It’s Ridiculous How Many Kinds Of Wiper Blade Fittings Exist. Time To Just Pick One

It’s been absurdly rainy where I live lately, a fact that I’m pretty sick of, to be honest. Whatever the point this weather is trying to make, I think it’s made it, already. It’s wet. Water falls from the sky all the damn time. That also means that I’ve been thinking about windshield wipers more than normal lately, and I have to say, what I’ve realized is downright disturbing. That’s because the state of windshield wipers in the world right now is one of absolute madness, and for no good reason whatsoever. It’s not because of how they function – windshield wipers are generally just fine on almost every car – but how we replace the wiper blades.

Wiper blades are a consumable, as we all know, and the difference between old, worn wiper blades and fresh, new ones is dramatic and obvious. It’s a safety issue as well, since these directly affect how well you can see while driving, which is, I’m told, quite important. So you’d think it would be a good idea to make wiper blade replacement as easy as possible, right?

Well, if you’ve replaced your wiper blades recently, then I think you’ll agree that we have, as a species, not achieved that goal. Wiper blade replacement is an ass-pain, and for no good reason that I can tell. It’s not so much the physical act of replacing the wiper blades –it’s usually not so bad, though it can vary pretty wildly – it’s more a matter of figuring out exactly what kind of wiper blade you need. And I don’t just mean size, I mean the shape and design of the fitting that holds the blade to the wiper arm, of which there are a bewildering array of options, and I am absolutely baffled – no, wait – flummoxed as to why.

The level of madness hit me the other day when I went to replace the wipers on three of my cars – a 1989 Ford F-150, a 2010 Volkswagen Tiguan, and a 1990 Nissan Pao. They all used different fittings, and I had no idea which one used what kind until I went out and checked. After this, I decided to check all my cars and see what kind of wiper fittings they used, and here’s what I found:

Of the seven cars in my fleet, running and non-running, I have five different kinds of wiper fittings. The Dodge RV and the F-150 both use a form of the “pin” style of wiper blade fitting, the Pao and Beetle both used the J-shaped style, the Tiguan used some kind of pinch-tab/button thing, the 2CV uses what may be a claw-type arm (I’m not sure), the Changli uses something surprisingly substantial-looking and mysterious, as was the case with the unknown wiper I found in my driveway from some other car I no longer have.

Here’s the thing about all of those wiper fittings: they’re all fine. I’ve had all kinds of cars in all kinds of states of repair/disrepair, and I’ve almost never had a car fling off its wiper blades. I’ve had wiper problems, sure, but I think the problem of how to keep the blade attached to the arm is an extremely solved problem, for every one of these methods.

It’s not like there’s ones I like better or worse, or, really, have any opinion on whatsoever. They’re all fine. I had no idea what type each of my cars had because who gives a brace of BMs about this? Are there people who will, say, refuse to drive a BMW because it uses pinch tab wiper arms instead of top button arms? I’m going to say that person does not exist. And if they do, I think they’re fools.

And my small sample of wiper blade fittings was just a tiny slice of this whole huge ridiculous pie of wiper fittings. I tried to get a full list of all the different types, but you know what? That’s almost impossible to do, because there are so damn many of these things, there doesn’t seem to be one standard set. Conservatively, I think there are between 16 and 18 common types of wiper fittings, and likely many more less-common ones. Just look:

We have hooks and pin arms (large and small, side and otherwise) and bayonet arms and pinch tabs and rock locks and J-hooks and push buttons (of slim and non-slim varieties) and claws and so many named for combinations of letters and numbers and what the hell are we doing here? This is, objectively, madness. These all do the same job, in basically the same way, with the same general look, size, performance specs, everything. There is nothing a pinch tab wiper attachment mechanism does that is so much better or worse than a J-hook or a push button or whatever.

I defy anyone to tell me that they have some sort of deeply-held preference for a particular kind of wiper fitting. Some are easier to get on and off than others, so I can believe that people may have preferences there, but in actual use? No one can tell one from the other.

Is there some kind of engineer mass delusion happening here that makes automotive wiper engineers think that they need to re-design fucking wiper arms because they have an idea for one that is so much better? It’s ludicrous.

The wild proliferation of different types of wiper blade fittings has become a safety issue too, because normal, non-car-obsessed drivers, people who should be able to easily replace their wipers on their own, as needed, often don’t have any idea how bonkers the world of wiper blades is. They go in and buy blades of the size they think they need but perhaps don’t realize there’s forty heptillion kinds of fittings, and then end up with the useless wiper blades just sitting on the passenger floorboards of their car after they tried to install them, saw a small black plastic puzzle as complex as a Rubik’s cube, and gave up. So old wiper blades end up staying on longer, because finding replacements is a pain. I’ve seen this happen many, many times.

It’s not impossible, of course; most auto parts stores can check databases and find the kind needed, and usually – but not always –they’re right. But that doesn’t make any of this actually make any more sense. The only sensible thing to happen here is that there should be only one type of wiper blade fitting, and that should be standard across all cars.

I’m not kidding. This should be mandated legally, if possible, and if a carmaker refuses to comply with The One True Wiper Blade Fitting, then the CEO of that company goes to jail. Maybe we let them out when the company finally agrees to use the wiper blade standard. Maybe.

I don’t even really care which standard type of fitting is picked. I’d prefer one of the less complicated ones that are easier to install, but if there was just one, I’d accept almost anything. And sure, if some company has some radical kind of wiper that absolutely has to have some proprietary blade fitting, then, fine, they can apply for an exception. But everything else? One kind.

I’d even want to mandate recalls for every freaking car on the road, where wiper arms are replaced with whatever standard we pick. I don’t care what it costs! We’ll print the money if we have to! It’ll all work out in the end with the massive savings that will come from companies not having to build a snacktillion different kinds of wiper blade fittings.

If there is an argument to why we somehow need all these different kinds of wiper blade fittings, I will listen to that argument. I’d love to hear that argument, actually, because I genuinely do not understand why we’ve let wiper arms get so out of hand like this. Maybe there is a reason! A reason that I simply cannot see because I’m too shallow and crude to appreciate how much better a claw-type wiper arm is as opposed to a pin-type or whatever. Feel free to make this make sense.

If not, then please consider this my formal demand that all wiper blade fittings be standardized by, oh, 2027. That should be plenty of time. Come January 2027, all you need to know to buy new wiper blades will be the size. You can swap good ones from your Camaro onto your BRZ if you want, or from your Land Rover to your Jeep, or whatever in this glorious future. You can buy new blades for your partner’s car because you saw they needed them with barely a thought.

It’s going to be a beautiful new world when we finally have true wiper blade unity.