It's all in the detail: Autocar's favourite car parts

Pontiac GTO hood-mounted rev counter - Colin Goodwin

No doubt current pedestrian impact regulations would rule out a comeback for one of my favourite car details. It’s the bonnet-mounted rev counter that was fitted as an option to Pontiac Firebirds from 1967 onwards and also to the Pontiac GTO. Buick pinched the part for its 1970 Skylark GSX as well. A pal of mine had a 1969 GTO and later a 1970 model, both of which had what Americans call ‘Hood Tachs’. I don’t remember either of them ever working but they looked cool and were quite a good idea because the last thing you wanted to do in a muscle car from that era was take your eyes off the road. 

BMW 3 Series (E21) door handle - James Ruppert

The best interior door handle known to humanity belongs to the E21-generation BMW 3 Series. It is ergonomically perfect. Instead of a plastic or chrome pull, which wastes valuable space on the door card and is a pointless engineering indulgence, the handle is incorporated into the pull. You don’t actually see it, just squeeze it. The more you use it, the more natural it becomes – until you try to exit from another vehicle and realise that the door pull won’t let you out. 

Ferrari 365 GTB/4 ‘Daytona’ exterior door handle - Andrew Frankel

They say the shape of the shark ceased to evolve millions of years ago because it had reached a state of perfection. The door handle should have gone the same way half a century back. The world of car design should have looked at that tiny little silvery hook, so elegant in its own right, yet so respectful of and deferential to the rest of the car’s styling, and said: “Okay, no one is ever going to do it better than that.” And in the past 50 years, no one has, and I suspect no one ever will. After all, how do you improve on perfection?

Mini head-up display - Mark Tisshaw

The first car I drove with a head-up display for any length of time was the third-gen Toyota Prius, about a decade ago. For no real reason other than being a luddite back then, I didn’t like it, and over the months running it, I actively tried to come up with ways to block its projection out of the top of the dashboard, such as with sheets of A4 that would then just glare onto the windscreen and make it worse… A head-up display next turned up again on a Mini Cooper I started running in 2014. For no real reason other than no longer being a luddite, I thought it was brilliant. Now, it’s my favourite piece of car kit bar none. Head-up displays stop your eyes from leaving the road to check the speed and reduce cognitive load and strain on your eyes. Sorry, Prius, it was me and not you. 

Skoda bottle clenchers - Jim Holder

Set into the bottom of cupholders aboard most Skodas are five raised moulded plastic mounds. They look like a design quirk, or possibly a way of raising your drink above any spillages, until you place a bottle of pop (or similar) in there, whereupon they transform into the most useful thing you never knew you needed, vice-gripping the base of a bottle while you turn and open the lid. Anyone who has ever tried opening a bottle while driving – using either two hands or both legs and one hand – will immediately appreciate the safety significance of such a simple detail.