Good cars ruined by bad design.

[Barry Cade]

bmw e46 handbrake mechanism. Its mounted to the back plate, which rots out sendinf te various components into a spin cycle inside the disc.

I forgot about that- Big Volvo's do the same, but its a part of the aluminium hub that snaps off, causes carnage, and costs nearly a grand in parts when it goes. Never EVER apply the handbrake in a newer Volvo when you are moving.

 

Mk3 Transit doors cracking

 

Puma rear arches

 

Peugeot 206 handbrake cable clips

 

Punto wiper linkages

 

Stilo coil springs

 

Saab 9-5 heater fans/ motors

[Cavcraft]

Oh aye, forgot about Transit doors cracking, they didn't all do it but plenty enough of them did. A bit like the diffs which were really hit and miss.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Removing the speedo drive cable from any car where it clips into the back of the speedo unit.

The clip is from the mind of Dr Rubik and the method to get there would involve breaking my arm/hand/fingers in 50 places.

I can still vividly remember the uncomfortable pain of having to do this.

Not sure of the Statute of Limitations on this ,so won't comment,or mention when a mate* coloured in the first digit on a Carlton speedo because he couldn't get his hand behind the clocks. Or when another mate( not me this time) presented a lovely 3 year old Montego Gti for its first MOT and the tester said 'Fuck me, this is doing well for 580,000 miles!' My genius mate hadn't realised there were six digits when he lined up the mileage.

[cort16]

With the puna arches would have thought (not ford obviously ) a set of women's tights wouldn't be sufficient as an inner arch guard?

 

Another one is swirl flaps on BMW Diesel engines . I wonder how many motors that's claimed to date?

[saucedoctor]

BMW "TU" Piss Flaps can be removed from the shaft, and the assembly refitted, or someone will make you alloy blanking plates. According to my tame BMW breaker, the flaps have lunched many more engines than BMW would care to admit. They don't even do all that much anyway - they're supposed to make it run smoother at idle, or some such bollocks. Once removed, I don't think anyone can notice any difference. The version of the M47 used by Rover doesn't have them, as it's not the Technical Update (TU) version of the engine.

[twosmoke300]

Not really a problem unless you have a pedantic MOT tester but Corsa b 3drs always seem to crack on the body swage line just behind the doors.

[Formula Autos]

+1

 

I just want to open the window a couple of inches

 

Oh bugger it's going all the way down

 

Press "up"

 

Bzzzzz... Now it's shut again

 

Press "down"

 

Bzzzzz... Now it's opening all the bloody way

 

...etc etc, until you manage to press the button just hard enough to stop it going down but not hard enough to make it go up again.

 

Having tried, and failed, to open a front window in my FIL's Mondeo Mk3, my MIL (in a fair bit of a rage) christened such things "idiot windows".

 

I have used this term myself ever since.

 

One for the lexicon, perhaps?

[rml2345]

Those BMW diesels remind me... Rover fitting the clutch slave cylinder for the 75 INSIDE the gearbox so that if it goes it's an absolute arse to mend.

Lovely car otherwise.

[Cavcraft]

Those BMW diesels remind me... Rover fitting the clutch slave cylinder for the 75 INSIDE the gearbox so that if it goes it's an absolute arse to mend.

Lovely car otherwise.

 

 

See also SAAB and Vectra for the same stupid idea.

[Ghosty]

Back seats on Mk5 Fiestas. Arse numbingly hard/flat, no headroom, and a window aperture about two inches thick, so it's more like looking through a porthole... After a few hours in one of those, I had quite bad lower back pain for a week or so.

 

and rear seats in 9N Polos. Sit in them, and they're wonderfully comfy buckets. Plenty of space and all!

But why are they buckets?

Because the body roll etc from the beam axle would throw you to the other side of the car on corners if it was a flat seat.

 

Also had no room for my head in the back of a 58-plate Avensis...

[Asimo]

Mk5 Fiestas.

 

9N Polos. 

 

Genius, four-door two-seaters.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

See also SAAB and Vectra for the same stupid idea.

Had to part with £500 on Christmas Eve for new clutch on Mrs N's Freelander 2 due to this brilliant piece of design. The clutch was ok but for sake of £150 parts I had it done anyway whilst the gearbox was out. To add insult to injury on the invoice it's printed. ' we cannot warranty this repair,due to dmf not being replaced' No vibration or rattle but the robbing bastard still wanted another £350 to put one in.

All modern cars iz shit!

[cort16]

Focuses also have slave cylinder inside the box. I saw a tidy 52 plate one go to the bin because of it recently.

[cort16]

Vectra indicators

[Ghosty]

Mk5 Fiestas.

 

9N Polos. 

 

Genius, four-door two-seaters.

My experiences are actually in 3dr versions, but I don't think 5dr ones would be any different.

[Barry Cade]

Not really a problem unless you have a pedantic MOT tester but Corsa b 3drs always seem to crack on the body swage line just behind the doors.

Is a fail though- within 30 cm of the seatbelt mount.

[twosmoke300]

Tis indeed a fail . Same as rust around the alpine windows in discoveries . Within 30cm of the rear upper seat belt mounts.

 

Nearly all cars seem to have the internal concentric slave cylinder set up now . God knows why . Supposed to be a better clutch action but Hondas stuck with external cylinders for years and have lovely clutches.

[Junkman]

All modern cars iz shit!

 

^^

This.

 

I want to see one single post-1986 designed car that isn't one big exercise in bad design.

If you let computers do the designing, instead of humans, only a massive pile of shit can possibly ensue.

It'll soon be 30 years of increasing dehumanisation in automotive design and manufacture, and the next generation of cars likely won't even provide sufficient room for human beings riding in them, I bet. You'll have your new car on the drive, so the neighbors can see it, but you'll do your traveling on the computer in 3D, while sitting on the bog, or with your old Autoshite.

I'm not surprised the industry is in dire straights, since cranking out ever more insolent tosh that completely defies the purpose the car was initially invented for can't make for a sustainable future.

Cars haven't been built with the intention to be good since the 80s, they are merely built to meet imaginative market positions that in reality don't exist, i.e. are artificially created via propaganda. The current automotive landscape is a bewildering array of absolute waste of raw materials.

It shares its unimaginativeness with other industries, that equally suffer from absolutely zero real innovation for an entire generation by now.

It went the wrong way a long time ago, but instead of addressing the root causes, merely symptoms are cured by artificially compensating them away with silicone idiots that have TLAs.

This nonsense has to stop. What is required is a reset to 198x and some clean sheets of paper. Then real engineers should start designing cars that are intended to be good and sensibly meet the requirements of today in terms of efficiency, environmental sustainability, and waste management. But for this, innovation would be required, I'm afraid. And that would require using brains, not computers, hence I do realise how absurd my idea is.

[cort16]

Old cars had shit designs too like the ignition being lined up with your knee cap so if you crash the key goes through your knee, petrol tanks practically in the back bumper, shit brakes and the fact you have to grease nipples every 12 miles or the wheels fall off.

[cort16]

What are the UFO brakes you sometimes see in reference to older audis?

[dollywobbler]

I think you go too far Junkman. Give me fuel injection over carbs pretty much any day of the week. 

[Junkman]

Old cars had shit designs too like the ignition being lined up with your knee cap so if you crash the key goes through your knee, petrol tanks practically in the back bumper, shit brakes and the fact you have to grease nipples every 12 miles or the wheels fall off.

 

I won't argue this for a second, but they were designed to then current standards with the intention to be good cars, not merely meet an imaginative lifestyle that only exists in the illusion of some deranged marketing mong.

By the mid 80s, a reasonable standard of safety, reliability and longevity had been reached by most major manufacturers. What should have happened next is to improve the physical economy, however, this didn't happen. Everything was sacrificed for the sake of financial economy, and financial economy only.

[Junkman]

I think you go too far Junkman. Give me fuel injection over carbs pretty much any day of the week. 

 

Fuel injection and electronic ignition were well established by the mid 80s.

Personally, I prefer carbs. They do gasify liquid fuels, exactly what is needed to operate an internal combustion engine.

Injection systems do no such thing and are therefore a compromise. 

[Parky]

^^

This.

 

I want to see one single post-1986 designed car that isn't one big exercise in bad design.

If you let computers do the designing, instead of humans, only a massive pile of shit can possibly ensue.

It'll soon be 30 years of increasing dehumanisation in automotive design and manufacture, and the next generation of cars likely won't even provide sufficient room for human beings riding in them, I bet. You'll have your new car on the drive, so the neighbors can see it, but you'll do your traveling on the computer in 3D, while sitting on the bog, or with your old Autoshite.

I'm not surprised the industry is in dire straights, since cranking out ever more insolent tosh that completely defies the purpose the car was initially invented for can't make for a sustainable future.

Cars haven't been built with the intention to be good since the 80s, they are merely built to meet imaginative market positions that in reality don't exist, i.e. are artificially created via propaganda. The current automotive landscape is a bewildering array of absolute waste of raw materials.

It shares its unimaginativeness with other industries, that equally suffer from absolutely zero real innovation for an entire generation by now.

It went the wrong way a long time ago, but instead of addressing the root causes, merely symptoms are cured by artificially compensating them away with silicone idiots that have TLAs.

This nonsense has to stop. What is required is a reset to 198x and some clean sheets of paper. Then real engineers should start designing cars that are intended to be good and sensibly meet the requirements of today in terms of efficiency, environmental sustainability, and waste management. But for this, innovation would be required, I'm afraid. And that would require using brains, not computers, hence I do realise how absurd my idea is.

 

Can't agree enough with this. The last 20 years have given us fatter, heavier cars with less visibility and zero feel in the controls. At least we have more side impact bars and airbags to protect us from the accidents caused as a result of the reduced visibility....

 

We should by now have aluminium chassis with fibreglass panels (or some more advanced composite material) for low weight, legislation determining how much visibility should be included in designs, and simple bolt in mods for engines-rather like how we can easily update our computers.

 

We should now have light cars averaging 75mpg under any conditions. That's what we were promised in the 1988 Earls Court motor show brochure!

[dugong]

Fuel injection and electronic ignition were well established by the mid 80s.

Personally, I prefer carbs. They do gasify liquid fuels, exactly what is needed to operate an internal combustion engine.

Injection systems do no such thing and are therefore a compromise. 

Except with turbos. Blow-through carbs are a joke with a turbo (see Renault 5GTT hot-start murderousness), 

 

Also, autochoke carburettors. They can FRO, too. 

[Junkman]

What are the UFO brakes you sometimes see in reference to older audis?

 

I think you mean the brakes Audi introduced for the then new V8 in 1989.

They were restricted by 15" wheels so even the biggest conventional discs that fit inside the wheels didn't provide enough swept area for their taste.

What they did then is in order to increase the swept area, they essentially used a sort of brake drum with the actual disc bolted to the inside and mounted the caliper inside this arrangement. This way, they could make the disc so big that it just about fit inside the wheel, because no space between the disk and the wheel was required for the caliper.

 

Edit:

 

Found a pic.

 

Note how the 'UFO' acts as a carrier for the actual disc and the caliper 'gripping' from the inside.

[mercrocker]

Most annoying design faults in my motors -

 

VW T25 stupid oil filler - 90 deg to crankcase.  Its like herding cats up a dog-lined hill....

Morris 1000 - Unbelievably shite inner body construction methods trap moisture everywhere

BMC Farina - Fugging ridiculous oil change arrangements - filter bowl restricted downwards by crossmember, negotiating the new bastard back up and then against the spring (whilst its full of oil as it is supposed to be).   Plenty of these cars were wasted by garages just wiping the old oil off the bowl, chucking somebody elses old element in the boot and ticking the box on the service sheet.   Almost every attempt at using a spin on conversion usually ends in OMGF.OILALLUPTHEROAD

Morris Cowley - Offset steering column and all dials/switches in another county.   You can hold a barn dance in the front but not switch on the wipers from the driving position.   

Mercedes 190E - An exercise in perfection, only spoilt by the manufacturers' dogged inability to ever come up with anything remotely as good to replace it.   Which means I am condemned to driving rusty cars for the rest of my life.....

[cort16]

Cheers junk man that's some amount of engineering to fit a wheel.

[HMC]

Fuel injection and electronic ignition were well established by the mid 80s.

Personally, I prefer carbs. They do gasify liquid fuels, exactly what is needed to operate an internal combustion engine.

Injection systems do no such thing and are therefore a compromise.

 

Junkman' shares his perspective with none other than Enzo Ferrari, who when quizzed by Paul

Frere on the same subject, opined that if fuel injection had been around for years then someone came up with a carb people would marvel at its simplicity and efficiency.

 

Mind you, when asked about the big bhp deficit yet similar top speeds of d types compared with a contempory ferrari at Le Mans he reconed aerodynamics were for people who couldn't build decent engines!

[Cavcraft]

I don't agree about post 1986 cars, there's been some great motors knocked up since then. Also in the 1960s1970s/1980s people would have said the same about the previous decades.