I think I’ve made it pretty clear that my secondary geeky fetish after obsolete ridiculous cars is obsolete ridiculous computers and video game consoles. I have a collection of such silly things in my basement, co-existing in harmony amongst the car parts and stacks of old car brochures, so when there’s an overlap between these two worlds, I get especially excited. In fact, just a week ago, I wrote about such an intersection between the automotive and retro computing worlds, and now here I am about to do it again, staunchly refusing to check if anyone other than me actually cares. But I hope they do. Today I want to talk about a computer from the tail end of the 8-bit era, and one that I learned was both named for and designed to look somewhat like a car.
The design and look of computer cases was once a lot more wild and varied than it is now, where market evolutionary pressures have gradually made most desktop and laptop computers look pretty much the same, in the same way that cell phones went from being devices that could have as many forms and colors as a box of factory-reject Froot Loops to the ubiquitous black monoliths we all have today.
Sometimes, automotive influences crept into computer case design; not often, but there were a few notable crossovers. For example, one of the designers of the Datsun 240Z, Kumeo Tamura, also designed an early laptop, the Ampere WS-1:
That was from 1984. And while the Ampere WS-1 was definitely a sleek laptop with some lines that perhaps Tamura was inspired to pen because of his work on the Z-car, it wasn’t directly intended to suggest a car.
But this computer was intended to suggest a car: the SAM Coupé:
The SAM Coupé was a British 8-bit home computer, released in 1989 as a sort of upgrade to that most legendary of British home computers, the Sinclair Spectrum. The SAM Coupé was based on the same Z80 processor as the Spectrum and had backwards compatibility, but also had some significantly upgraded graphics modes, came with much more memory (256K for the base model!), a 6-voice sound chip, and had a built-in 3.5″ floppy drive. It was a pretty significant upgrade over the Spectrum, but it came out right at the start of the 16-bit era of computers, and it just couldn’t compete with more advanced machines like the Commodore Amiga or Atari ST.
So, it was something of a commercial failure. But it has the distinction of being designed to resemble a sort of wedge-shaped sports car, with its feet meant to suggest wheels. I think the car it looks closest to is probably a Lotus Esprit, which was released just a couple of years before the SAM Coupé.
And yes, the “coupé” in the name was intended to refer to a car, at least in part. According to The World of SAM, this is how the name was picked:
“The ‘Coupé’ was a nickname from two sources: one being an ice cream sundae called the “Ice Cream Coupé” and the other because the machine resembles a fastback car in profile with the feet as the wheels.”
From what I can see, “ice cream coupe” refers to a type of long-stemmed ice cream serving dish? Huh. I had no idea.
It’s kind of ironic, but there doesn’t seem to really be any good driving games for the SAM Coupé, which is a shame; it had pretty good graphics and sound capabilities for the time, as you can see in these demos from back in the day:
Someone should port a game like Pole Position to the SAM; I mean, it could run the Spectrum version, which looked like this:
… but I bet a SAM Coupé native one could be even better! Oh well. I’ve never even seen one of these in person, anyway, but still. One can dream.
(Top image sources: Lotus, Wikipedia Commons)
How did you get through this entire article connecting ice cream and coupes without mentioning the Hyundai Scoupe!?!
The notch, at the back of the keyboard, makes it look more like a TR7.
The release of the Esprit was 1976. This computer was 1989.
That’s more than ‘a couple of years before the SAM Coupé.’
It’s ok. We all compress time in later middle age.
Lotus were still churning out Esprits until 2004, so they were still pretty current in the 80’s and 90’s. Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge came out in 1990 on the Amiga.
I implore Torch to do a colab with old mate Wade the manical popular Aussie Youtuber behind Garbage Time (his old nugget car thing) and Dank Pods (his old tech thing).
Somewhere in my office there is an F1 Ferrari laptop that plays the sound of a passing F1 car when you turn it on… if it still turns on. It’s red with carbon fiber trim.
This is from before my time. It’s just here.
Well there’s a lot of name overlap.
Acorn Atom and Electron
Lynx
Rabbit RX83
Lambda
Franklin
Matra (same company)
Tesla
Vector
Ferguson
Vixen (Osborne)
Triumph-Adler Two car companies!
Why did the British have a hard time making successful computers? Too hard to make them leak oil. And/or make them keep the magic smoke in.
Electronics by Lucas, more likely.
The funny part is that I have never had a single Lucas component fail in 30 years of Spitfire ownership. Nor in my years of Land Rover ownership – and my Disco has Lucas fuel injection. Eek. The only failed electrical bit was the alternator, an Italian Magneti Marelli unit – at nearly 30 years and 135K miles, can’t complain TOO loudly. The Valeo HVAC servos failed on my Range Rover, and I have no idea who is responsible for the disaster that is the main fuse/relay panel on P38as, but pretty sure not Lucas. It’s probably fine in and of itself, if you don’t mount it 6IN from the exhaust manifold of a 4.6L V8… Cooked…
On the other hand, it’s the Japanese Denso bits that keep failing on my Mercedes. A/C compressor clutch, radiator, a couple sensors.
The British made some extraordinarily successful computers (Sinclair and Amstrad sold millions of units), and some moderately so (Acorn Archimedes, BBC Micro). They did miss the boat with the move to 16-bit CPUs. On the other hand, ARM (from Acorn) was developed in England and is deployed in every Android phone and many cutting-edge AI applications.
I never realized that ARM spun off from Acorn!
Yup!
Those were toys, relatively speaking. The ARM chip, yes – but notice that no British company ever had success actually making anything out of it. The British are excellent at inventing things and terrible at making a commercial go of them across many, many industries in modern times.
Could Pole Position be the first known instance of in-game advertising?
While the Esprit might be the true inspiration, the fact that they mention a fastback car makes it seem as the rear of the computer (far side from the user) is the front of the car with an upright windshield. In which case, I’d say it has a profile more like an AMC Marlin, a first gen Barracuda and, of course, the Candylab Racer.
My secondary geeky fetish is biscuits (cookies for most of you, I guess).
So obviously I used to geek out on Lotus Biscoff, especially when served as an Esprit-style wedge of cheesecake.
“Here’s to computers; the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems,”
(possible misquote)
“In this house we obey the laws of artificial intelligence.”
I care about retro computers.
I have my original Apple 2+ that my Dad brought home in 1983 (which launched my career), a Commodore VIC20, a TI99/4A, and an original IBM PC. The VIC20 won’t power on anymore (probably a bad capacitor) but everything else is fully functional. I still have floppy discs with code I wrote when I was 8 years old.
Ahhh…the VIC20 and “The Count”… my very first introduction to computers. Thank you, Bob, for taking me down memory lane!
The VIC20 was my first introduction to computers, too! Then my Dad brought home the first Compaq “portable” from work – a 30-pound steel box with no battery or hard drive. It had a 9″ monochrome monitor, 2 5.25″ floppy disk drives, and a keyboard built into the lid covering the screen and drives.
Flagged for misleading F40 image! What’s the connection?
it was one of the few Sam Coupé images of a car I could find!
I’ll see you that and raise you the Dodge Shadow (landline) phone which is simultaneously cool that it exists and a shame Chrysler went this way with what I assume was a promotional item rather than the usual 1/25 scale model which AMT or MPC would’ve reissued many times since.
vintage-telephone-dodge-shadow-touch_1_7cccc8663d4580a6fe7de1afaaf699d8.jpg (1440×1080)
I always preferred the SAM Saloon.
Let’s not forget the special edition SAM Wagon, it only came in brown with plaid interior and somehow was a manual.
SAM Page Brake
I like the SAM(bar) myself. Everyone “kei” with that?
But could you run Lotus 1-2-3 on the SAM Coupé?
Very good.
At one job, I used what I think was 1-2-3’s main competitor, which was Quad-<something> maybe? Do you recall?
Quattro Pro! My folks wrote at least one textbook on Quattro Pro starring us kids and other family members as data examples. Creating fake data is really harder than you might expect.
I really liked using Quattro Pro and was a bit bummed out when my employer made us all change over to Excel. I remember there was one feature in QP that was far better than Excel at the time, though eventually Excel adopted that feature as well. I think it was the ability to create formulas that referenced another sheet with the same spreadsheet.
Yes, that was it. And, I was using a datalogger to do testing, and instead of just storing its data to be retrieved later, it had a radio transmitter module plus a receiver to plug into the back of my PC. And Quattro had a function to receive the data. So I could sit there at my desk and watch as my spreadsheet grew new rows of data in REAL TIME!!!! It was like freaking magic!
“Creating fake data is really harder than you might expect.”
Classic understatement.
It was probably Quattro Pro.
Not a numbers guy at all, but my previous employer was still using Lotus Notes for email 11 years ago. Supposedly it was more secure than Outlook.
And was the Sinclair Spectrum named after the Chevrolet Spectrum?
Just checking notes on my computer for some more jokes but I can’t find any. Hold on, let me push this button and spool up some more power. Nope, still can’t think of anything.
However you could push the button on the hood of your Chevy Sprint (Located where an emblem or hood ornament would otherwise be) to gaze lovingly at your 1 liter, 3 cylinder motor.
I’m suddenly reminded of the Lamborghini and Ferrari-branded (Acer? Asus?) laptops of the late ’00s. I think. Maybe early ’10s. Anyway, those were regular laptop shaped for the Era, they didn’t literally try to look zoomy.
That said, I feel like they could’ve done more to sell the zoom. Rear wing carrying handle maybe?