The Austro-Daimler ADR (1980-1986) featured a dashboard-mounted lever that allowed drivers to mechanically adjust the anti-roll bar stiffness in real-time while driving, making it the first production car to offer adjustable suspension geometry without electronics—yet this elegant mechanical solution required drivers to physically fiddle with suspension settings during cornering, making it more of a distracting novelty than a practical advantage and demonstrating why electronic suspension control would eventually render mechanical solutions obsolete.
Car Fact #72 — August 27, 2026
