OK. We get it.

You’re addicted to coffee.

Only we don’t, as we can’t bear the gritty, muddy-looking liquid.

Plus, unless you’re American, you shouldn’t even be drinking coffee.

Ever.

Not if you hold a British passport. Let alone whilst ‘in’ your car.

Yet everywhere you look now, people are either getting into – or out of – their cars, nursing an oversized coffee cup or a heat-retaining flask.

Although they’re not called a flask any more, because as a word ‘flask’ isn’t deemed dope enough. Nor is the word ‘dope’ sic any longer.

Probs.

But we digress.

What we’d love to know is just when did the sudden, inescapably inexplicable urge to have a coffee on the go become so entwined in our outdoor culture?

Why does society feel the compulsion to grab a coffee minutes after they venture outside their own front door?

Be the agenda being the school run, gym class, work commute, supermarket sweep or any other destination which necessitates the use of a motor vehicle.

Bearing in mind you’ve probably only just consumed an oversized mug of the sludge-like stuff moments before you reached for the car keys and exited the front door.

Why is it physically impossible for people to go somewhere which lies beyond their own kitchen without first ensuring that they have a coffee to hand?

Like some sort of caffeine-feeding growth attached to people unable to function without it.

I’m sure many people would intravenously go about the business of their day with a coffee-saturated drip if they could. It’s all a bit of a blur to us.

But Back To Coffee And Driving. Not TV

What consenting adults do behind their closed doors is their business. And we’d rather it remain that way, to be honest.

Yet when it comes to their acknowledged behaviours when they potentially come into contact with us, IS fair game.

In our opinion it should be outlawed. The consumption of coffee on the hoof.

Or at the very least, a crime punishable by death.

If a human being can’t climb aboard their car without a means of instant-hit caffeine surgically secured to their physical being, then they need to have a good, long, hard look at themselves.

Isn’t It The Fault Of Cars Though?

Of course, automotive manufacturers have enabled caffeinistas by equipping every new model for as long as time itself with in-car coffee cup holders. More of which (i.e, the actual facts) after a few drops.

Somewhere convenient to place drivers’ coffee vessels while they otherwise drive somewhere. Probably just around a few corners (or blocks, if you’re of American patronage). And therefore qualify to inject coffee according to your birthright.

An expedition similar to that made by your average polar explorer; whose emergency survival kit includes a hip flask of whisky and a job-lot of Kendal Mint Cake.

Because let’s face it. You never know when you could lose your way when circumnavigating the school run, and end up horribly lost a few hundred yards from where you normally reside. Desperate to learn where your next, life-saving drop of bean-derived nectar will come from.

Until that is you glance down and remember that you have a Starbucks refill to the immediate left of your equally left, left thighbone to deeply inhale.

So as to counter the anxiety that such a fight or flight situation could leave you in. In other words, grave danger; and the experiencing of a genuine fear for your life and deeply suburban times.

But seriously. Just HOW/WHEN did we ever get anywhere in our cars without a coffee within reach. I mean, can someone, anyone, explain to us?

One minute everyone is just focusing on driving their cars to places they need to be, then you turn your back for a few years and suddenly nobody climbs into the driver’s seat of a car without an oversized vat of steaming, dark brown-coloured gloop.

But Just Who Do We Have To Blame For Fostering The Now Deep-seated Belief That We Need Coffee In Our Cars Just To Exist?

Chrysler, if our entry-level research holds any credence.

Yes. Let’s praise the Lord that Chrysler indeed saw the need to reward its long-suffering owner/drivers with immediate and unconditional access to caffeine-based liquids when in transit.

It was its Plymouth Voyager minivan which first sported cup holders back in 1984, according to the internet.

Minivans being the forerunners to what identify as SUVs today. And which remain the primary vehicular means of transportation for coffee addicts, and a variety of other cunts.

The type who flagrantly continue to disregard the existence of estate cars because they perceivably fail to reflect the approximate measurements of their egos.

So, let’s get this straight shall we.

Coffee cup-holders became features in certain vehicles BEFORE airbags were compulsory?

Wow. Let’s consider the ramifications of that for a moment…

But before we do, it’s probably prudent to take a quick stroll down the coffee-cup-holders-in-cars timeline. Now that we have ascertained who’s to blame for this unquantifiable shitfest.

In-Car Coffee Cupholders: A Brief Walk Through History

Back in the pioneering days of in-car coffee fuckwittery, cupholders were integrated into the sort of traditional snack trays you’d receive from fast-food outlets and/or drive-in movie faculties.

The type which would hook over the car’s window frame, yeah yeah.

It wasn’t long before most drive-thru establishments and open cinemas insisted that carmakers integrated cupholders into their automotive designs. Which saw the birth of the ancestors of the cupholders we recognise in today’s vehicles.

Early adopters witnessed the infusion of said cupholders located on the inner side of the glove box compartment. Typically situated on the passenger’s side of a car. While an instant success whence the vehicle was static, an immediate and miserable fail when the vehicle was in motion.

Pre-1950’s, there was no such thing as in-car cup holders.

Meaning the world was an infinitely better place than it is today.

This was largely due to eating/drinking in vehicles being frowned upon in polite society. Based on hygiene, rather than etiquette as such.

That’s not to say motorists of the day didn’t partake.

In 1950’s America the passenger – or co-driver, as they preferred being called – was responsible for snack tendering. With their preferred means of accommodating in-car refreshments either held precariously between their legs or stashed in the passenger/co-driver’s footwell.

Which was mostly by their feet.

November 1950 – Images emerged of snack trays suspended from the dashboards of cars, secured in situ by the presence of suction devices. Created to hold two soda bottles, this device could be stored in the glovebox when not actively facilitated.

1953 (month unknown) – A Texan inventor received a patent for their design which looked strikingly similar to the archetypal cupholder we clock in cars today. Benefitting from a single deep cylinder to hold a small cup, it was pictured wedged between the rear seats then and there. However, this design was still classed as a prototype and not something picked up by the automotive industry.

Then The 1960’s Happened

During the 1960’s – Lots of things occurred. Although one of them WASN’T car manufacturers offering cupholders in their latest models. And even when they eventually did, they existed purely as car ‘accessories’ and primitively attached to window frames.

Sometime Later But Possibly During The 1980’s – A civil engineer and history professor at Duke University going by the name of Henry Petroski wrote in depth about the emergence (and subsequent evolution) of the presence of cupholders in automobiles because nobody else was. Petroski documented how cupholders moved from glove-box lids and aftermarket window-hanging plastic baskets into standard console wells popularized in vehicles like 1980’s minivans.

1984. But Not George Orwell’s – Which as luck would have it leads us nicely (and seamlessly) to the 1984 Chrysler Plymouth Voyager mini-van we mentioned earlier. Acknowledged in history as the first mainstream production vehicle to entertain the notion of actual in-car cupholders designed by the auto maker and factory-crafted in-house.

To add some social context of the time, 1984 configurations gave rise to a single integrated cup holder being juxtapositioned between a multiple array of on-board ashtrays.

Conceived under the stewardship of Chrysler’s legendary designer, Lee Lacocca and his team, their cupholder design transformed car interiors which would never look the same again. Culminating in both the standard and multi-tiered cupholders featuring in makes and models across the automotive sector from that point onwards.

Right. There’s The In-Car Cupholder History Bit Explained Away, But Did You Also Know?

But did you also know that today some in-car located coffee cupholders are arguably more valuable than the very vehicles they’re sum parts of.

Take for example the first-gen Audi TT.

These distinctive twin cup holders have recently exchanged ownership between peoples for wildly inflated figures. Heading towards the overall market value of the MKI TT itself in some perverse instances.

How can this be so?

When did this happen?

Please make it stop.

Etc…

So, Who Is To Blame For The Omnipresent Cars And Coffee Culture Of Today?

People who organise cars and coffee meet-ups, that’s who.

There, we’ve said it. And now expect to receive a slew of complaints from car peeps and those who suffer from OCD. Otherwise known as obsessive coffee disorder.

Whilst the idea of getting people to come together to celebrate a shared passion for our automotive pervertedness should be universally applauded, the means by which to trigger this most natural of human responses tends to involve the mention of coffee at various points in subsequent conversations, and the associated advertising materials frequented.

Point in question being; ‘cars and coffee’.

Inevitably staged in close proximity to cafes on Sunday mornings the length and breadth of the UK, such innocent meet-ups reel the suspecting in with the nonsensical promise of caffeine. Like car people can’t exist without the allure of caffeine pumping through their veins, or something.

We love cars, ergo we clearly must neck needless volumes of coffee until our bladder explodes within the snug confines of our mid-1990’s Toyota Supra.

No.

Just, No.

But then it didn’t stop with the more haphazard, pop-up-esque, independently-orchestrated ‘cars and coffee’ meet-ups. It suddenly went global, with the advent of the otherwise superb ‘Caffeine and Machine’ set-ups.

Jeez, we love what these guys have done (and continue to do).

Apart from the coffee bit.

We can’t argue that as a pun-y name, ‘Caffeine and Machine‘ rolls off the tongue. And has cued up infinite merch concepts based on this jump-off point. We would be churlish not to salute that.

From a marketing perspective; absolute genius.

Unfortunately though, this has done nothing to halt the draconian slide of aligning our vehicles with a flagrantly cosmopolitan attitude towards the partaking of hot beverages behind the wheel in the broader sense.

For ‘cars n coffee’ also read ‘beards n brews’.

We could go on, but we won’t. We fear your attention threshold has been exceeded and sense the imminence of coffee to calm your jitters…

The Rise And Rise Of The Conjoined Costa Twin

The thing is this.

You’re not soccer moms. Unless you are soccer moms.

We’d hazard a guess you’re not clad in what appears to be a giant duvet masquerading as winter outerwear. And there’s an outside chance that you’re not a social media influencer. We certainly hope so. Because if that’s the case, there’s a high probability that we could be friends.

All of which begs the question as to why you need to be a conjoined Costa twin.

Physically and emotionally inseparable from the recyclable cylindrical cardboard carton of Intense Americano, you might not even be aware you’re doing it.

Wherever you are.

Which is daily. And many times per day.

Unconsciously quaffing coffee like there’s no tomorrow. Slugging and slurping shots of the caffeine-laced liquid as if it’s going out of fashion. Which it seemingly never will, tragically.

Yet hear us out.

It is possible, believe it or not, to facilitate your car WITHOUT coffee playing an integral role.

We understand that such a headfuck concept is alien to you in 2026, but nevertheless it’s an attainable #squadgoal. Providing you put your mind to it.

You’ve discovered that it’s achievable to interact with your car WITHOUT the need of your smartphone to hand/ear in more recent times. The law has helped with this process for you.

And that’s good.

So how about we apply a similar degree of PMA to the coffee reliance, eh. Positive mental attitude.

You can do this. We’ve got you…..