Vodafone
VM1

The Vodafone VM1 was the first mobile phone that Vodafone sold, although the term “mobile” can only be used loosely with this specific model. It was a phone designed to be installed in a car and was manufactured by Japan's Panasonic specifically for Vodafone and branded as such. In August 1983 Vodafone ordered 5,000 VM1 units from Panasonic and 5,000 of the Mobira-manufactured Vodafone VT1's (the other launch device). It chose two manufacturers as a means to minimise the risk of not having any phones for launch. This proved to be an astute move as at the time of launch in January 1985 only a few hundred VM1's had been delivered and a handful of evaluation units of the VT1.  The decision to order 10,000 units was considered pretty foolhardy at the time, but Vodafone felt it needed to make a meaningful commitment to get the manufacturers to take them seriously. This was particularly important as the new 1G analogue network technology (TACS) being used by Vodafone was only available in the UK at the time. The bulky receiver (typically in the boot/trunk of a car) was connected via a cable to a Vodafone-Racal branded handset mounted near the driver. There was also an antenna which would be mounted on the outside of the car to aid reception. It is most famous for being the phone that was used to make the first-ever mobile phone call on Vodafone’s UK network at midnight on 1 January 1985 (beating rival BT Cellnet by nine days). The call (pictured below) was made by Michael Harrison, the son of former Vodafone Chairman, Sir Ernest Harrison. Michael secretly left his family’s New Year’s Eve party at their home in Surrey in the UK to surprise his father by calling him from London’s Parliament Square. On New Year’s Day (1 January 1985), the UK’s “first public mobile phone call” was also made on the VM1, this time by UK comedian Ernie Wise. He arrived at St Katherine’s Dock in London in a 19th-century mail coach, representing one of the oldest forms of communication, sending a letter. The call he made was to Vodafone’s headquarters in Newbury, Berkshire. The Vodafone VM1 was a Class 1 device with an output of 10 watts. When it was first launched it cost £1,275, which went up to £1,350 once the hands-free kit was available. The installation cost of £100 rose to £125 with the hands-free kit. The initial connection to the network was £50. The first unit was sold by salesman Ivan Donn to his friend Mungo Park who paid £1,200 for the device. Mungo’s phone was installed in a Mercedes 450 SEL 6.9L. Vodafone mainly favoured hole-mount antennas so drilled holes in the roofs and wings of hundreds of thousands of luxury cars in the early years. Glass-mount antennas eventually took over when coverage improved sufficiently to tolerate their slightly poorer performance. A little-known fact is that to change the phone number on the VM1 an engineer had to remove the receiver unit from the car and take off the lid to change the dual in-line ROM chip. VM1 image: Vodafone