Can you retrofit cruise control?

01/04/2025 12:00 AM

Cruise control has become a standard feature in most new cars, but not so long ago it was an expensive optional extra or only fitted to high-end cars.

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Technically, cruise control dates all the way back to the first cars made. In 1908, the Peerless Car Company of the United States added a lever to its cars that maintained engine speed. The problem was that if you were going downhill, your speed would increase.

Modern cruise control wasn’t invented until 1948, when an American engineer, Ralph Teetor, became frustrated with drivers’ failure to maintain a specific speed and developed a more reliable system. The first car to be fitted with Teetor’s “constant speed regulator” was the 1958 Chrysler Imperial.

Cruise control then underwent numerous small changes until Mitsubishi developed adaptive cruise control in 1992. Over the next three decades, cruise control underwent even more changes to the point where vehicles are now (almost) self-driving.

But if you want the luxuries of a modern car in your older model, is it possible to fit cruise control retrospectively?

Can you retrofit cruise control?

Yes, kits are available to fit cruise control to most older vehicles. However, due to the nature of the modification, it should be undertaken by a professional auto electrician or mechanic.

The difficulty of fitting cruise control to a vehicle depends on a few factors, mainly the type of throttle it has.

Older cars use a manual, cable-actuated throttle body. Essentially, it’s just a cable that runs directly from your pedal to the butterfly on the throttle body, which opens to let air into the engine.

You can buy a universal cruise control kit that comes with an extra cable that holds the throttle in place of where you set it.

Sometimes, these kits are wired into the speed sensor that tells the vehicle what speed it is doing, but if you have a car that does not use a digital speed sensor, it will act like an early cruise control system that essentially just holds the throttle at a certain engine speed.

A kit for a cable-actuation cruise control system is usually around $1000 and takes about three to four hours to install. Depending on the shop undertaking the work, labour costs will be around $400 to $600.

On the other hand, most new vehicles have an electric throttle body or drive-by-wire. This throttle does not use a cable; instead, it sends a throttle input signal to your car’s computer, which tells the throttle body how much to open.

You can buy a ‘plug-and-play’ cruise control kit for your specific model of car. These are often cheaper because they require less moving parts and less installation time.

You can typically find a cruise control kit for a drive-by-wire system for around $400 to $1000, depending on your model. Then, it involves a typically two- to four-hour installation time, which is another $300 to $600, depending on the shop.

Again, it is a job best undertaken by a professional to ensure that it is installed correctly, and you should opt for a trustworthy brand. If installed incorrectly, it can cause the accelerator to jam in your vehicle.

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