Car features you don't like

[Barry Cade]

1 hour ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

Snap. Same here. I'm always a passenger in the Sandero so the window switches are a pain as a result. 😆

LHD is the solution.. 🙃

[myglaren]

On 02/02/2022 at 17:47, Mrcento said:

Actually, i have another nomination for fucking annoying climate control.

Spaceship civic.

I absolutely hate the fact there's no dial or simple button to change where the air is blowing, just a mode button you need to cycle and take your eyes off the road to look at the screen to see what you're selecting.

I leave mine on Auto most of the time but push the 'screen' button and the aircon button in weather/temperatures that were are currently enjoying, then when the screen is clear and warmness is seeping in, back to auto.

Only needed when the car has stood for several hours.

I wish my son would stop buggering about with it. And altering the seat and mirrors.  And playing shouty CDs

[Mrcento]

55 minutes ago, myglaren said:

I leave mine on Auto most of the time but push the 'screen' button and the aircon button in weather/temperatures that were are currently enjoying, then when the screen is clear and warmness is seeping in, back to auto.

Only needed when the car has stood for several hours.

I wish my son would stop buggering about with it. And altering the seat and mirrors.  And playing shouty CDs

Mine mists up if it so much as threatens to rain (definitely some water ingress somewhere), and i don't have working AC.

So it's a constant battle of demisting and getting some fresh air to the face when it's muggier.

[grogee]

2 hours ago, Timewaster said:

Here it is:

I'm annoyed now and it's not even my car

[Talbot]

There's a very good reason I have the Merc that I have.  It's the perfect blend of electronic assistance that ACTUALLY ASSISTS, but without the nannying bullshit that everyone is mentioning at the moment.  It has cruise, it has limit drive.  What it doesn't have is lane assist or any other method for the car to control the steering.  It has brake assist (If you jump from the accelerator and jab the brake very hard, it assists as it's detected you panic), however it doesn't have any ability to put the brake on for you.  Good.
It has mechanical buttons for the electronic climate control.. Ideal as far as I'm concerned:  Automatic control, but no touch screen.  It has a cassette deck instead of some modern bollocks that takes your attention from the road.  It doesn't have start-stop or any other irritation like that, but it does have a surprisingly good (although I still don't like it) autobox.  The seats, steering wheel and mirrors are power memory, the mirrors are auto-dipping, heated and folding, but ONLY when I tell them to.
There's a warning to tell you you've got the parking brake on when you're above 5mph... reasonable.  There's also a lights-on-door-open warning.  But that is it.  No key in ignition warning, no extraneous beeps all the time, and no seatbelt nannying either.  It sits there in absolute silence just doing as it's told.

... and so the list goes on,  Actual useful things to make your journey easier and allow you to keep eyes and concentration on the road.  No extraneous bollocks that diverts your attention to the interior.  Plus it was one of the very best from a safety point of view when new, and it's noticeable that in crash testing, it only performs slightly worse than a W211 or W212.  It really was properly ahead of it's time, so still holds it's own today.

[grogee]

21 minutes ago, Talbot said:

 It has a cassette deck

Fucking show-off

[JimH]

Pretty much everything. The modern car is a truly hateful device.

What do I want that for?: Automatic lights, wipers, handbrakes, start, stop, lock, unlock, seats, heating. This isn't progress because it is just the same old system with some crude actuator or sensor attached to it. Special shout out must go to the handbrake which replaces a pair of two bob cables and a lever with a leaky box containing a wiper motor and some gears that last saw service in a 924 sunroof which will cost you more than a monkey to replace it. What about adjustable suspension. Look! You can change the damping rates between spine punched through skull to upsetting swell and not one of them works. I've a crazy idea. Why not design the suspension right in the first place and don't let the plum who bought the thing fiddle with it. To quote Chapman (Graham not Colin) "Nothing! You're not qualified!"

Anti-social shit: LED headlamps must come top of the list here but I'd put everything which makes the dick piloting two tons of high speed junk feel indestructible in the same scrap pile. You should feel vulnerable when you are driving because that way you might - might - give a second thought to the other poor sods on the road with you. Finally, if you want anti-social what better way to do it than driving round in a car carting round an extra ton of resources. Brilliant. There are people driving round in cars that weigh over two tons who think they are saving the planet. TruFax!

Space invaders: We have cars as wide as lorries used to be yet I can't fit more than two people in the back. Seats, jet fighter centre consoles and dashboard mouldings the size of a small village.  More stuff which serves no purpose other than to massage the egos of people who think they are a racing driver pilot spy. Give me my space back. What does a dashboard need to tell me? How fast I am going and how much fuel is left in the tank. There we go. I can do that in the space of a small mobile phone. Why does the instrument panel look like something that would look a bit gaudy in Blackpool?

Patriotism is the last bastion of the scoundrel: Not just utterly hateful things like the Union Jack back lights of the 0.5 Series or Tricolore on a Fiat 500 but anything that "echoes", "mirrors" or "reinvents" something patently better than the parts bin shit I'm looking at. Design the thing properly and stop copying people you plagiaristic chancer. 

The downright dangerous: I can't see out the bloody thing. Everywhere I look there is something solid. Ah but it is so much safer if you have a crash. Well maybe if we could all see then there might be fewer crashes. You can add indicators that can't be seen if the sun is in the wrong direction and those sod you Jack LED headlamps. A blind spot indicator. You what? You accept that there is a blind spot so you design a system to tell you when someone or something is in it? Why in the name of all that is holy did you not design out the blind spot? Surely that would have been a more sensible approach.

Stuff that is just crap: Turning the world into a tedious monochrome of metallic boredom. That awful stuff they dare to call leather. Plastic carpet. There are so many materials we could use to make a car interior a nice place to be and we use none of them. There is a very special place in Hell for the bastards who have anything to do with quilting. And I haven't even started on styling. Jesus wept. What a sorry mess. A special shout out here to the pinnacle of emotionally retarded thirteen year old thinking - the trigger guarded starter switch. You know, the one that looks just like what that Tom Cruise used in that there Top Gun. 

We'll never get the hang of this: We can apparently design a car which can drive itself yet when the sun comes out I need to hold a piece of stiff car in front of my eyes. Really. That the best solution to the Sun that 120 years of development has given us - a flap in front of your eyes. My current smoker has a hatchback. If you open it when it is raining water runs into the boot. No end of cars I have encountered do exactly the same thing. For some reason this is not viewed by designers as a problem.

I'm going to stop now. The older I get the more I hate these things. This isn't some backward thinking - there are so many aspects of modern car design and manufacture that are just brilliant yet we are shackled to the most loathsome backward thinking.

Just imagine something the size of a Mini made to today's standards. Think how light it would be and how little of anything it would use. 

 

[LessThanEqual]

Indicator that doesn't immediately cancel after setting stalk to middle position.

Wipers which do not automatically park when you turn the car off.

[AnnoyingPentium]

18 minutes ago, LessThanEqual said:

Indicator that doesn't immediately cancel after setting stalk to middle position.

This does my bloody head in on the Fabia, or maybe it's just me that's not using it right?

I don't particularly like "lazy" indicators either since my ones don't flash quite enough before cancelling.

[LessThanEqual]

1 minute ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

This does my bloody head in on the Fabia, or maybe it's just me that's not using it right?

I don't particularly like "lazy" indicators either since my ones don't flash quite enough before cancelling.

My 6L Ibiza (2005 copy-paste VAG job) flashed three times if you flicked the indicator but would cancel normally after less than that if you actually stuck the indicator on, though it's been a few years since I've had that car.

[AnnoyingPentium]

2 minutes ago, LessThanEqual said:

My 6L Ibiza (2005 copy-paste VAG job) flashed three times if you flicked the indicator but would cancel normally after less than that if you actually stuck the indicator on, though it's been a few years since I've had that car.

Aye it's the same as the Fabia. 6L and 6Y are the same A04 platform and switchgear AFAIK. It wasn't until the face-lift of the Fabia in 2004 that they added them indicators you could flick.

[Missy Charm]

Vauxhall flick and return to middle position indicator stalks. They just don't work in practice; the old fashioned click on type is much better.

[bunglebus]

9 hours ago, JimH said:

Pretty much everything

Word

Couldn't have put any of that better myself

[Leyland Worldmaster]

Fake exhaust tips. That's my contribution. 

[Crackers]

"Engine Start" push buttons. I've never encountered one that just starts the bloody car. If it's keyless (see below) you have to push the brake or something before it'll start. Others, you have to put the key fob in a slot and either push it in or not push it in, then press either the brake or clutch before it'll start. Push that key in the slot a millimetre too far and it'll think you've pushed hard enough to active the eject mechanism and it'll pop out and turn the ignition back off again.

Just give me a metal key blade which I put in a slot and then twist it, please.

Also: Keyless entry. They still give you a key with lock/unlock buttons on, which completely defeats the object. Keyless cars are also infinitely more nickable than a conventional system, so your two-ton wanker tank is ten times as likely to go missing in the night as my ancient rusty crock. Finally, since you have to have that key inside the car to start the engine, why do they never give you somewhere to stick the enormous key fob? They always make the key fob about as big as Yorkshire, meaning you can't keep it in a trouser pocket without cutting off the blood flow to your leg, so invariably it gets launched into a cupholder or ashtray, rendering that storage bin useless for anything else you might want to put in it. Like, say, a cup. Or ash.

[Crackers]

Also, start-stop that cuts in when you change from drive to reverse, or vice versa. I honestly didn't think any automotive engineer would make such an oversight but the 1-series I drove the other day cut out with a jolt when I pulled up by a parking space, and these systems never seem to be fast enough to give you back power exactly when you want it. 

[JimH]

24 minutes ago, Leyland Worldmaster said:

Fake exhaust tips. That's my contribution. 

Oh don’t. Fake exhausts, fake windows, fake diffusers, fake splitters, fake lights, fake grilles, fake noise, fake mesh, fake dents and entirely fake cars.

What I hate more than anything else is the thought of these roll necked safari park chimps in the design department whooping excitedly at their brilliance as the invoke the spirit of the first <insert name of car that everyone still gets excited about> and how this will delight the key 35-50 market segment. Rot in hell, you box ticking, button pushing dipsticks.

Oh, and while I’m on I want anyone responsible for those adverts saying nowt about the car but featuring a naff old song slowed down stung up with piano wire.

 

[Broadsword]

On 2/1/2022 at 10:33 PM, Daviemck2006 said:

I detest the fog lights coming on for cornering lights. They do not help on my yeti, and both front fogs come on when you select reverse. Why? I'm going fucking backwards, dont need extra lights on the front!

Sent from my SM-T585 using Tapatalk
 

I second this. I also think they have a negative impact on road safety. The cornering light often comes on too eagerly even if you aren’t turning , so it gives the impression you are turning off a road even if your aren’t. The indicator has already been invented, let’s just use that.

[AnnoyingPentium]

Just now, Broadsword said:

The indicator has already been invented, let’s just use that.

Aye but can we really trust morons to use all their braincells to remember the purpose of that little orange flashy doohicky?

[320touring]

The Burd's ph1 Clio 172 auto locks the doors above 5mph.

So:

Get in

reverse out space

*Doors lock*

Stop to let her in

Forget to press the button.

Rain starts, the Burd gets irritated.

 

Great*

[AnnoyingPentium]

6 minutes ago, 320touring said:

The Burd's ph1 Clio 172 auto locks the doors above 5mph.

So:

Get in

reverse out space

*Doors lock*

Stop to let her in

Forget to press the button.

Rain starts, the Burd gets irritated.

 

Great*

My Granda's Punto did this. He panicked the first few times thinking he was trapped in the motor.

[FakeConcern]

23 minutes ago, 320touring said:

The Burd's ph1 Clio 172 auto locks the doors above 5mph.

So:

Get in

reverse out space

*Doors lock*

Stop to let her in

Forget to press the button.

Rain starts, the Burd gets irritated.

 

Great*

I'm pretty sure that holding down the lock button on the dash for 30 seconds (or something!) will turn off this useful* feature...

[320touring]

Just now, FakeConcern said:

I'm pretty sure that holding down the lock button on the dash for 30 seconds (or something!) will turn off this useful* feature...

I just use it to remind me it's not perfect 🤣

 

So much nicer to drive than my ph2 182

[AnnoyingPentium]

On 2/3/2022 at 8:21 PM, grogee said:

Fucking show-off

I've got one you can have if you're that jealous.

[bunglebus]

11 hours ago, 320touring said:

The Burd's ph1 Clio 172 auto locks the doors above 5mph.

So:

Passat used to do the same - got that feature turned off, the locks go wrong enough on these without giving them more reason to misbehave 

[Shite Ron]

12 hours ago, JimH said:

Oh don’t. Fake exhausts, fake windows, fake diffusers, fake splitters, fake lights, fake grilles, fake noise, fake mesh, fake dents and entirely fake cars.

What I hate more than anything else is the thought of these roll necked safari park chimps in the design department whooping excitedly at their brilliance as the invoke the spirit of the first <insert name of car that everyone still gets excited about> and how this will delight the key 35-50 market segment. Rot in hell, you box ticking, button pushing dipsticks.

Oh, and while I’m on I want anyone responsible for those adverts saying nowt about the car but featuring a naff old song slowed down stung up with piano wire.

 

You convey my thoughts on modern cars far more eloquently than I could, both posts are excellent. Have excessively tinted windows been mentioned? And why can you not get new cars with proper colour interiors?

I want blue, beige, green or red interior. Not black!

[myglaren]

13 hours ago, Crackers said:

"Engine Start" push buttons. I've never encountered one that just starts the bloody car. If it's keyless (see below) you have to push the brake or something before it'll start. Others, you have to put the key fob in a slot and either push it in or not push it in, then press either the brake or clutch before it'll start. Push that key in the slot a millimetre too far and it'll think you've pushed hard enough to active the eject mechanism and it'll pop out and turn the ignition back off again.

Just give me a metal key blade which I put in a slot and then twist it, please.

My Civic does that.  Normal key but button to start engine, no dancing on pedals needed.  Turn key to stop engine.  I fail to see the purpose of the "Start" button.  Emulating Microsoft probably.

[Timewaster]

A colleague had a new Xc90 as a hire car (we get some awesome hire cars sometimes) and I took him to pick his car up. He let me drive it. 

Now I really like a big modern Volvo. 

It took me ages to start it. It has a start knob which you have to twist. (hybrid so no obvious sign of having started it.) 

To make it go backwards, you push the crystal gear selector forwards. To make it go forwards, you pull the lever backwards. Wtf? 

It's a lovely thing to drive and a lovely place to sit although I can't imagine what the ivory coloured leather steering wheel will look like when they get a few years old. 

Then I couldn't turn it off. 

Twist the start knob thingy. No

Try pressing the start knob thingy. No

Try twisting it the other way. No

Twist the knob thingy and hold it twisted for about 5 seconds.... Ah that's it. 

I've been driving all sorts of different stuff for 30 something years and I never had a car I couldn't switch on or off before. 

[Metal Guru]

14 minutes ago, myglaren said:

My Civic does that.  Normal key but button to start engine, no dancing on pedals needed.  Turn key to stop engine.  I fail to see the purpose of the "Start" button.  Emulating Microsoft probably.

I had a Jeep Cherokee which you had to fully depress the clutch before starting with a normal key. Safety feature maybe, but off roading it’s useful to start the car in gear on a very steep slope. Maybe they just thought not many go off road.

[Asimo]

1 minute ago, Timewaster said:

To make it go backwards, you push the crystal gear selector forwards. To make it go forwards, you pull the lever backwards. Wtf? 

Like every other floor mounted automatic transmission control lever of modern times?