Scicon Advert - October 1978

Whilst it feels like pretty much every modern car is more computer than motor, the idea of using electronics to manage some or all of a car's engine and performance dates back decades, with Engine Control Units first showing up in the late 1970s^[1].

In the case of this advert though, the vehicle in question is a 1978 Formula 1 racing car, with a microprocessor being used to monitor things like speed, suspension, g-forces and chassis roll.

The company doing it was Scicon Micro Systems, which was an operating division of Scientific Control Systems - a company first set up in 1967 as C-E-I-R Holdings Ltd by BP Trading Ltd and Kenilworth Oil Co as an investment company specialising in mathemtical analysis and computers^[2].

By 1968 it was renamed to Scientific Control Systems, and by 1979 the parent company became known as Scicon Holdings Ltd - a contraction of Scientific Control. By the latter half of the 1980s it had moved to Milton Keynes and had become a subsidiary of BP, with British Aerospace owning 25%, and by 1988 it was said to have been Britain's largest software company^[3].

The 1979 Panther De Ville saloon car, announced to the world in January 1979's Practical Computing. The built-in removable entertainment console, with the extra base unit housing the PET computer itself, can be seen in front

The PET as installed into the Panther De Ville. Chauffeur and bottle of single malt were no doubt extra. From Practical Computing, January 1979Perhaps the most impressive (or ludicrous) use of a microprocessor in a car has to be the installation of a Commodore PET 2001 into a 1979 Panther De Ville saloon car.

The De Ville - powered by a V12 Jaguar engine and styled like a 1930s Bugatti Royale - was hand-built, with only twelve a year being made.

It cost around £45,000 - which is around £290,000 in 2024 - and examples were apparently owned by Elton John, Liz Taylor, Oliver Reid and Sammy Davis Junior.

The addition of the PET cost another £2,000, or £12,800 in 2024, with the installation being undertaken by David Hughes of the recently-formed Thames Personal Computers Ltd.

The keyboard of the PET was built into a hinged lid of the regular radio, television and cocktail-cabinet console. The 2001's chiclet keyboard - which was said to have been "disappointing" and like a "calculator rather than a typewriter" in previous reviews^[4] - actually became an advantage on account of its compact size.

A close-up of the entertainment console and cocktail cabinet, showing radio controls, the miniature 3" Sony television, and the 2001's chiclet keyboard. The PET's external tape deck "datasette" can be made out below it. From Practical Computing, January 1979

Rather than have wires running from the PET computer itself - which was housed in an extra base unit - the system made innovative use of a wireless transmitter to connect its video output to the microscopic 3" Sony TV. Apparently even with this tiniest of TVs, the display was "remarkably clear and surprisingly readable^[5]".

The car was first shown at 1978's Motor Show in Birmingham, but the company actually waited for an article on the "Pet and the Panther" to appear in January 1979's Practical Computing before announcing it to the world.