What Is The Best Factory Option Ever Offered On A Car?

Screenshot: Doug DeMuro

Back when I bought my E39 BMW 540i, it had basically everything I was looking for at the time. A torquey naturally aspirated V8, a manual transmission, rear-wheel drive and a tape player that allowed me to listen to music from my iPod. I paid a very fair price for it, and to this day it remains one of the best cars I’ve ever driven. Sadly, though, I knew going in that when the original owner spec’d their car, they left out one very important feature — the car phone.

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While other BMW owners got to drive around conducting important business on their important phones in their important cars, I was stuck driving around like a loser who could only make phone calls with the cell phone he had in his pocket. At the time, I didn’t actually have any important business to conduct, and it wouldn’t actually work anymore, but something in me still wished the original owner had sprung for the car phone.

Thinking about my missing car phone recently got me thinking about other options that you could order from the factory. The baseball glove leather interior that Audi offered on the TT is one that comes to mind immediately. If I were buying an old convertible, I’d get a Honda S2000 over an Audi TT in a heartbeat, but dammit, that baseball glove leather interior was just cool. It was also completely unnecessary, even down to the stitching that was supposed to remind you of a baseball glove. I just love it.

Is that enough to make it the best factory option ever offered on a car, though? Probably not. Which is why I’m turning to all of you for help. What would you consider to be the greatest factory option that any automaker has ever offered?

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