Where should the exterior rear-view mirror actually go?
10/07/2015
In the early days of motoring, it was rarely necessary to look behind the car - what would have been the point of coming close from there? Even in the pre-war years, hardly anyone thought of fitting a rear-view mirror. But as traffic increased, looking at the cars behind you became more and more important.
As a result, vehicles were fitted with interior mirrors and, at some point, exterior mirrors. Two exterior mirrors only became mandatory in modern times, but many vehicle owners retrofitted them for greater safety. But where should the wing mirror be fitted?
For a while, it was considered very sporty to mount the wing mirrors far forward on the mudguards. The British liked to do this, but the Japanese (in the picture above, a Datsun Cherry from the seventies) also followed this trend. Mirrors positioned far forward were not very practical and the rear view became very small.
So the door-mounted rear-view mirror prevailed, even today. And at the latest when people wanted to be able to adjust mirrors from the inside, front-mounted rear-view mirrors would have meant additional complexity.
A particularly amusing photo on the subject of exterior mirrors shows a Porsche Carrera 6 (1966), which was probably retrofitted with a second pair of mirrors to improve visibility. The original rear-view mirrors on the fenders were probably kept because of the historic look.
