERN HYBRID POWERTRAIN: Toyota Prius (1997)

The idea of a hybrid is older than you think; Ferdinand Porsche dabbled in gasoline-electric cars in the early 1900s, and Mercedes-Benz experimented in the early 1980s.

Though Toyota didn’t invent the hybrid, we give it credit for raising the public’s awareness of the technology and making it increasingly common in new cars. The first-generation Prius launched in Japan in 1997 with a 1.5-litre four-cylinder engine backed up by a permanent-magnet electric motor. Despite its complexity, the system has proved very reliable. PICTURE: post-2000 Toyota Prius

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 - as the future of the car now appears to be electric, the Prius is where its modern-day journey begins.

ADAPTIVE CRUISE CONTROL: Mercedes-Benz S-Class (1998)

Cruise control is superbly useful, but less so in heavy traffic . Adaptive cruise control (ACC) technology uses radar and sometimes also camera technology to automatically adjust speed while keeping at a set distance from the car in front.

The 1995 Mitsubishi Diamante blazed the ACC trail, but didn’t activate the brakes. The first car to offer a full system as we know it today was the Mercedes W220 S-Class, launched in 1998.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – marvellous, and apart from usefulness, it was also arguably the first automotive step in autonomous operation.

ACTIVELY-CONTROLLED SUSPENSION: Mercedes-Benz CL-Class (1999)

The C215-generation CL ushered in the world’s first actively-controlled suspension system in 1999. Aptly named Active Body Control (ABC), hydraulic cylinders embedded in the suspension offset unwanted body motions such as the car leaning into a turn or the front end diving under heavy braking. It also considerably improved the big coupe’s handling and comfort.

In 2013, Mercedes went a step further: it attached the system to powerful computer which was fed readings from a camera which scanned the road ahead. Operating up to 81mph, it could detect bumps and potholes and immediately adjust the suspension accordingly, smoothing out the ride. Dubbed Magic Body Control, it was a pricey option on high-end versions of the 2013 Mercedes S-Class W222.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – a plus for handling & comfort.

NIGHT VISION: Cadillac DeVille (2000)

In 2000 GM used technology from Raytheon to make Cadillac the first car to offer Night Vision , in posh versions of the DeVille . It used an infra-red sensor to highlight objects of safety interest onto a monochrome Heads Up Display. Take-up of the $1995 option was brisk at first – 7000 in the first year, but this dropped to just 600 in 2004, and the option was dropped in 2005; Cadillac didn’t return to the Night Vision scene until 2015, with its CT6 flagship.

In the meantime, the largest German manufacturers among others had launched increasingly sophisticated night vision systems. They were and remain pricey options - £2250 and US$2260 on the current Mercedes S-Class, for example. Opinion on them is somewhat divided, but they are certainly becoming more intelligent.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 5 - If and when cars become fully autonomous, the ability for the car to ‘see’ will become vital.

SATELLITE RADIO: Cadillac (2001)

Car radio can be a pain in America. Reception varies and some out of the way spots don’t have any at all. Satellite radio solved all that, ensuring stations on the same frequency where you are – and there’s no commercials either.

Cadillac started offering XM Satellite Radio on its DeVille and Seville (pictured) models for the 2002 model year. It announced plans to roll out the option to its entire 2003 line-up in 2002. Today over half of new cars sold in America feature the technology; of those, around half pay a monthly subscription.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – a boon for America.

VOICE CONTROL: Infiniti Q45 (2002)

Arriving in the Infiniti Q45 , for the first time ever you could control the navigation with your voice. For a long time since, such systems were still largely hit-and-miss in operation, often the latter.

Fast forward to today, and Amazon’s Alexa seems to have cracked voice recognition as well as anyone – no wonder that she’s now available in models from Audi, Ford, Lexus, and Toyota, and heading to others soon.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 3 – Alexa, can you understand me now?

DUAL-CLUTCH AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION: Volkswagen Golf R32 (2003)

Porsche started developing the dual-clutch automatic transmission for its race cars during the 1980s. It fitted the unit, which it called – and still calls – Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe (PDK), to the 956 and the 962. It took a long time before the technology appeared on a production model, though.

The first street-legal car equipped with a dual-clutch transmission was the 2003 Volkswagen Golf R32 . The six-speed unit was designed for front-wheel drive or, as in the Golf, front-based all-wheel drive applications. Audi offered the gearbox as an option on the TT 3.2 Quattro, which came with the same engine as the R32, the following year. The technology allows for swifter gear changes and greater economy.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 4 – automatics will never be the same again.

SELF PARKING: Toyota Prius (2003)

The saviour of inept drivers everywhere, the self-parking car was a godsend when it arrived in 2003. The first car to get it was the Japanese-market Toyota Prius; it would take another three years for overseas buyers to be able to choose this tech, when Lexus made it available on the LS. Toyota called it Intelligent Parking Assist.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 3 – clever tech, even though it often takes longer than doing it yourself.

BLIND SPOT WARNING SYSTEM: Volvo S80 (2006)

Safety technology got into another gear early in the last decade. Volvo was the first company to fit a blind spot monitor, into its S80 . Using small rear facing cameras mounted below the wing mirrors, it detects vehicles in the car’s blind spots and displays a warning light accordingly (inset, left). The technology has now been widely adopted, usually as part of an enhanced safety options package.

In 2010, Nissan took the concept further in its Fuga (inset, right) and Infiniti M models – if those cars detect the driver is attempting to move into a vehicle’s path, the steering wheel will actively resist the manoeuvre.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 5 – a potential life-saver.

AUTONOMOUS EMERGENCY BRAKING: Mercedes-Benz S-Class (2006)

Mercedes-Benz launched the world’s first autonomous emergency braking (AEB) system at the end of 2006. Called Pre-Safe Brake , the feature was offered as an option on the new W221 S-Class and the C216 CL-Class . AEB relied on existing technology. Near- and long-range radars scoped out the road ahead and sent a signal to the ECU if they detected an imminent collision. The car emitted audible and visual warnings and automatically applied 40% of the maximum brake performance if the driver didn’t react.

This process happened in mere milliseconds. Mercedes’ in-house research found AEB could prevent 70% of rear-end collisions. It reduced the severity of the ones it couldn’t avert by around 40%. In 2009 Mercedes upgraded the system, enabling maximum braking force in emergency situations, first fitting it to the new W212 E-Class .

AEB quickly spread across the automotive industry and it began trickling down to more affordable cars in the early 2010s. It didn’t take long for law-makers to notice its unimpeachable life-saving potential, especially during the international rise of smartphones. AEB will be mandatory in new cars sold in Europe in 2021 and 2022 in the US.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 8 – in an age of distracted driving, even more important than ever.

LED HEADLIGHTS: Lexus LS600h (2006)

LED headlights offer the best of all worlds: they're compact, very efficient and they last pretty much forever. The first car to feature LED headlights was the Lexus LS600h, but this was only on dipped beam. However, within a year of the Lexus's 2006 launch, Audi was offering LED headlighting on dipped and main beam, on its R8 V10 .

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 5 – an advance into the light.

APPLE CARPLAY: Ferrari FF (2014)

Ferrari founder Enzo Ferrari long argued that his cars were all about the engine, and for a long time Ferrari interiors seemed modest. And, as a full part of the Fiat group since 1988, much Ferrari interior technology and more recently, multimedia systems, were inherited from the parent and often of a standard associated with rather lower price-points.

So it comes as a pleasant surprise to see the Ferrari FF take the title as the first production car to be fitted with Apple CarPlay. This system allows many of the functions of the driver’s iPhone to be operated from the car’s central control screen. In 2015 the Hyundai Sonata became the first car to be fitted with Android Auto, which operates in much the same way, but for Android phones. Today’s most new cars support both systems.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6 – brilliant.

LASER HEADLIGHTS: Audi R8 LMX (2014)

Laser headlights offer even greater efficiency than LED items, as they use half the power and are even brighter. Audi was the first to offer such tech on its limited-run R8 LMX of 2014, which was restricted to just 99 units worldwide. Within weeks of the R8 being announced, the BMW i8 went on sale with laser headlights as an option.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 4 – laser light.

ELECTRONIC PARKING BRAKE: BMW 7 Series E65 (2001)

The mechanical parking brake create a packaging problem for car firms as they need to allot a large amount of space to a mechanical brake lever between the seats. Some firms tried to solve this by coming up with a different solution; Mercedes persevered with a foot operated brake for many years, though they could be tricky to use, especially hill starting on cars with a manual transmission.

BMW solved the problem once and for all when it inaugurated the world’s first electronic parking brake, operated by a simple button on the dashboard. They have since become ubiquitous, though some enthusiasts prefer the old fashioned way as levers enable the classic handbrake turn.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 6

48 VOLT ELECTRICAL SYSTEM: Bentley Bentayga (2015)

For decades, cars have featured six or 12-volt electrical systems. But with ever more complex trickery on cars – electric antiroll bars and electric turbos, for example – more power is needed to run them. The Bentley Bentayga got there first with a 48 Volt system, just ahead of its sister car, the Audi SQ7.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 5 – some days, all cars will have this.

DIGITAL KEY: Volvo (2016)

Volvo's Digital Key used Bluetooth technology to allow owners to leave their key fob at home and instead use their phone to lock or unlock their car and start the engine. The Digital Key also made it possible for Volvo owners to share their car with someone by instantly sending a key, even if they’re thousands of miles away. Volvo believes its Digital Key will ultimately make the car key obsolete but will provide regular fobs for as long as customers ask for one.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 4 – very clever.

10-SPEED AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION: Ford F-150 (2016)

The term “10-speed” isn’t just for road bikes anymore. GM and Ford formed an unlikely alliance to design the first 10-speed automatic transmission and began producing it in 2017. Ford first brought it to the market in the 2017 F-150 ; GM chose to first use it in the 2017 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 .

As of 2021 it’s also found in a number of other cars including the Fords Mustang , Expedition , Everest , and Ranger models, and the Lincoln Navigator as well. On the GM side you can now find it in the Cadillacs Escalade and CT6 , and Chevrolets Suburban RST , Tahoe , Camaro SS , and Silverado , and the GMC Yukon Denali . Meanwhile, Honda introduced its own 10-speed automatic transmission on the 2018 Odyssey .

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: 4 – very handy for economy.

VARIABLE-COMPRESSION RATIO IGNITION: Infiniti QX50 (2017)

Infiniti introduced the second-generation QX50 on the eve of the 2017 Los Angeles auto show. Though it looks like yet another SUV from the outside, its sheet metal hides a trick piece of tech. It’s the first car available with a variable-compression ratio engine.

Variable compression technology and downsizing help the 268hp VC-Turbo engine return markedly better fuel economy than its V6-powered predecessor without completely neutering its performance genes or adding the weight and complexity of a hybrid powertrain. America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reckons the new SUV is 35% more economical than the 2018 V6 QX50.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: Too early to say

FINGERPRINT SECURITY: Hyundai Santa Fe (2019)

Hyundai ripped a page from the Apple playbook when it developed a technology best described as Touch ID for cars. Thanks to fingerprint-sensing technology, drivers can unlock the car by touching a small sensor integrated into the door handle and they can start the engine by placing their finger over the ignition switch. Capacitance recognition ensures thieves won’t be able to access a vehicle with a paper copy of the owner’s fingerprint; they’d need the entire finger to break in, which would be inconvenient but not impossible.

FIRST 200BHP/LITRE CAR: Mercedes-Benz A45 S AMG (2019)

There was a time when cranking 100 horses out of a single litre of engine capacity was impressive, but it’s taken a while to crack the 200bhp barrier. McLaren got close in 2018 with the 197bhp-per-litre offered on its Senna track-focused supercar, but it wasn’t until 2019 that we finally got there with the A45 S AMG 4Matic+ from Mercedes. This car flew through the 200 mark, belting out 416bhp from its turbocharged 1991cc M139 engine – delivering 208bhp-per-litre.

It means this small hatchback is capable of 0-62mph in 3.9 seconds, quicker than a Ferrari F40. The M139 is also the most powerful four-cylinder engine in series production, for good measure.

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: Too early to say, though as the car world goes electric, we fear the 300bhp-per-litre record may never be broken.

CURVED OLED: Cadillac Escalade (2020)

Cadillac introduced the world’s first curved OLED screen to be placed in a car in the 2021 Cadillac Escalade, unveiled in early 2020. The screen has twice the pixel density of a 4K TV , and is bright enough to not require a hood over the screen (to give shade).

GROUNDBREAKER SCORE: Too early to say, though doubtless they will become very common in the future.

Feature by Richard Dredge , with some additional content from Tom Evans

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Kids and adults gather at a Memorial Day parade to honor and celebrate veterans in South Portland. Sofia Aldinio/ Staff Photographer

BATH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade begins at 200 Congress Ave. and concludes at Library Park and will be followed by a wreath-laying service at 11 a.m.

BERWICK 11 a.m. Monday. Parade begins at Berwick Town Hall/Sullivan Square and proceeds to Lord’s Cemetery by way of Wilson and Allen streets. After a ceremony there, the parade will continue down Saw Mill Hill Street with a pause at the Somersworth-Berwick Bridge for a brief memorial service for those lost at sea. The parade ends at Sullivan Square with a memorial service honoring area veterans.

BIDDEFORD-SACO Opening ceremony at 9:55 a.m. Monday at Saco City Hall. Parade starts at 10 a.m. from Saco City Hall and proceeds along Main Street and down York Hill into Biddeford, continues along Main Street, onto Alfred Street and finishes at Veteran’s Memorial Park with a closing ceremony at 10:45 a.m.

BRUNSWICK-TOPSHAM 9 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds from Topsham Town Hall, pauses for observances while crossing the Brunswick-Topsham bridge, and concludes at the Brunswick Mall.

CAPE ELIZABETH 9 a.m. Monday. Parade begins at the middle school parking lot, turns right on Scott Dyer Road, right onto Route 77 and ends at the village green adjacent to the town hall. A brief ceremony and laying of the wreath will be held at the Village Green after the parade.

CUMBERLAND 8 a.m. Monday. Kids run at Greely High School followed by 5K Run and Remember race at 8:30 a.m. Parade starts at 10 a.m. at Mabel I. Wilson School and ends at the veterans’ monument in Moss Side Cemetery in Cumberland Center, where a ceremony will be held at 10:30 a.m. Advertisement

FALMOUTH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds from 65 Depot Road (Falmouth American Legion) to Pine Grove Park, where a ceremony will be held.

FREEPORT 9:30 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds from Holbrook Street, heads north on Main and makes a right onto School Street, then right onto Park Street, ending in Memorial Park. There will be a small ceremony in Memorial Park starting at 10 a.m.

GORHAM 11 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Village School (12 Robie St.) and ends at Eastern Cemetery on Johnson Road.

GRAY 11:30 a.m. Monday. Parade leaves the Russell School (8 Gray Park), proceeds to Shaker Road and continues to the Soldiers Monument at the intersection of Routes 26 and 3 for a wreath-laying ceremony. Parade continues north to the American Legion Post (15 Lewiston Road) for a closing ceremony.

LYMAN 1 p.m. Monday. Parade starts at Waterhouse Road/Mill Pond in Goodwins Mills and ends at the Lyman Town Hall on South Waterboro Road.

NEW GLOUCESTER 9 a.m. Monday. Parade leaves from Memorial Elementary School (86 Intervale Road) and heads down Intervale Road to Route 100/202 to Veterans Park for a memorial service. The parade will reconvene and go down Peacock Hill Road, then take a left on Gilmore Road. Advertisement

OLD ORCHARD BEACH 1 p.m. Monday. Parade starts at the corner of Ballpark Way and E. Emerson Cumming Boulevard and proceeds down Saco Avenue, Old Orchard Beach Street to First Street and ends at Veteran’s Memorial Park.

PORTLAND 2 p.m. Monday. The procession starts at Longfellow School (432 Stevens Ave.) and ends at Evergreen Cemetery for a commemoration ceremony.

SANFORD 10 a.m. Monday. The parade starts at the Sanford Armory (88 William Oscar Emery Drive), proceeds up Gowen Park Drive and ends at Central Park.

SCARBOROUGH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Scarborough High School, turns onto Route 114 and then Route 1, past town offices to the Maine Veterans Home and concludes with a ceremony there.

SOUTH PORTLAND 10:30 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Southern Maine Community College parking lot, proceeds down Broadway to the Veterans Monument for a short Memorial Day recognition service.

WELLS 9 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Wells High School (200 Sanford Road) and proceeds to Ocean View Cemetery for a ceremony and musical performances. Advertisement

WESTBROOK 10 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds down Main Street and will be followed by a ceremony in Riverbank Park.

WINDHAM 9 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Windham Town Hall and proceeds onto Route 202 toward Windham High School. At 10 a.m., there will be a ceremony in front of Windham’s Veterans Memorial Flagpole at Windham High School.

YARMOUTH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade leaves from Yarmouth High School (286 West Elm St.) and proceeds to the Memorial Green at Town Hall for a ceremony.

YORK 10 a.m. Monday. Parade starts near St. Christopher’s Church (4 Barrell Lane) and proceeds down York Street to York Town Hall.

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