Pointless Car Features

[Pete-M]

Here's a few more. CD players within reach of drivers.

Ipod connectors within reach of drivers.

Satnavs with fucking window mounting suckers.

 

All these things should be banned and binned immediately. People need LESS distractions and toys, not more.

 

Oh dear. I disagree with most of these, but don't own an ipod thingy.

 

CD players should be well within reach of the driver, definately. You don't need to look at a cd player to operate it.

 

Also, if Sat navs didn't have window mounting suckers where the hell would you put them? I drive, on average, 25-30 cars a week and need sat nav most times as I'm always going to places I've not been to before. Also, having the sat nav placed in the right place on the screen means they don't block more than a tiny amount of vision. Of the fleet of cars I drive regularly, 6 have sat nav, and four of those are Toyotas - which have infinately more dangerous and difficult to use nav systems than a Tom Tom on a window mount.

 

Heh, and as for auto dipping mirrors, they rocketh mightily. One of the greatest inventions for night driving evah. They're brilliant. So good, in fact, I'm gonna go and buy one off ebay for the Jag (Bugeye Scorpio one is the same as the Jag one...)

[chaseracer]

Sorry, wrong forum! I was looking for Autoshite - is this Craptical Plastics or Postwar Classics...?

[STUNO]

I must agree with a lot of the crap fitted.

Two I have had, Nissan Laurel auto headlights, they came on after it got too dark to be seen , bloody useless. And driving through the forests on a dull day with the lights automatically turning on and off depending on how dark it is under the trees.

And Nissan Cefiro aircon, shut the heat off when the interior reached the set temp but did not turn off the fan. So the incoming air turned freezy cold for a while till the room temp dropped again. That one really annoyed me.

Also I cannot understand the need for satnav in an underpopulated , underroaded and undertrafficed small island where getting lost is more of a pleasure than a problem.

[Richard]

I'm with Dollywobbler on the front fog lights. They are there purely to differentiate between the base and lux models in a range.

 

Rev counters. Like fog lights they have gradually worked their way down the range to the point where they are standard fitment on pretty much everything, but who actually uses them?

 

I've moaned about "dribble wipe" before. You wash the windscreen, you get the usual three sweeps with the washers (these sweeps are sponsored by Autoglass), then it pauses just long enough to get more dirt on the screen and wipes again.

[Pete-M]

The following are pointless/annoying in my opinion.

 

ABS: Expensive to fix and doesnt slow the car down any quicker.

Traction control: Expensixe to fix and does not improve traction enough to stop you getting stuck in the snow.

Power Steering: Expensive to fix.

Electric windows: Tempramental when the system gets old

Air conditioning: Not normally a DIY job to fix, therefore expensive when the system leaks or the condenser rots. Winding down the window is perfectly sufficient.

Fog lights: If you want to see the side of the road IMMEDIATELY in front of you, they are GR8.

Engine management, emissions control, sensors etc - Expensive to fix, strangles performance. Only necessary because of tree-hugging gypos (sort of).

 

Other than the last item, my fiance's car has none of the above and it required very little maintenance

 

Oh dear, I disagree with this lot an' all.

 

ABS: It's not meant to slow the car more quickly, it's there so you can still have a degree of steering even under heavy braking.

TC : If it wasn't for TC, my Jag wouldn't have gone anywhere last month.

PAS : Expensive to fix, maybe, useful on 2 tons of car with 255/45/17 tyres. Can't steer the thing without it.

EW : Useful. Most still work after 20 years.

AC : Essential if you suffer from hay fever, or are fair skinned in 25°C + temps. I never switch it off.

Fogs : Don't need 'em often, but when they are needed they're excellent. Used 'em the other day on the M5 in snow. Made seeing a lot easier.

ECUS : Strangles performance? What? ECUs are great. No messing about with chokes, better economy, smoother performance, more power.

[boobydoo]

I've had rain-sensing wipers on all my cars for about 10 years or so and I tell you it drives me nuts if I get into a car without them when its spitting with rain. .....forever flicking that switch!!

 

So yes, it does make you lazy!!

[ashmicro]

Not sure about the power steering thing myself. To me, the fitment of it in small cars smacks of a regression in engineering skillz. Case in point: at the same time in our family, we had a 1991 R6 Gta, tuned to the nuts on twin SU's, with sticky 195/55/13s, and a brand new Ka on 165/70/13s. The Metro had no power steering, and was easy to steer and park, even by my sister who is TINY. The Ka had a powered helm, and felt no lighter than the Metro. Interestingly, the Ka's PAS needed to be bled regularly ("they all do that Sir") - maybe it didn't really need it?

 

One possible explanation from our Ford dealer was that the Metro's K Series was a lot lighter than the Valencia pushrod in the Ka.

[Angrydicky]

I'm with Pete-M and Dollywobbler on the Shat-nav. I wouldn't be able to do my job without one, as I'm always going to places I've never been before.

 

I don't fiddle with it on the move though.

[dollywobbler]

Programmed wash/wipe does my head in. The BX, like many French cars, always seems to wipe once too often, smearing crap all over the screen - not good when the 'brilliant' arm mounted washer bar is actually really crap! Amused me greatly to see Vauxhall VX220 owners wetting themselves over how good the BX washers are and fitting them to their cars. Give it a few months, the bloody thing will have clogged up, and it won't seem such a good idea (and naturally, being in the airflow, don't even consider actually getting any screenwash when the temperature plummets).

 

I can operate the wipers myself, and similarly, I can turn the indicators off myself. The Landy is particularly irritating as the right-turn indicator turns off as you turn right rather than when you're straightening up again. I think that need disabling.

[Futuramic]

I'm with Pete-M and Dollywobbler on the Shat-nav. I wouldn't be able to do my job without one, as I'm always going to places I've never been before.

 

I don't fiddle with it on the move though.

 

Really? I do the same in the course of my job and make a point of not using the bloody thing. I'm fan of man-up Nav or the road atlas as it is sometimes known. I have managed to make my way around inner London with maps; find a friend's house in Newcastle without any navigational aids whatsoever and drive without prompts to numerous places I rarely visit.

 

I didn't have much of a sense of direction before; however navigating the hard way has really improved things. I take pride in the fact that I can drive faultlessly to any indication on a road map. It's really not that hard and I make fewer mistakes than work colleagues blindly following Shat Navs.

 

Sorry to boast but we can all do this with a modicum of effort.

 

Hirst raised an interesting point; my Volvo 740 safety mobile had the auxiliary controls laid out in such a way that all minor adjustments were possible without looking at them. Probably the most intuitive dashboard layout I've ever come across.

[The Moog]

Can i just add

 

Run Flat Tyres... dont see the point in them as they compromise the ride quality all because you might get a puncture one day .. or I suppose they might be shot out by gangsters ..

 

Cruise control .. unles you are driving on a straight road in the states then you should be paying attention to road conditions and varying your speed accordingly..

 

Electric boot locks .. means that when they fail you cant get into the boot because the boot lock will be rusted up due to lack of use. Especially great when it is a Jag with the battery in the boot and no way to get in through the passenger side

 

Self locking central locking for when you engage gear .. again just in case you live in SA and you might get car jacked. Dropping your mate off becomes needlessly hassled by disengaging the doors.

 

LED eye lights .. they just look shit and dont do anything apart from pretend you drive an Audi . .

[Cavcraft]

Run flat tyres are also useless once punctured as they can't be repaired without doing away with the run flat bit.

 

TDX tyres: metric in size, can't be tubed and always seem to leak round the beads. Pointless?

 

When I was a driver (doing about 750 miles a week on average) I'd get the job sheets, route 'em out over the weekend, get my map out, put them in order and go from there. Sat navs are brilliant things though and less time dawdling about looking for obscure places, saved time and fuel and not getting carved up by lunatics in unfamiliar city centres has to be a good thing.

[garethj]

Cruise control .. unles you are driving on a straight road in the states then you should be paying attention to road conditions and varying your speed accordingly..

I love cruise control, not for use on the wide open spaces but on motorway roadworks where there’s average speed limits.

 

SatNav is quite handy, I found that on the bike I could go for a blast looking for the most interesting roads, then use satnav to get me home. What’s weird is the number of people who seem to use it to get home from work every day. Don’t you know where you live?

[Guest Leonard Hatred]

Sat-navs are excellent, even though the Garmin takes some funny 'short-cuts'. I regularly visit obscure places, the ability to plot them precisely by BNG reference or lat/long is very handy.

I could have done it before with road maps, routeplanners and OS maps, but the sat-nav saves messing.

 

What’s weird is the number of people who seem to use it to get home from work every day. Don’t you know where you live?

 

I use mine in the car all the time because it has a built-in MP3 player.

 

Can i just add ...Cruise control .. unles you are driving on a straight road in the states then you should be paying attention to road conditions and varying your speed accordingly..

 

I like cruise control, it's certainly not essential but is a stress free way of keeping to a set speed when you can. There are 2 or 3 ways to disengage it, so it's not unsafe.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Programmed wash/wipe does my head in. The BX, like many French cars, always seems to wipe once too often, smearing crap all over the screen - not good when the 'brilliant' arm mounted washer bar is actually really crap! Amused me greatly to see Vauxhall VX220 owners wetting themselves over how good the BX washers are and fitting them to their cars. Give it a few months, the bloody thing will have clogged up, and it won't seem such a good idea (and naturally, being in the airflow, don't even consider actually getting any screenwash when the temperature plummets).

 

I can operate the wipers myself, and similarly, I can turn the indicators off myself. The Landy is particularly irritating as the right-turn indicator turns off as you turn right rather than when you're straightening up again. I think that need disabling.

 

I came in to whine about wash/wipe. The Fiesta wipes three times, and then again after a short delay (you can't seem to turn this off). The first three wipes do their job. The fourth smears the screen so it needs washing again.

 

Can't check to see if the jets are frozen either, because if they are the wipers will rub grime

back and forth

back and forth

back and forth

 

 

...

 

 

 

back and forth.

[messerschmitt owner]

Power steering on the smart roadster. Well, all smarts really. It's a tiny, lightweight car with the engine at the back. Why does it need power steering?! smarts don't go around bends anyway. I might have given in and bought a smart roadster (in the days when I thought finance was a good thing...) if the steering wasn't absolutely awful.

you should have ... mine was £8995 brand new, was costing me £50 a month to buy it due to the fuel saving over the 230TE and 109 Dormobile it replaced.

 

The steering is electric and I find removing the power to the motor for the steering is sufficient! Oh, fortwos don't go round corners unless you fit them with big wheels - smart roadsters go round corners no problem, more so if they've been lowered an inch.

 

The leccie steering on a roadster was the result of smart UK asking for it! We could have lived without it!

[face]

I dunno, my ForTwo is surprisingly good around the bends.

 

Mind you it is the wider tracked 451 model, and it's a 'Pulse' which has the wider wheels

[Mike D]

I love toys and gadgets, Sat Navs are GR8 4 not arguing with the wife, Cruise control is fantastic for motorways and average speed sections, I don't think I could be without a cd player, however, rev counters in an automatic seem a bit pointless, unless you are giving it a thrashing and 'doing' the gears, but then you should have bought a manual! Also, I absolutely despise the terrible 'delayed extra wipe' on most modern Fords, it serves no purpose but to smear the screen, and to cause me never to buy a modern Ford.

[messerschmitt owner]

I dunno, my ForTwo is surprisingly good around the bends.

 

Mind you it is the wider tracked 451 model, and it's a 'Pulse' which has the wider wheels

you should try a cdi on 135s! mwahahahaha

 

As soon as you go to 175 on the front, a lot of the understeer disappears!

[flat4alfa]

The 1983 Alfa 33 Gold Cloverleaf has a trip computer.

 

However, it has a psychosis.

[Tartan58]

Have to agree on the Autowipers thing. My daily steed (Mondeo) has them and they never do what you want them to do - the worst thing is the Auto setting replaces intermittant so you've no choice but to use them in light rain. Apparently swapping the stalk for a standard one works so that's on the shopping list. As said the extra wipe on the wash is annoying but even more so is the fact that you can't activate the washers without the wipers coming on, so when the washers have frozen up (heated jets but not pipes, another pointelss thing) and you hit the washer to see if they've defrosted yet the wipers come one and smear the screen and suddenly you're blind!

 

Infact Ford have managed to cock up everything to do with seeing where you're going - ok the "quickclear" windscreen is quite a good idea in principal but it's no quicker than getting the scraper out, and you've still to do the other windows by hand anyway.

[Rusty Pelican]

The following are pointless/annoying in my opinion.

 

ABS: Expensive to fix and doesnt slow the car down any quicker.

Traction control: Expensixe to fix and does not improve traction enough to stop you getting stuck in the snow.

Power Steering: Expensive to fix.

Electric windows: Tempramental when the system gets old

Air conditioning: Not normally a DIY job to fix, therefore expensive when the system leaks or the condenser rots. Winding down the window is perfectly sufficient.

Fog lights: If you want to see the side of the road IMMEDIATELY in front of you, they are GR8

Engine management, emissions control, sensors etc - Expensive to fix, strangles performance. Only necessary because of tree-hugging gypos (sort of).

 

Other than the last item, my fiance's car has none of the above and it required very little maintenance

My Beemer has none of this crap and its wonderfull except its got a outside temp warning system , anything below 37 degrees F it beeps and flashes the temp at me , I know its bloody cold , the things covered in frost FFS

[Richard]

I came in to whine about wash/wipe. The Fiesta wipes three times, and then again after a short delay (you can't seem to turn this off). The first three wipes do their job. The fourth smears the screen so it needs washing again.

 

Can't check to see if the jets are frozen either, because if they are the wipers will rub grime

back and forth

back and forth

back and forth

 

 

...

 

 

 

back and forth.

 

The way to stop it doing the "dribble wipe" (apparently the official name for this feature) is to do a flick wipe as soon as it's finished the three "main" wipes.

[mnde]

One of the most pointless features I've found was the econoscope on a CX GTi Series 1 I borrowed once. It seemed however gently I drove it, the red "excessive fuel consumption" light came on. Let's face it, in a GTi it's going to be lit most of the time....

 

Wash-wipe in the BX also infuriates me - except that now I've connected the spray bar directly to the pump rather than via the nozzle in the wiper spindle, I get a shed load more water pressure and volume. Rear wipe is also irritating: press once for a single wipe, press and hold for spray and constant wipe - I'd kill to have an intermittent rear wipe feature like on my GSA! I'm told the BX estate has a latch feature on the rear wipe button...

 

Mark.

[Cavcraft]

Modern cars with levers (as opposed to knobs) to adjust the seat backs. You can never get the fuckers just where you want them and as soon as someone else moves them a smidgen you're back to piss arsing about for half an hour trying to get it right or sitting in discomfort for miles.

[Pete-M]

I absolutely love cruise control. Once you suss out how to set it to the right speed (not as easy as it sounds) it's a brilliant thing.

 

Auto-wipers are good, but the dribble wipe thing tends not to be. I like the feature quite a few cars have where if you've got the wipers set to slow when you stop at lights or whatever they go to intermittent until you move off again. I wish the Jag had it as the wiper stalk is an unusual set up, click down for intermittent, down again for off, then up for slow, up again for fast. The intermittent is one of those silly speed related jobs without a rheostat or whatever. I'm forever fiddling with the bloody stalk.

 

As for sat nav, I've been to Cardiff, Oxford, Solihull, and Northampton in the last few days, and I'm off to Milton Keynes and High Wycombe tomorrow and I have to visit a few places in each city. If I had to use maps and the like (which I did until a couple of years ago) it'd take me forever to plan my routes around. Now it's just "Enter Postcode" and it does all the hard work. It also knows where the traffic jams and congestion is, and directs me around it all. No map does that.

[Mr Lobster]

Have we mentioned electronic handbrakes yet? How these are supposed to be a positive feature is beyond me.

[eddyramrod]

Yes, they've been mentioned, and I agree!

[Pillock]

Hmmm.

 

I've spent the last two months in a variety of hire cars - old and new-shape 10 plate Astras, Golf GT and a (frickin) Corsa. I've started to appreciate things I thought were pointless.

 

Cruise control. Only the older Astra didn't have it - even the Corsa does! It rocks, as said especially through average speed limits. Bang it on, and just steer. Seems to take away all the thoughts of going too fast, set to 70 and just cash in at the pumps.

Daytime running lights - anything that makes me more visible must be good. Not a fan of blingy aftermarket ones, but built in ones on new cars look ok.

Trip computers - I've had to record all my mileage and it's nice to know how much I'm gonna get paid before I fill up.

Steering wheel audio controls. I really miss these in my car, must be safer. My only gripe is the Golf had them on the left hand side.... that does seem pointless, that's the hand you use for everything else apart from wipers.

Doors that lock when you start moving. I'm in Dunstable..... nuff said.

 

As for satnav, no they shouldn't be banned. Yeah plan your route the night before (I do, on Google Maps, then send it to my satnav) but that doesn't help if there's an accident after you set off. My satnav warns me of realtime traffic issues, it really does work and it's way better than a crusty old map. Plus I can bang in "mcdonalds" (while parked, natch) and it'll find me the nearest source of hydrogenated fat - a map can't!

 

I will agree on electric handbrakes being rubbish though. In the Astra you pulled a little switch and then heard an electric motor pull on a cable. Absolutely no benefit at all as far as I can see, apart from making hillstarts easier for shit drivers - you just drive forwards and the handbrake releases when needed. It does seem like it will cause hassle in 18 years time, when the car is one MoT fail away from being scrapped and the garage man is sucking through his teeth at you.

[mattblack]

Heater controls that you need a Phd in astrophysics to fathom out.