What was the first production car with a GPS navigation system?

The 1990 Mazda Eunos Cosmo was the first production car with a built-in GPS navigation system. Its optional Car Control System integrated navigation into a futuristic touchscreen-equipped luxury coupé.

The Eunos Cosmo belonged to Mazda’s JC series and was sold in Japan from 1990 to 1995 through Mazda’s Eunos luxury channel. Its navigation system used GPS alongside stored digital maps and vehicle sensors such as wheel-speed information. Because early civilian GPS accuracy was limited, these additional inputs helped the system determine the car’s position more reliably.

The Cosmo’s dashboard was unusually advanced for its era. A color CRT touchscreen could control navigation, climate settings, a mobile phone, television, radio, and CD functions. The car was also Mazda’s only production model with a three-rotor engine, the twin-turbocharged 20B-REW.

A common mix-up is the 1994 Mercedes-Benz S-Class or BMW 7 Series. Those models helped popularize factory navigation in Europe, but the Eunos Cosmo introduced built-in GPS navigation earlier. Toyota’s 1987 navigation system is also sometimes mentioned because it used CD-ROM mapping, but it was not the same milestone.