Over time, innovations have come and gone in the automotive industry. Some things hit the bull’s-eye, others turn out to be mostly gimmicks. The latter is the case with the occasionally rather remarkable windshield wipers on Japanese cars, in the late 1980s.
In Japan they are not averse to special inventions. As a European you can feast your eyes on a city like Tokyo, because no matter how Western it may seem here and there, you will see things that will blow your mind. Take a nap in a ‘sleeping capsule’ in a wall, sing a game of karaoke while a robot brings you a bowl of sushi, or go to a toilet where you have 30 options to get everything clean again. You can’t think of it that bad. In the automotive field, the 1980s were a golden era in that regard. In the ‘Bubble Economy’ in Japan the trees grew up to the sky. This was expressed in ‘innovative’ excesses that disappeared as quickly as they came.
The mirror wiper on the Nissan Cima (photo: Nissancimay31)
Since the wealth seemed to be out of reach and there was an insatiable desire for more and more luxury, Toyota and Nissan came up with things that were mainly ‘cool’. To start with Nissan. That resulted in a mirror wiper on the Cedric Cima (Y31). A very small wiper that could free your mirrors from moisture. The option was added to the Cima order list in 1988 and disappeared a year later. The luxury sedan (a hardtop, without a B-pillar, another typical thing for Japanese at that time) had a mechanism in the side mirror that moved the small wiper up and down. Ideal for keeping things clean and moisture-free, although it is generally not so bad how dirty side mirrors get. Heated side mirrors are more than enough, Nissan quickly realized that. The mirror wiper was therefore short-lived, but as a successful Japanese businessman you could of course make a great splash with it.
Side wiper on the Toyota Mark II
At Toyota they went one step further. Such a small mirror wiper was of course funny, but was not really noticed. No, if you really made it, you would have a wiper for your side windows! In the same year as the Cima, Toyota conjured up this option for the Chaser, Cresta and Mark II. In the photo above you can see what it looked like on the latter. As with the Nissan, this wiper functioned from the side mirror, only the working area was considerably larger. According to Toyota, whether you had a good view in your side mirrors apparently had more to do with how clean your side windows were, than whether the mirrors themselves were clear enough. These wipers not only wiped away water from the windows, they went much further. Above the spot in the side mirror where the wiper was controlled, there was even a small nozzle. Just spray some soap on the window and wipe, ideal. When the wiper was ready, it fell neatly back into a holder on the trim.
As you can already guess, the side window wiper was also short-lived. Just like the mirror wiper, it ended with the goodbye of the 80s and the associated economic bubble. It is not really a loss, but it is nice that it once existed.