Clearly, what we don't miss from the 80's is good taste!.

I do remember the joystick you speak of. Plus, graphic equalisers?, whatever happened to them?.

Richard Grant Accessories (RGA)?, my Dad put one of their front spoilers on our mk2 escort estate!. They would have a also sold the rear window louvres. As did German company Kamei, who's 1st product, I believe, was a front spoiler for the beetle to dramatically improve stability in crosswinds.

The electric aerials survived well past the 80's though, I worked in a Saab dealership from '90 to '95 and I clearly remember the noise they made going up and down!.

Graphic equalisers - cool! Spectrum analysers - even cooler! Saw a Ford (not sure which car though) with it in when me and my Dad visited the annual car show in the 1980s in Brum. Since then and until my last but one purchase (a Sony in 1992 - it lasted 15 years) I've always specified my HiFis with both - the LED versions were good, but the fluorescent displays were even better!

Talking of ICE in the 1980s, remember when cars had cassette tape racks down the centre console? Or you got a car with an auto-reverse tape player with Dolby NR? Sweet.

I actually bought the manufacturer's optional extra cassette player for my 2005-build Mazda3 as a treat (and other items) for saving money (£1000+) by getting a del miles one from a car supermarket.

Other 1980s items on car I remember:

• Door edge protectors with night reflective illuminance (not easy to fit nowadays with smaller tollerances and better fit and finish) - ugly but useful.
• Fake GTi and Ghia (and suchlike) badges on ordinary cars, and BMW owners taking off the 316i badge to pretend they owned a 320i.
• Smoked out lights - those on the Audi Quattro (cool!).
• Fords with radios with security codes (not cool - as we see on a near daily basis on the Technical Section - no-one wrote them down!) or others with removable panels.

I'll have a think about any more I can remember.

I've remembered a couple more from that "golden age" of motoring. Headlamp washers are still around (compulsory for the HID dazzlers) but there was a period when headlamp wipers were de rigueur. Upmarket Renaults with the "GTX" badge sported them, as did some Mercedes and BMWs, most Volvos and Saabs and even the Rover V8-S IIRC. Rolls Royce and Bentley even got in on the act with exquisitely elegant brushes, which knock the Bentayga's pop-out wash & smear effort into a cocked hat!
And another old favourite, the battery of supplementary warning gauges, mostly of zero practical use on public roads, and all but invisible when mounted right down in the console.

90s rather than 80s, but one oddity that I'm really glad never caught on was on the Peugeot 406 which had a fold-out keypad in the dash on which you had to enter a PIN code before you could start the engine.