It took some time, but I finally found another useless Japanese car innovation: the quick hand warmer! The Doctor sent me this nice useless innovation. It is a picture from a Japanese X70 brochure he owns.
Useless Japanese car innovation: the quick hand warmer
This quick hand warmer (QHW for short) was an option on the whole Toyota X70 (GX71 and MX70) range and served its purpose to warm the hands of the mid-level salarymen who bought this special option. Probably mostly used when they went golfing with their boss in Autumn…
Basically it is a minified hair dryer stuffed inside the steering column and operated by a switch right behind the air duct:
The quick hand warmer assembly from the EPC
You need a lot of amps going through the wires to bring a 12 volts unit quickly up to temperature, so Toyota installed an amplifier (87760) under the bonnet connected with a big lead to the unit in the steering column. I don’t want to know what will happen when this goes wrong with a short circuit or something!
Not such a bad idea if your heater is as slow to warm up as mine LOL