Driver unfriendly car features

[Guest Hooli]

You press the stalk in the same direction to stop it iirc.  When I last had a car with this arrangement, I hated it until I'd got used to it... then it was great!  3 flashes with just a flick- ideal for changing lanes or indicating through roundabouts   Takes some getting used to, though.

 

Reminds me of indicators on Hardley Ablesons (& BMWs I think) where you have a left n right button on the left & right switch gear, to cancel you press the same direction you are indicating in. For once the japs got it right with a simple switch you flick left or right to indicate & press to cancel.

[brandersnatch]

Reminds me of indicators on Hardley Ablesons (& BMWs I think) where you have a left n right button on the left & right switch gear, to cancel you press the same direction you are indicating in. For once the japs got it right with a simple switch you flick left or right to indicate & press to cancel.

For added fun* on the BMWs to cancel there is a third button under the left button which had to be pushed up to cancel.

 

 

One’s too many, ten’s not enough!

[binhoker668]

I would never drive a car with cup holders. Drink yer coffee before/after your journey, it's not rocket surgery.

 

No.

[MikeR]

spare wheels , best location I had was in the right hand rear wing of a Volvo , and it was full size ......with room to spare ( sic ) for tools , jack and my stuff ...

 

now they are some thin speed restricted disc , under the dead weight  in the boot , which has to be unloaded  .... and where does the flat full size wheel go ..

 

it wont even fit in the wheel well !!!     so now you possibly have a brake dust encrusted wheel as a passenger !!!

 

great if you are on a trip with a full car and boot !

[Talbot]

and where does the flat full size wheel go .. it wont even fit in the wheel well !!!     so now you possibly have a brake dust encrusted wheel as a passenger !!! great if you are on a trip with a full car and boot !

I've often wondered the same thing. Space-saver wheels are all well and good, but what do you do with the full size wheel when it's been removed?

 

That said, I've not had a puncture in years and years. Electrical failures, split hoses, perished fuel system rubber components, and various other problems, but the last puncture I had was my own fault when I hit a steel-lined kerb. Before that, I can't even remember. Must be well over a decade ago, possibly longer.

[Jazoli]

For added fun* on the BMWs to cancel there is a third button under the left button which had to be pushed up to cancel.

 

 

One’s too many, ten’s not enough!

 

One button or ten ???

[stonedagain]

I've often wondered the same thing. Space-saver wheels are all well and good, but what do you do with the full size wheel when it's been removed?

 

That said, I've not had a puncture in years and years. Electrical failures, split hoses, perished fuel system rubber components, and various other problems, but the last puncture I had was my own fault when I hit a steel-lined kerb. Before that, I can't even remember. Must be well over a decade ago, possibly longer.

My Boxster has the optional 18 inch alloys, the rears don't fit in either of the trunks! In the even of a puncture,the wheel has to go on the passenger seat & the passenger walks home!

[SierraMikeHotel]

Thoroughly enjoying this thread, and I'm amused that Pillock and I have the same gripes about modern Mercs.

 

More than once the automatic headlamps have come on (and it's not always obvious, for example in daylight but going through a wooded area), and after a couple of people have flashed me I've realised that they've come on at full beam. There must be a reason why I've hit the stalk in the right way to make that happen - probably because I was intending to interact with the cruise control!

 

What I really, really hate on that car though is the telephone dial that interacts with the computer. It takes forever to enter a postcode.

 

Touch screens can be good and bad. I like the Toyota one, for example. However anything that you need to interact with on the move (volume, heating etc) should have a physical control that you can adjust without taking your eyes off the road to dig through menus. An example on the Merc: there isn't a single button press to skip to the next track (unless you've got the music display up, which you can't if you're using the sat nav).

 

The controls for cruise on the Saab are a bit odd but it doesn't have any other irritating habits. I hadn't realised how rare that is until I started thinking about it for this thread. Oh, as I mentioned above, the fog light switches are hidden but that's true on a lot of cars.

[Junkman]

And Junkman, what 1918 car had auto transmission?  I didn't know they even had synchromesh back then.

See, with those there manual gearboxes, you even need makeshift (pun intended) solutions like synchromesh to make them remotely useable.

 

Even the most modern automatic can trace its origins to an epicyclic gearbox developed in 1904 by the Sturtevant brothers of Boston in that Massachusetts (to put this into perspective, this was a mere 26 years after the last person was trialled for witchcraft in that state).

 

It had two forward ratios, the change being made by centrifugal weights. Although there may have been earlier automatics, this is the first one I know about.

 

But to answer your question, in 1918 ZF released a hydraulically operated four speed automatic that became available in several German high end cars like Maybach and Stoewer a year later.

[martc]

Reminds me of indicators on Hardley Ablesons (& BMWs I think) where you have a left n right button on the left & right switch gear, to cancel you press the same direction you are indicating in. For once the japs got it right with a simple switch you flick left or right to indicate & press to cancel.

 

MZ's and 80's Guzzis (these are the ones I can remember) had indicator switches which moved vertically - up for right, down for left, like a 'normal' car, I think they were mounted on the right hand side, which would qualify them for entry into the 'right hand side indicator stalk (switch)' thread.

[LostnotFound]

That said, I've not had a puncture in years and years.

Bloody hell that takes some balls to post. You might as well price up a new tyre now!

 

My focus which has picked up enough nails through the years has a bloody space saver, just what you want after pissing around in the rain at midnight after a shift to then get to drive home at half speed knowing you're going to have to dick around with it again the next day, no just chucking the loose one in a tyre place to be picked up after work when it's done.

[martc]

to put this into perspective, this was a mere 26 years after the last person was trialled for witchcraft in that state

 

Were the witches tried for predicting a machine which changes gears automatically, thus fore-telling the work of the devil?

[Junkman]

Were the witches tried for predicting a machine which changes gears automatically, thus fore-telling the work of the devil?

 

A man was tried. The case was dismissed since nobody, not even a septic judge, wouldn't welcome such a machine.

[MikeR]

Bloody hell that takes some balls to post. You might as well price up a new tyre now!

 

My focus which has picked up enough nails through the years has a bloody space saver, just what you want after pissing around in the rain at midnight after a shift to then get to drive home at half speed knowing you're going to have to dick around with it again the next day, no just chucking the loose one in a tyre place to be picked up after work when it's done.

 

I keep a full size spare in the garage , it dont match being a steelie , but at least I can do full speed !!!

[Talbot]

Bloody hell that takes some balls to post. You might as well price up a new tyre now!

£25 from the local part-worn emporium, although my current car carries a full-size, in the rear wing, accessable even when laden.

 

I'm no stranger to having to change a tyre in shitty conditions though. I've snapped the weld on an old-fashied Cross-brace before now due to some tyre monkey rattle-gunning my wheel bolts up to near-ductile-failure. Due to being 18 and having no breakdown cover I had to walk several miles in the pissing rain to borrow a socket and 4' breaker bar, then the same miles back to the car, change the wheel while freezing cold and piss-wet through, drive back to where I'd borrowed the socket and breaker from, then home. All at about 1am. Never been so cold in my life.

 

These days I think I would just set fire to the car.

[Talbot]

That said, I've not had a puncture in years and years.

Actually, that's bollocks. Just remembered, I got a puncture about 4 years ago on the M20. It was only a slow puncture, and I could probably have blown it back up a couple of times to get back home, but as I had a full-size spare it made sense to change it.

 

... but before that, I genuinely don't think I've had a puncture for at least a decade. Even with the above incident, flat tyres still rank very low on my FTP reasons. For me, carrying a basic toolkit and some odds and sods is far more important than a spare tyre.

[bunglebus]

Hidden foglight switch and headlight level adjustment on Ford Grand Torneo. No wonder there are always people driving around with fog lights on for weeks after a misty morning.

 

Bonnet releases hidden or still on the left on RHD cars. My Renault 5 was guilty of this.

 

Cruise control/indicator stalk on Pug Boxer vans, always hitting the fucking indicator stalk when trying to cancel the cruise on the motorway, which results in the indicators flashing three times, so people think you're changing lanes. Gah. Also has a really annoying part on the bottom of the dash which catches my foot every time I come off the clutch.

 

Full beam stalk on my old VW bus was annoying, if you flashed full beam during the day, the lights came on on full beam the next time you used them, you had to flash twice so they went back to off. Also had an orange full beam light for no apparent reason.

[Guest Hooli]

My Mk2 polo had the same daft main beam thing, double flash was the only answer there too.

[Ohdearme]

I keep a full size spare in the garage , it dont match being a steelie , but at least I can do full speed !!!

I had a brand new 2004 BMW 5 series for a company car with run flats. Driving down the M1 the puncture sensor illuminated the dashboard and the idrive put up a long message saying something like ‘pressure loss detected, vehicle has run flats and it is safe to proceed at max speed’ Excellent.

 

However, the important second bit of the message ‘...of 50km/h’ didn’t fit on the page and would only be revealed by turning the idrive to scroll down the rest of the message.

 

In my case it was a duff sensor not an actual puncture though.

 

On the subject of idrive-esque things the dial on the wife’s Audi A1 is backwards, who would turn a dial anti-clockwise to go down a menu list?

 

Right should be down, left should be up. Idiots.

[SierraMikeHotel]

 

 

On the subject of idrive-esque things the dial on the wife’s Audi A1 is backwards, who would turn a dial anti-clockwise to go down a menu list?

 

Right should be down, left should be up. Idiots.

On the Merc the image on the screen rotates the opposite way from how you're turning the dial. Hateful thing.

[Talbot]

Full beam stalk on my old VW bus was annoying, if you flashed full beam during the day, the lights came on on full beam the next time you used them, you had to flash twice so they went back to off. Also had an orange full beam light for no apparent reason.

They have a mechanical latching relay for dip-beam to main-beam transfer, with electrical actuation for the latch coming from the main-beam flash circuit, hence even when the headlamps were off, if you flash the headlamps, the relay mechanically latches over to Main-beam.

 

Essentially, there's no difference between a headlamp flash and a changeover from main to dip. I presume it was done for penny-pinching reasons.

[Uncle Jimmy]

Sat navs, parking sensors, 'entertainment' screens of any sort, electronic handbrakes, most glass which is not horizontal or roughly vertical.

[John F]

Are they as hopeless as Calibra headlights?

 

No dipped-beam headlights have ever been invented that are worse than those fitted to a Calibra, and I say that as a Calibra owner.

 

Shining your phone screen forwards through the front window gives a noticeable improvement in road illumination.

[dozeydustman]

Ford/Jag/Landrover windscreen washer button on the end of the stalk, not flick toward you for squirty like 99.9% of all other cars.

 

EDIT - why can't all manufacturers agree on a common system for column stalks?

[Tadhg Tiogar]

No dipped-beam headlights have ever been invented that are worse than those fitted to a Calibra, and I say that as a Calibra owner.

 

Shining your phone screen forwards through the front window gives a noticeable improvement in road illumination.

 

That bad? 

[dozeydustman]

Any headlamps with the glass sphere lenses that don't have a xenon bulb behind them are pretty much useless with the standard 55W bulb in them. Doesn't matter what car they're fitted to.

[John F]

That bad? 

 

Oh yes. They're downright dangerous outside of street-lit areas.

[myglaren]

spare wheels , best location I had was in the right hand rear wing of a Volvo , and it was full size ......with room to spare ( sic ) for tools , jack and my stuff ...

 

now they are some thin speed restricted disc , under the dead weight  in the boot , which has to be unloaded  .... and where does the flat full size wheel go ..

 

it wont even fit in the wheel well !!!     so now you possibly have a brake dust encrusted wheel as a passenger !!!

 

great if you are on a trip with a full car and boot !

 

 

Always seemed a good idea.

[Pillock]

See, I get on with those indicator stalks.

Flick for a three flash. Push harder for "on".

Flick either way to cancel. And on the Vauxhall I had, and my BMW, they do cancel when you turn the wheel appropriately.

[FakeConcern]

I've never tried one, I'm sure they're fine if the car is automatic, but hill starts must be fun* in a manual XM.

Or when it is auto, but for various reasons* it won't idle! Ask me how I know.