What's your fetish?

[Shirley Knott]

Non sunroof cars.

 

^This

 

I've always managed to have the sense to avoid owld/cheap cars with a sunroof,  threw caution to the wind and made a recent exception to the rule with the 940....

 

#InstantRegret.

[Matt]

1980's style aftermarket spot and fog lights.

 

vw scirocco mk1 gti by david, on Flickr

 

Volvo 740 by Håkon Arnljot, on Flickr

 

1991 Ford Sierra Laser by Tiarnan, on Flickr

 

 

[Ghosty]

R8s, for what immensely capable do-it-all motoring they are, an ideal daily in my eyes.

 

Square/boxy styling, as epitomised by Volvos, and three-box full-size American cars like the Caprice Classic.

 

Fonts on gauges.

[davocano]

The sound of an idling big block V8 makes me go a bit gooey inside my pants.

[rml2345]

Volvos.

[Richard]

I like clever mechanisms, which Volvo are very good at. 

 

The head restraints on the 940 retract automatically when you fold the seat forward. This video also shows the board that flips down to cover the gap.

 

 

The built-in booster seat on 850s. I could only find one video, the guy makes a massive meal of it and the seat appears to be broken.

 

[robinmasters]

Steel wheels. Painted black. Phwoarrrr.

[JeeExEll]

However my main Fetish (car wise) is a rear wiper. I fitted one to all my Minis except the Clubman estate and have had one on every car since. The C4 VTS only has a tiny rear wiper (nobody's perfect).

 

My Minis and 1st Metro showing rear wiper;

 

My Cars 01a.jpg

 

Tiny rear wiper on VTS

 

IMG_4837.JPG

[jon.k]

Any old car or commercial vehicle which is has somehow outlived all its contemporaries and is going about it business in tatty unrestored condition as just an old car, not as a classic.

[Guest Hooli]

Lotus Carlton...............

Most wanted 'normal' car ever made for me.

[JeeExEll]

Non sunroof cars.

I like tilt/slide steel sunroofs. Especially on 60s and 70s cars. Even more especially on basic models.

 

Also like side-opening tailgates on old US station wagons where the frameless rear window can wind down into the tailgate.

 

Someone mentioned the chrome Ford 3-speed auto T-shifter. Nice. Reminds me of my Raleigh Chopper too.

 

Also, given the choice I usually prefer the version of a car without the bodykit.

See BMW e28 M535i / 535i. And the 1980s Saab 900s.

 

Oh, one more, - where the whole front end of the car tilts forward to reveal the engine and all the other gubbins, like an E-type or a Herald or a Corvette C4.

[TripleRich]

Big family cars, especially ones made by Chrysler in the early 70s.

 

[Shirley Knott]

I like clever mechanisms, which Volvo are very good at. 

 

The head restraints on the 940 retract automatically when you fold the seat forward. This video also shows the board that flips down to cover the gap.

 

 

The built-in booster seat on 850s. I could only find one video, the guy makes a massive meal of it and the seat appears to be broken.

 

 

 

 

My 940 has the built in booster seat as well as the retracting headrests in the rear seats. A clever system for sure.

[warren t claim]

I've always thought that attaching the rear head restraints to the headlining of estate cars and hatches would make perfect sense. 

[Lord Sterling]

High spec cars crammed with useless technology. Like electrically adjustable rear seats ala: Mk1 Rover Sterling, Mercedes S-Class, BMW 7 and the Ford Granada Scorpio.

 

Big Vehicle Monitor computers with all sorts of buttons (that don't usually do anything interesting or read out accurately, see: Mk1 Rover 827/Sterling) factory/dealer fitted TVs in headrests ala BMW 7 et al...

 

Remote central locking, great when they work.

 

The difference between early production models and later. Things often get cheapened during production run, I like fitting earlier higher-quality trim or higher spec trim to lower spec model cars ala: Ma's Micra but not of course to base-spec Sierras.

 

Big on my list though is stuff like proper dealer/factory fitted floor mats. Door cards with nice leather inserts and believe it or not; vehicle manuals and thier wallets. All these small items make for a car thats nice and complete for me.

[4wheeledstool]

The G Lader - excellent noise, and an interesting engineering solution.

 

 

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-Lader&ved=2ahUKEwib1euLt-jcAhVCYsAKHTXJBikQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw2nmpoW2qbOTPhY3tP7MrGC

[Amishtat]

The sound of a six cylinder engine being given a good footful. In particular, the gorgeous noise of a pack of Triumph 2000s at Foxhall or better yet Mildenhall.

[Amishtat]

Further to the above, there's a YouTube video of two Mk. 1 2.5 P.I.s going round a small race circuit in Australia, one in fast road spec and one a race car. The latter just sounds ridiculously good. Sorry, not clever enough to figure out how to post a link but it's titled Triumph 2500x2

[fatharris]

Orange indicators.

 

So much so that when I buy one without orange indicators, there's a high chance I'll tint them myself. Done it to four cars already.

 

Also, gauge fonts of more than two colours. The Xantia was good for this.

[Faker]

I have a torch fetish!

[drivewaymyway]

Leccy windows is mine. Growing up with decent spec BL cars then poverty spec furrin cars, placcy winders would have to be carefully used to try and pretend the old man had ticked the option box.

 

The fascination lived on with the position of the switches, the thought behind the decision on why to locate them wherever.

 

Favorites are obviously the Alfa roof mounted switches for the airline pilot look at toll booths. The Megan’s RX4 rears being down by the driver’s right knee. BMW 8 series rear passengers not having any switches at all. Pug 604 rears on the shelf. Renault 21 and Pug 405 rears on the trans tunnel and perfect for being twatted by size 10s as they shuffle along the bench.

 

Lancia Y10 LX spec had Leccy rear hinged windows. Spent an hour at a Lancia stand at a local car show just marveling at this. I know BMW Compacts has this, as did the Fiat Ullyse.

 

I was also fascinated in the little blank rear isolation switches - usually little blank buttons. Sierra, Stellar GSL, BMW, Granada, Senator etc.

 

It’s all a little boring now with door arm-rest mounted switch packs.

 

Am I to understand that the top end Fiat Stilo Multiwagons has roof mounted switches? Heard a rumour but never bottomed it out.

 

Has anyone here ever had the pleasure of operating the sliders on a certain Datsun Sunny Coupe?

 

Or had the pleasure of lowering and raising that tiny window on a 929 coupe?

 

I know I have a problem....

 

 

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Fiat 127 pivoting front quarter light and tilt out rear windows.. Same on the Citroen Berlingo I have had both cars.. Pivoting quarter lights, come on car designers lets add some proper retro..

[Junkman]

My Vintage Tyre.
 
Embrittled in honour classic* rubber, depending on the vehicle in radial or crossply flavour,

extra hard horn growage ensuing if they are of the full grandpa spec 8 ply knobbly Winter variety.
Rover V8s for example are only really fun to drive if shod with 40 year old Pirelli P6es

(guess how I found out) and utterly boring if you replace those with some freshly vulcanised Vredestein shit.
I'm seriously sifting through the once free, now severely censored, internet, in search of some crumbly Michelins in the correct size for my R16.
I hope this will come together before it'll carry four people and their belongings on an extended Continental road trip in September,

the purpose of which being to load it up with even more heavy tat obtained there (note: warped Norevs don't count, they weigh nothing),

delightfully testing fossil caoutchouc sidewall strength in the most death defying way gay abandon allows.

 

I miss the times when I hooned big septic bloody V8 chod on good old F70-15 Polyglas GTs.

 

I could also write a thing or two about driving with end of life dampers, but that just wouldn't be pre watershed material.

[jamesC.]

1970s dealer accessories for Datsuns and by extension 70s/80s mods in general. Cars with an old style Irish reg. 1960s buildings and motorways, Oh and the year 1979 (this is mainly due to music but cars seemed to start getting more boring around this time anyway)

[chodweaver]

 

My fetish I guess is things which light up, especially if unusual. Such as instrument stalks:

 

 

I even went to the lengths of converting the BX window switches to illuminated:

IMG_0217.jpg

 

IMG_0220.jpg

 

But back to the Stellar - one of the big attractions to me as an 8 year old was the rear reading lights. I used to love long journeys late at night, where I would read a book while the miles sped by. In my teens they would occasionally get used whilst 'getting cosy' in the back seat

 

Nowadays I'm always driving, and generally alone so the only time I get to experience these wonders is if I sleep in the back - but just how welcoming is this?

DSC_8809.jpg

^^^^^ This. Just so much, this.

 

Electric power in a car is like free power. So every opportunity should be used to make the inside light up or glow and correctly illuminate the controls and the ways in and out of the vehicle: lights in the footwells - with a light coloured carpet a warm glow can make the interior a cosy and welcoming place - I don't think anything will top the Vel Satis for that. And lights in the bottoms of the doors - to show you the ground your stepping out onto and to alert other road users that the door is open - these should be compulsory for every car.

 

But most of all, the dash and switchgear - no light should be allowed to leak out through cracks and gaps in badly put together trim. Bulbs or LEDs should cast a gentle light on the transmission tunnel and seats, but brightly into the ashtrays and oddment bins and definitely do a proper job in the glove compartment. The contents of my car's glovebox should not become a mystery after dark! Map reading and courtesy lights MUST ALL WORK. I've spent many happy hours replacing bust bulbs and upgrading individual lights (HVAC, accessory socket/cigar lighters and electric window switches) to LED but never done a full clocks LED upgrade. One day...

 

A current bugbear is in the Folkarse - Ford took a leaf out of BMW's book and put red lighting into the radio and information centre displays - it's too bright, it cannot be dimmed, but worst of all, I cannot for the life of me focus (ahem) properly on either display. Really stupidly annoying.

 

I AM very picky when it comes to dash and instrument lighting colours - everything in green is a bit indistinct and boring - I had enough of that with an early Metro 1.3S (though the digital clock display was nice).

 

The bright blue shit that VW went for a few years ago looked very snazzy at first, but I reckon if I'd had one, I'd have found it wearing to look at rather quickly, and then about as appealing as a UV money checker after a while.

 

I cannot fault the MR2 - a combination of a decent* Kenwood head unit, set to blue rather than red, complimented the rest of the instrument backlighting, with clocks with white lettering and orange needles with yellow tips, iirc. So that's where all the money that an MR2 cost new went...

[gtd2000]

Back in the day, many things.

 

These days, cheap tax and high MPG do it for me

[Snipes]

I'm aware of a few Japanese cars with frameless windows even on the four-doors; I'm also aware of some pillarless coupes, but all the saloons I can think of had the upper section of B-post, same as cars with framed windows. Heck, a Triumph Herald has no window frames on the doors, but it does have that pillar. What does it for me is the unbroken space when you wind all the windows down. Two doors, like an old Celica, or Huggy, work well enough, but four..... ooh it makes me shiver!

Facel Vega: I'll hold my hand up, I forgot about that. But it was hardly a commonplace mainstream car like a 1960 Chevy Impala, now was it?

 

I did also like watching my pop-up headlights going up or down too.

Tell you what else works: red velour interior. Oooooh!

All the big Japanese brands made pillarless saloons and coupes but almost never sold them in the UK. I have to admit not all of them managed to drop the rear door window fully. Observe the U11 Bluebird SSS;

 

[MorrisItalSLX]

I thought of some more!

 

Original stereos. Nothing bothers me more than a modern flashy CD bluetooth jobbie held in with cable ties and scotch locks in the chopped up dash. Give me a mono AM/FM Cassette any day! When I bought the Jag, the modern Pioneer CD AUX thing was binned in favour of a late 90s Pioneer radio cassette. I'm still on the lookout for a factory Jaguar radio cassette.

 

Dealership tat. Stickers, Number Plates, Logbook stamps, buisiness cards in the original document wallet etc.

 

Twin door mirrors. Just a symmetry thing.

[binhoker668]

I'm so glad you said that. It's unmistakable.

Obviously unless you buy a new car every week or work in a dealer it's hard to keep yourself topped up, but a place I used to work at had packaging made with the same glue, or foam, or whatever it was that smelled. I just used to sit with my head in the boxes thinking of Sierras and Granadas.

 

THIS.  I used to always get my dad to stop at the Ford dealership in Larne so that I could nip in and get the latest issue of 'Cars'.  Glorious nose-full of new Ford smell whilst there.

I used to read every bit of that brochure.  Mmmmmmm......pushbutton tape holders.     Mmmmmmm.....joystick balance/fade control............

[Tadhg Tiogar]

….The bright blue shit that VW went for a few years ago looked very snazzy at first, but I reckon if I'd had one, I'd have found it wearing to look at rather quickly, and then about as appealing as a UV money checker after a while....

 

Blue seems to be the default colour to represent electric / hybrid cars now.

[Talbot]

All the options. Every single last one of them. Every single button possible with all the fiddly functions available. Backlit at night, and all vying for attention. Also information overload.. I want every single dial possible, every readout and every bit of information that exists presented to me.

 

But not in a menu system like modern mercs and BMs.. it needs to all be shown all the time all at once.

 

Basically an aircraft cockpit.