With summer around the corner and the mercury creeping higher and higher, it is a breath of fresh air when the car's air-con unit is chilling. This creature comfort has become the norm on modern cars, with sellers having trouble if the box wasn't ticked when new. But when was air conditioning first offered?
Turn of the 20th century saw the first air conditioning device - used to keep the paper from wrinkling by controlling the humidity in a printing plant. Cold air in cars came over 30 years later when Packard released a car with air conditioning. With no controls in the cabin, the driver had to disconnect a compressor belt to turn off the system. Car coolers were also used in the 1950s and 60s. These rocket shaped contraptions hung off partially open windows using latent heat to cool the driver and passengers. Nowadays, A-C is as ubiquitous as a steering wheel but, with systems weighing a substantial amount and costing ever so slightly on power, it tends to be removed from track-biased cars.
What is your first memory of a car with air conditioning? Let us know here