Modern car features that drive us crazy
What was wrong with volume knobs and manual parking brakes?
At this year’s Geneva auto show, people at Volkswagen’s jam-packed Group Night were treated to a truly farcical display of modern music. Live DJs tweaked and twiddled knobs seemingly at random, a different track of mmmtiss mmm-tiss electronica for each product unveiling.
It was perhaps the silliest thing I’ve seen all year, especially when there were two artistes working the same board: DJ Johnjon and DJ Chapstick. Yes, really: Chapstick.
As Grandpa Simpson might point out, “I used to be with it, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it,’ and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to yoouuu ...” Well, tie an onion to my belt and give me five bees for a quarter, because it’s happened: I have become cantankerous. More cantankerous.
And that means there are more than a few features in modern cars that drive me absolutely nuts. Some can be rationalized. Some can be justified. All of them are irritating. The electronic parking brake: The electronic parking brake is the Canada goose of the automotive world. It seems innocuous enough, but ends up pooping all over everything.
Not only can you not use it in an emergency situation, but the electronic parking brake puts yet another step between you and driving away. Yes, it saves console space for more cupholders, but it’s also just another thing to break down and cost you money one day. Besides, I prefer the English term: handbrake or turning brake. Run-flat tires: Designing a car to have enough space for a spare tire and decent cargo room can be difficult. So some companies don’t bother. Instead, you get a little repair kit and a set of run-flat tires.
The idea behind run-flats is sound: Why not use an extrastiff side wall to prevent you from having to pull over and wrestle with a spare wheel?
Because they’re bloody annoying, that’s why.
Run-flats ruin the ride of a car, cost a fortune to replace, and aren’t actually all that useful. Last year, I got a flat in an Audi RS 7 just outside Grand Coulee Dam, and not only could I not drive the short distance to the local tire store (that’ll wreck the side wall), but I also had exactly zero chance of finding a tire in that size anywhere within 1,000 kilometres.
Eventually, they repaired it and we limped home carefully. To heck with that — even a space-saver doughnut would be better. Touch screens instead of knobs: With the proliferation of smartphones, manufacturers assume we’d all like our cars to be sort of an iPhone on wheels. Thus, the doing away with physical buttons and knobs in favour of a centralized touch screen.
This is a case where some is good, but more is horrible. In something like a CR-V, you don’t even get a volume knob, so you must swipe and fiddle around trying to get the levels right. Much easier to have a proper knob for quick, nolook volume adjustments — and one for tuning the radio too, while we’re at it. Overly aggressive styling: Why, I ask you, does every new car have to look like it was developed by Philishave’s new tactical combat division? Everything from family sedans to four-cylinder crossovers now leaves the factory with a front end that resembles a cross between a basking shark and the speaker tower at an AC/DC concert.
Compounding the irritation, aggressive styling requires huge wheels that ruin the ride, and swoopy tweaks that eliminate visibility. What good is it if the look of your car can frighten young children but you can’t see out of the damn thing?
Enough already. Let’s go back to designing cars that are pretty, not grimacing like a Transformers version of the Maori haka. The Sport button: Fair enough, I suppose, that a luxury sedan might offer different driving modes from Eco to Sport. Makes sense, I grant you, that with emissions testing, a more moderate key-on behaviour makes sense in a crossover.
But in a sports car? No. It’s supposed to be sporty already. You’re supposed to jump in and go, and if you want to drive a little less sportily, then just don’t press so hard on the gas.
What’s more, the Sport button can ruin a really great car, as it does in the Volkswagen GTI. In normal mode, the DSG gearbox is a little too eager to upshift. In sport mode, it’s psychotically eager to hold revs, too much for the street. Happily, you can just buy a stick-shift version, but a middle ground would be better. No, VW, not another setting, just the right one to begin with. Fake engine noise: The sound a car makes is all part of the experience, whether it’s the honk of a BMW straight-six or the rumble of a Chevy small-block V-8. The way a screaming Ferrari V12 runs a finger down your spine like a xylophone; the way a turbocharged Subaru flat-four wub-wubs like a panting dog — it’s all great stuff.
Thing is, Mom and Pop don’t want their Toyota Camry to sound like the main straight at LeMans. Thus, manufacturers have become expert in insulating driver and passenger from any sensation of speed or sound. That’s great in a Mercedes Maybach. In a BMW M3? Not so wonderful.
Thus, the idea behind piped-in engine noise: play some vroom-vroom noises through the speakers and everyone’s happy, right? Well, I’m not.
It’s fake! It’s fake like a live performance of Blame It On The Rain, and everybody knows it. Thank goodness for manufacturers — such as Jaguar and Mazda — who spend R&D dollars making sure they’re creating an instrument and not a synthesizer. Electric power steering: Every single car with electric power steering is slightly worse than the model that preceded it. This technology has numbed the helms of the greats, from the Mazda MX-5 to the BMW 3-Series to the Porsche 911. And for what?
Saving on emissions, we’re told, is the reason for the change. Really though, does it make that much of a difference? And can’t we figure out how to bring back the driving feel, both for enthusiasts, and for those who merely want to know what their front tires are doing when it’s raining?
Things are improving: with the third-gen MX-5, it looks as if Mazda’s almost got it. Everybody else, stop trying to auto-tune the steering wheel.