Details We Love: The Mono Wiper

Time to celebrate a marvel of engineering that Cabriolet drivers see every time they sit behind the wheel: the panoramic eccentric-pattern single windshield wiper. The pride in this engineering feat—the largest coverage of any wiper system on a passenger car in its day—is palpable as you watch that single blade sweep across 86% of the windshield with classic teutonic efficiency.

Note wiper treatment on this 1964 Lamborghini 350GT


Now wait a minute. Not so fast on crediting the Teutons. Rewind to 1964 and the seductress known as the Lamborghini 350GT. We can credit Malcolm Sayer with the three-wiper design of the Jaguar XKE, but Carrozzeria Touring gets the nod for getting the job done with a single wiper blade. Less is more with this bold, elegant, minimalist engineering statement that started for Mercedes with the W201 and W124 in model year 1986, then continued through the next generation of mid-size Mercedes (W210) in '96, only to vanish with the following generation in 2003 (W211).

The mono wiper helps makes the low drag coefficient of .34 possible.
Conceived by Italian engineers and executed by Germans years later in the A124 Cabriolet and its E-Class contemporaries. The gods are in the details. Bravo, Lamborghini! Bravo, Daimler-Benz!

In its day, the W124 had the most effective wipers
of any passenger car. (Photo: spannerhead.com)

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