This year of our Ford 2026 has been around for over an entire day now, and that hasn’t changed the fact that it’s still as cold outside as it was last year, a magical time known as Two Days Ago. Cold is like ranch dressing in the sense that when it’s in the air, it tends to saturate everything it touches, covering them with its essence. In this case, essence of cold, not ranch. Consider steering wheels, which can get painfully cold. Luckily, there are ways to solve that, which, I now know, go back way further than I realized.
I normally equate heated steering wheels with cars from the past 20ish years or so, usually more premium models, and the heating is accomplished via electrical resistance heaters embedded inside the steering wheel. I was fairly confident in this assumed history, comfortable in my ignorance.
Then, yesterday night, I spent four bucks on a book from a used bookstore, Floyd Clymer’s Historical Motor Scrapbook Number 8, where I saw this:
Holy crap, Floyd, how have I never heard of this? Also, Floyd, would it have killed you to cite some sources here or even give the name of the person or company that was developing this system? The heating system described here is pretty fascinating, too: it uses hot exhaust gases, which are channeled from somewhere off the exhaust manifold and into a hollow steering column, and from there into a hollow steering wheel, effectively turning the whole steering column into part of the exhaust system.
I can imagine this could have worked pretty well, maybe even too well: the exhaust system in air-cooled Volkswagen Beetles (and other air-cooled cars, like a Citroën 2CV) uses exhaust gases running though pipes to heat fresh air, and those gases get those pipes very hot. I can easily imagine such a heated steering wheel getting too hot to hold after a while, and there’s all the potential for exhaust gases to be leaking inches from your face.
Of course, I think this solution was targeted at open cars, which would be absurdly cold to drive in the winter, but that also means exhaust leaks from the steering wheel are less of an issue than in an enclosed car.
After a little digging, it looks like this exhaust-heated steering wheel setup likely originated from someone named Charles Burg, who is mentioned in this video (at 8:30) about early heated steering wheels, along with some other early attempts:
Another fascinating and mildly terrifying attempt to make a heated steering wheel came from Robert W. Coan, who specialized in aluminum products, like this dish you can buy on eBay, if you’re into that sort of thing. Coan’s idea was to pump hot radiator coolant – just water in that early 1900s era, and scalding hot water at that – through a hollow aluminum steering column and steering wheel.
It doesn’t seem like either the exhaust gas method or the hot engine coolant methods of steering wheel warming ever actually made it to market, but a much simpler and safer-seeming method did: electrical. In fact, the earliest patent for an electrically-heated steering control seems to pre-date the steering wheel, even, or at least the universal application of the steering wheel, because it’s a patent for a heated steering tiller handle:
Patented by R.A. Fleiss in 1903, this was a handle with what appears to be four resistive heating coils embedded within it. A simple four-position switch seems to allow for one to four coils to be active at any time, giving it the ability to have four heat settings in a simple way.
It seems like versions of these electric resistance heaters eventually made it to market, with one of the more common options being aftermarket add-on heated grips for steering wheels:
Products like these “Steer Warms” were wired directly to the battery or magneto of your car – it looks like they had a generic version, then a cheaper version for Ford Model Ts, which, at $5, would be about $170 today.
I bet these worked pretty well, though I can imagine the insulation on the wires would get brittle and crack, and I wouldn’t be shocked to learn these things ended up causing some fires, but I don’t know that for sure.
Still, in an open car, in the bitter cold, I’m sure drivers were thrilled to have something like this.
Those exhaust/coolant-warmed ones, though, I think I’m good taking a pass on those.
I actually looked for a heated steering wheel cover for my Prius, but because it has a weird size wheel I couldn’t find any that would fit. Those Steer Warms would totally work though. Now I’m wondering how hard it would be to make those myself. Someone must sell 12V-powered heating pads and I have a bunch of leftover pleather from a previous project…
The coolant idea seems especially bad: by the time it warms up, you’ll have been gripping that wheel for several minutes (at which point you’ll have warmed it up on your own). Then again, people probably needed to warm up their engines for a long while anyway, so maybe it didn’t matter.
Neat! Nothing is ever really new in the automotive world. Though I would think keeping a steering wheel that has to spin sealed well enough to contain either hot gas or hot liquid would be a bit of an adventure. Electrons are easier to corral when you need them to spin. I wonder who invented the electrical clock spring? Though many Old British Crocks just use a wire down the column that just winds and unwinds. Until it breaks and the horn quits working, LOL.
My beloved pair of BMWs have heated steering wheels, but they need heated shift knobs to go with them – that sucker is COLD on a cold Maine morning. Or even a brisk Florida one when your delicate hand has been on a nice hot steering wheel.
“I bet these worked pretty well, though I can imagine the insulation on the wires would get brittle and crack, and I wouldn’t be shocked”
Oh I bet you WOULD!
> I can easily imagine such a heated steering wheel getting too hot to hold after a while
There’s a foot-operated valve to modulate the amount of hot gas going into the wheel, so I’m thinking you’d close the system off when the wheel was warm and open it again when it got cold.
blob:https://www.theautopian.com/128c53fa-055d-4531-bb89-8ef6e96c9428
Any urologist can tell you what chapter of the anatomy textbook that picture cam from!
“save money on gloves…” Ha! Quoted from the copy in the last graphic.
I will admit that the heated steering wheel on my ex-wife’s BMW X5 was nice on a cold winter’s day. We traded it in for an MDX and she commented that she missed the heated steering wheel. I dove down into the manual and sonofabitch! It had that too. The switch to turn it on was more subtlety located, but once I showed her where to touch, she was a happy camper. About that at least. After we split, she traded the MDX in on a Lincoln Aviator. I’m sure that has a heated steering wheel as well. I hope she has found the right button or setting in the touch screen or whatever.
My ’17 Accord does not have a heated steering wheel, but I lived a long time without it. And I don’t think my hands are any the worse for it.
I had a look a the Coan aluminum dish. Are you sure it’s not the front emblem from a 1989 Infiniti Q45?
“Also, Floyd, would it have killed you to cite some sources here or even give the name of the person or company that was developing this system?”
I gather ol’ Floyd had something of a history of not citing sources (mind you, my own sources here are purely hearsay). My Clymer edition of Paul Richardson’s service manual for Vincent motorcycles came to market, I’m told, without the author’s permission, despite a publisher’s note in the book claiming otherwise.
The wiring diagram shows a single heating element and a resistor voltage ladder to provide a number of different currents through the heater. Basically the same thing as blower motor resistors that used to be used, just as part of the switch instead of mounted remotely.
However many modern cars do use a form of resistor ladder in the steering wheel switches so that there is only one wire in and one wire out.
What about heated handlebars like this:
454 cubic inch big block Chevrolet V8 produces 412 horsepower
Just in case you’re havin’ any trouble removing snow from your driveway… this baby will blow snow back to where it came from… more story at the bottom…
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https://comancheclub.com/uploads/archive/eb42b650f35b1413c6956547f40d0395/a1d93f4363c84fe186f671346650ee7d.jpg
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And now for the rest of the story….
If you’re tired of anemic, one-lung snowblowers with their slipping drive belts, you might consider Kai Grundt’s V8 snow blower which raises the bar on the traditional snow blower in every respect. With electric start, electric block heater, antifreeze heater and eight cylinders, it has no drive belts to freeze up and you’ll never get bored with the job as the 454 cubic inch big block Chevrolet V8 produces 412 horsepower, 430 foot pounds of torque and can throw snow 50 feet at just 3500 rpm.
Nor will you get cold as the machine has been ingeniously designed to route the engine coolant through the handle bars, with the rear mounted, enclosed radiator keeping the operator nice and cozy.
Maneuvering the massive beast (it has a total wet weight of 912 lbs) is a breeze thanks to the hydraulic-drive 4WD skid steer on independent walking beams which offers a zero turning radius. It’s also as fast as you like, with an infinitely adjustable speed range on the drive wheels via dash mounted flow control. At the opposite end of the scale, it has more than enough torque to pull your car out of the ditch before the hydraulic motors stall!
Adding to the well-balanced feel of the unit, just 15 pounds of down force on the handlebars will lift the auger blade off the ground in order to climb stairs/walkways for ease of snow removal. Safety has and continues to be paramount with spring return to centre “fail safe” type directional controls with emergency stop and tether cords.
Safety is one of the key theme, with a flashing blue light (as required by law in many areas) being the least of the safety features. No-one will fail to hear you with those twin throaty exhausts, which come standard with 92 decibels at the controls, though if the rumble of a V8 exhaust is music to your ears, you can obviously go much louder. Even at the standard baffling, hearing protection is strongly suggested.
The powerful yard machine lights and a dashboard with backlit gauges complete the package to ease the burden of this normally reviled task. The custom 42 inch, two stage auger has a Chevrolet 10 bolt truck differential with spool and a centrifugal auger clutch with shear pin protection, further adding to the image of this “automotive theme blower.” As each unit is custom-built, optional extras for the snow blower are both diverse and outrageous as the base unit – there is unlimited auger choices from single to multi stage designs and various motor combinations to suit the religious preferences of the customer (Chevy, Dodge Hemi, Ford) and such exotica as a V-10 or a diesel engine or remote starting can be accommodated. And if, after a while, you feel you’ve outgrown the 400 horses, this particular engine is well catered for in the performance modification area, with Lunati camshaft, Milodon Gear drive, Holley and Edelbrock components to name a few, and there’s always the fuel injection option too, if you feel you need to throw the snow out of the county or ensure your seat in the “neighborhood blower blingster hall of fame.”
I toss fifty bucks at my neighbour who is a farmer and has a JD tractor of with similar HP and a giant ass single stage snow blower bolted to it. Takes him 5 minutes to clear my 80 meter driveway and I don’t have to get out of my barcalounger
I moved 1700 miles south for the winters. Solved the problem completely. Snow removal is my housemates dilemma to deal with.
I’m considering Portugal or Spain.
Great choice if you can get them to let you in. I have friends who were able to get dual-citizenship in Spain due to having a Spanish grandfather. One of the easier countries for that. And for course, being a citizen of any EU country gets you access to pretty much all of them.
I’m just not that adventurous, and happy enough with my life here in the US. I suppose technical I could go to South Africa easily due to my father, but that just doesn’t seem like an improvement.
I’ve got money and I could get in as a senior when I retire … soon, I hope.
That thing is made out of pure awesome! If I still lived in Maine in the winter, I would want one for my big-ass yard and driveway. But it really needs an enclosed and heated cabin. I have a neighbor up there with the full setup on his John Deere garden tractor who I was jealous of for years. I just have a big-azz V-twin old school Craftsman beast of a walk-behind snowblower.
I suppose the next logical evolutionary step is one with a Cummins powering it. Think of how far 1000lb/ft of torque could toss snow!
“That thing is made out of pure awesome! But it really needs an enclosed and heated cabin.”
I believe the radiator is mounted under the control board, and had the warm air blowing towards the operator, as well as the engine coolant running through the handlebars.
It was designed as a walk-behind, so an enclosed cabin is kind of out of the question. All it needs is a windscreen to keep the blown snow from blowing back at the operator on the windy days.
But I agree – it’s quite awesome!
Engineer: The good news is that the car is ready for market. The bad news is that exhaust is leaking into the steering column.
Marketing: We got this. Hold my beer.
Are you telling me that Steer Warms will both “Protect my health” AND “Save money on gloves”!?
“and there’s all the potential for exhaust gases to be leaking inches from your face.”
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
don’t forget it would have been leaded exhaust gasses.
Drive a black car with black leather interior in the south and you have heated seats and steering wheel and shifter and arm rests and door sills all summer long!
Funny, “black car” and “black interior” were my only two dealbreakers on a car 🙂
I also told myself ventilated seats were a must, but cloth or perforated leather are still pretty good compared to solid leather. Nothing like showing up with the bottom half of my shirt back sticking to me in a dark semicircle for all to see!
Even as a northener, I refuse to buy a car with a black leather interior. They are so darn hot. When I was shopping for a BMW e36 M3, I was super stoked to find an Alpine White car with a sand beige interior that had heated seats. It stays cool in the summer but has heated seats for the winter.
It frosts (or roasts, per the season) my nupties that this idiotic country has decided that vinyl and leather are the only two possibly options in “premium” cars. I want cloth, dagnabit! And the recycled soda bottle “cloth ” near universally used in cheap cars these days is not great either. What happened to tweed and velour? Did the tweed birds and velour trees go extinct?
Well, I guess I stand corrected in assuming this was just some latter-day candy-ass solution to people who find gloves too intrusive /s
I have one and use it regularly, but it’s also the feature I could most easily live without. I’d gladly trade it for, say, a much cheaper and simpler CD/DVD combo in the dash.
I also think wheel warmers have been bolstered by touchscreens, which subtly discourages people from wearing gloves.
Do you live somewhere where it gets cold enough where you can feel the cold steering wheel sapping heat out of even gloved hands? I do. It’s not a necessity, but you won’t find me complaining about my heated steering wheel.
Oh wait I missed your very obvious /s my bad
Gloved hands, not really — That layer is usually plenty to keep me okay until the cabin heat takes over, plus the sympathetic warming effect of heated seats can also help your extremities, as well (you won’t find me complaining about good heated seats!)
Central AL without a garage means plenty of sub-freezing mornings, but single digits are rare. Around freezing is more typical and touching the wheel without gloves is still a shock to the system. I guess that’s why I have driving/running-wright gloves in my coat pockets most of the time. Heated wheels are still pretty cool, but it was something we all just did without for the majority of history, even though we had the tech to make it happen pretty easily.
I’m not saying “suck it up! Back in my day…” but it’s still a curiosity to me why it took so long. Or why ventilated seats are still a “premium” feature while heated seats are so mainstream. The tech for either one is pretty simple.
Living in Western Canada, heated seats and heated steering wheels have been one of the most welcomed features to become common in recent decades. We recently dealt with more than a week of overnight lows in the -30 Fahrenheit range, meaning that only the heaviest of gloves/mittens will prevent an early-morning steering wheel from sucking the warmth right out of your hands.
My steering wheel was cold enough this morning to be painful to touch. I snapped on the heater along with the heated seats and interior heat and drove to the store for milk and bread. It was -25C this morning.
Heck, here in SW FL where it was a chilly 55F the other morning I was VERY happy to turn the heated wheel on along with the heated seats. Annoyingly, my Mercedes doesn’t have a heated wheel, and the MBTex in that thing is even colder to the tush than the leather in my BMW. Good butt heaters in both thankfully. My blood is thinner than helium at this point after a decade of living down here, despite being from Maine.
I love the heated wheel in my Nissan Ariya (as well as the heated/cooled seats), which I have set to come on automatically based on temperature and it works flawlessly. But if I do need to modify any settings on the touch screen with gloved hands, it’s not a problem with these North Face “e-tip” gloves. I’ve had them for many years and they work flawlessly on my phone and on the screens in my car.
I would not hesitate to guess that these did not work very well and that is why heated steering wheels all but disappeared for a bunch of decades.
I love a good heated steering wheel, but I often wonder what the heating elements are doing to the surrounding materials. I wonder this about heated seats too. And why is it that the heat is strongest in the parts of the wheel where you don’t grip? I would think the heat would be strongest from 8:30 to 10:30 and 1:30 to 3:30, but my experience informs me that it’s warmest at 12 and 6. Maybe the three cars I have experience with were outliers?
I think the heat is strongest where you don’t grip it because the heat is being conducted into your hands.
Yes, your hands are cooling the heaters. And they are liquid-cooled.
Looked at another way, your hands touching the wheel remove heat from the surface faster than the air touching the rest of the wheel, plus radiative loss.
I’m going to start describing myself as being “liquid cooled.” Thanks for that.
We carry the ocean in our veins.
I conciously shecked this today when I went out to do some errands. I held the wheel in the wrong position (at the top) and then checked to see how warm it was at 3 and 9 and you’re completely right. It felt cool at the top and hot on the sides. I never thought of my hands as such a heat sink before.
Steer Warms are made of leather…I wonder if it’s leather from a steer?
*whoosh-crack*
RAWHIDE!
I’m thinking tauntaun.
They will smell worse on the inside.
Most things do.