Our five favourite Carpool feature stories of 2020

Whether it's because of the nostalgia or historic meaning associated with it, the unique take on something ordinary or simply because of the fun imagery, some stories just stick in your mind long after you’ve written or have read them.

In its fourth year of existence, carsales’ lifestyle and pop-culture destination, Carpool, has done its best to find the most weird, wonderful and helpful content in the car world.

It’s a place where we cover everything from road trips (when we’ve been allowed to leave our homes) to car hacks and tips, and from fun accessories and gadgets for your car to the quirkiest car-related stories you’ll read online.

Here is a list of five of our favourite Carpool feature stories that we have published in 2020.

Why are car brands changing their logos?

As the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right? For some car brands it is a little less about fixing but rather reinventing when it comes to updating a brand logo. For the same reasons someone might colour or cut off their hair after a relationship ends or buy a new bag when starting a new job. It’s just cosmetic after all.

In 2020 a few of the world’s biggest and most well-known car brands decided to freshen up their logos for the new decade. After the year we’ve all had, we’re sure 2021 will be full of new looks, logos and life mantras.

Five Australian Prime Ministerial cars through history

Today, it's taken for granted that a country's leader is chauffeured around in a luxurious, bullet-proof, large sedan to take them from engagement to engagement. That certainly wasn't always the case here in Australia. Over a century later, a fleet of vehicles across the country now serve the needs of members of parliament and special international dignitaries. We took a look back at where it all began as well as five Australian Prime Ministerial cars through history.

We decipher what cars famous cartoon families would own in real life

Have you ever thought to yourself “Hmm. I wonder what the real life version of this cartoon car would be?” No? Well neither had we until Coronavirus and working from home became a thing. Obviously cartoonists take inspiration from real life to create their artworks but sometimes it isn’t so cut and dry. So we decided to go digging through the 200k+ cars here on carsales and try and match them up with three of possibly the most famous cartoon family cars out there.

The Marshalite was the Melbourne made traffic signal that never took off

Australia’s intersections could have looked very different if a Melbourne engineer by the name of Charles Marshall had got his way. In the mid ‘30s, Marshall designed and manufactured his traffic signal alternative at his manufacturing engineering firm in Fitzroy. The traffic signal looked like a clock with two large discs, each around a metre in diameter set at right angles. There was a dial face on either side of the discs to face the oncoming traffic on all four intersecting roads. We took a look into the history of the Melbourne made traffic signal that never took off.

Nine car ads from the '90s that are a real blast from the past

The '90s was one interesting decade, full of great TV, questionable fashion choices and some pretty random car ads. We had just started our love affair with the world wide web, mobile phones were still able to break your foot and air-conditioning in cars was a luxury addition. We dug through the archives of history that is the internet to find nine car ads from the '90s that really give a good glimpse into the pre-millennium decade.