What we now consider normal was already on the Mercedes F100 in 1991

How German-sound do you have to be to design a brand new car with a completely down-to-earth, statistical data as a starting point? The honorable ladies and gentlemen who took on the Mercedes F100 as a project assumed that the average car was populated by 1.2 to 1.7 people. That’s one and a half people. But half people do not exist, and because one and a half is less than two, it was happily concluded that it was finally over and done with two seats in the front of the car. Happy, because other studies had shown that the center of any car is always the safest place. After all, there you are as far away from the sheet metal as possible, and therefore from potential impending doom. In other words: the driver of the Mercedes F100 was given an honorary position center front, as in a McLaren F1. There was room in the back for the remaining half person from the above study. Funnily enough not in the middle of the car either, but – oh, dangerous! – on two times two seats next to each other. Making the F100 a 5.0 person car.

Multifunctional screen, solar cells in the roof

The driver sat lonely and alone in the front, with the safe advantage that he or she would be less easily distracted by the passengers. The driver could always get in and out of the car on the safe side of the pavement, and there would also be no need for a separate right-hand drive version. Well, it all sounds very logical and sensible, but the central seating position has still not made it to series production. This is in contrast to many other gadgets. For example, the F100 did not have an ordinary set of instruments, but a multifunctional screen for displaying information of your choice. Solar cells were made in the roof, which supplied power to the air conditioning, which in turn switched itself on fully automatically to prevent the interior from overheating. Also new was the smart key in the form of a plastic card, which replaced the ignition key. For every driver there was such a trick with a magnetic strip that, among other things, remembered the favorite seat position of the owner or wife. A similarly functioning key came on the market in 1998 for the then new S-class. Furthermore, it was all about safety with the F100; one was even more impressive than the other. Nowadays we look spoiled if something is not standard: telephone buttons on the steering wheel, voice control, intelligent cruise control, xenon lamps, run-flat tires, electric handbrake, rain sensor, reversing camera, and much more. But then 32 years ago.

The road towards the hyperscreen continued with the Mercedes F200.