PH Blog: the new driving
Fast cars are getting faster but are they actually getting better? Chris isn't convinced they are...
But it struck me that many aspects of the way the car drove, and the way I interacted with it, bore no resemblance to many of the experiences and sensations I felt and celebrated when I started driving in the early 1990s. This was, in modern media speak, a new driving, and I'm feeling increasingly mournful towards the old driving that I loved so much.
This process of emasculation is well documented - the motor industry seems obsessed with removing the driver from any direct, physical contact with the car - and I've whinged about that enough already.
But what I do want to know is this: who perpetrates all of this stuff? Who sits down and proposes that a car aimed squarely at car enthusiasts should have a steering wheel rim so thick that Lord Voldemort couldn't wrap his fingers around it? Or that isn't actually round? Think about it for a minute - unless the car has a steering rack of one turn lock-to-lock or less, it's a bonkers idea.
And yet we now live in a world where most steering wheels in fast cars are not round and are un-usable by anything smaller than an adult silver back gorilla.
Who decided that suspension should no longer absorb bumps? Actually, I can answer that, it was the berks in the marketing department - but this fallacy of stiff springs and zero tyre sidewall has meant that virtually all new cars sold in the UK do not ride well. They are therefore not carrying out a basic requirement - to keep the occupants isolated from the road surface. That's like buying a £300 toaster, revelling in its build-quality, enjoying the control buttons and overlooking the small fact that it cannot heat white bread to the point that it hardens and turns light brown.
The only difference is that the car buyer tolerates cars that crash rigidly into cats-eyes, celebrates them even, but will return the toaster the moment they realised it didn't work.
It feels like a conspiracy to me. It feels like someone changed the parameters without consulting me - and now I'm left with a different set of rules for a game I thought I knew, and many of them just don't make sense.
Like sports seats. Designing a seat which locates the human torso under heavily lateral forces is not difficult - the clue's in the definition above. You locate the torso. So why do most sports seats have great wings either side of the squab which trap your thighs - the very things you want to keep mobile? And yet there's barely any support under your armpits, where you actually need it. And don't get me started on 'shoulder wings' - right up there with the BMW M two-piston caliper as the worst performance component of the century.
A great sports car used to be one that not only covered ground with electrifying speed, but also communicated its actions to the operator. That second definition now appears to play a minimal role in the development of a so-called drivers' car.
My theory for the way things have become? A lack of car enthusiasts in car companies? Maybe, but perhaps more worryingly it might be a lack of car companies who actually listen to their staff who ARE car nuts - being such a person does seem to have become a cultural and professional stumbling-block in a modern car manufacturer. I find this completely baffling - most months I meet engineers who chat off-the-record about the stuff they are forced to develop that they know is just nonsense to keep the marketing department sweet, and which actually gets in the way of the driving experience.
I'll never understand it. It's like making hi-fi which sounds bad, watches that don't keep accurate time, selling food that tastes of old socks.
We live in a world where bad has become good. Strange and worrying.
Chris
Having said that my '70s car has a lovely round steering wheel and plenty of room, because it has a thin wood rim.
One of the reasons I love my Elise so much is that it doesn't actually feel like a modern car.
I'm persistently disheartened by the company cars in our car park; bottom or the range diesels with rubberband tyres and wheels that wouldn't look out of place on the back of a paddlesteamer. When I query this choice with the cars' new owners, I'm told they prefer the hard, sporty ride as it makes the car handle better. I weep.
I'm not sure that over-steer on demand is anything to do with the modern vs older car argument anyway; that's just a question of person preference. Some of us prefer to have traction.
The majority of consumers will buy anything once as long as it is well marketed, that's why manufacturers are constantly facelifting their models, to fool people into buying the "all new" car again. People are getting smarter on paper, but common sense is a rare thing now (this is coming from a 24 year old).
People used to vote with their feet and not buy a car if it was rubbish, now there is always a moron to buy it if it has a good advertising campaign (some of the new MINI derivatives spring to mind).
My 25000 mile E92 BMW 325i Se is marketed as, looks like and should be a driver's a car. But its anything but. I had been saying loudly to Audi-owning friends that Audis and their AWD are for people that want to appear sporty but don't actually want to "drive" a car, only to find that my car is no different.
It has 19" 30 profile run-flat tyres on the front and 35 on the rear, meaning cats-eyes feel like the lanes are delineated by chunks of lava. The first 1-2" of damping in the suspension is so poorly done that high speed cornering on any surface that isn't billiard-table smooth amounts to a lottery. You'll exit the corner no doubt, but at which angle and direction is anyone's guess. Mid-corner expansion joints have a similar effect on the car as being hip-and-shouldered by The Rock.
Ok so maybe by selecting sport manual shift, we can have low-speed tail-out fun? Nein! For a car with a relatively low power to weight ratio, it has been blessed with 255 section rear tyres and no LSD. So even in the wet, there is bags of grip (even after you've held the traction control button down for a full 4-5 seconds in order to have the car to yourself) and not enough power to overcome it. If you do you will likely just light up the inside tyre only. No LSD to easily overcome both sides and evoke a low speed slide. The BMW preferred method is DTC off, manual shift, coupled with a mid corner stab in a low gear and bag full of lock then hope for the best. No ta. It seems I should have bought the 335i.
Nothing like the E36 of yore which could be slid 3 times (left,right,left) in one straight-across navigation of a roundabout, in the estate, with absolute confidence.
I'm disappointed in my car. Its not a bad car, but I bought it with the wrong expectations. I'd have been better off with an E36 M3 Evo. To be honest, a 2.0l Leon FR is more enjoyable A - B than my BMW and that smarts a bit.
Call it naivety but its a lesson learned.
I'm not sure that over-steer on demand is anything to do with the modern vs older car argument anyway; that's just a question of person preference. Some of us prefer to have traction.
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