RE: PH Blog: the new driving
Discussion
RJP001 said:
Chris said:
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.
I guess Leyland started that trend with the Allegro?
Cheib said:
I think the current generation of cars could well be the nadir in terms of driving pleasure.....over the last ten or fifteen years we have seen cars get heavier and heavier to meet (we are told) safety standards but also to lug around more and more electronic gizmos that aren't strictly necessary.
This was fine for car manufacturers as advances in engine tech meant they could deliver increased performance and fuel consumption (most of the time) whilst the weight ballooned. I suppose for the last five years we've seen a change where fuel consumption has become ever more important as not even enthusiasts can ignore the running costs with fuel at today's prices. We're now starting to see new models that are lighter than the cars they replace which will hopefully accelerate over the next ten years.....what price a 1200 or 1300 kg 3 series with today's engine tech?
I hope that's the way it goes, as the engine tech has moved on, but at a hefty price of actual running costs. Most modern cars have so much tech they are at risk of becoming a serious moneypit for the 2nd or 3rd owner too.... This was fine for car manufacturers as advances in engine tech meant they could deliver increased performance and fuel consumption (most of the time) whilst the weight ballooned. I suppose for the last five years we've seen a change where fuel consumption has become ever more important as not even enthusiasts can ignore the running costs with fuel at today's prices. We're now starting to see new models that are lighter than the cars they replace which will hopefully accelerate over the next ten years.....what price a 1200 or 1300 kg 3 series with today's engine tech?
BeirutTaxi said:
I suspect the next big selling car will be conceived by a few guys designing in their spare time because they have had an idea for a great simple car, rather than an enormous engineering and marketing department corroboration, which will nicely aid in filtering out all the good bits for a great simple design.
See also: DaciaHere's an alternative view on the problem. I was recently given a car from Avis to drive around Lake Geneva, it was a Golf Team, a diesel of some description. But here's the thing, this car had auto lighting, rain sensing wipers, auto park, rear tv, radar front and rear, sat nav, auto dim mirrors etc etc. Now this is a car designed for the masses and the masses clearly prefer a vehicle that gets them from A to B with the minimum effort, brain in neutral, job done. So VW need to make an enthusiasts car, how do their marketing bods deal with that when their basic models have every toy known to man? build a back to basics track toy? didn't Renault try this with the Sport Spider? not exactly a runaway success was it.
Enthusiast are there, this website proves it, there's just not enough of us with the commitment or money to buy Sport Spiders
Enthusiast are there, this website proves it, there's just not enough of us with the commitment or money to buy Sport Spiders
Apache said:
Here's an alternative view on the problem. I was recently given a car from Avis to drive around Lake Geneva, it was a Golf Team, a diesel of some description. But here's the thing, this car had auto lighting, rain sensing wipers, auto park, rear tv, radar front and rear, sat nav, auto dim mirrors etc etc. Now this is a car designed for the masses and the masses clearly prefer a vehicle that gets them from A to B with the minimum effort, brain in neutral, job done. So VW need to make an enthusiasts car, how do their marketing bods deal with that when their basic models have every toy known to man? build a back to basics track toy? didn't Renault try this with the Sport Spider? not exactly a runaway success was it.
Enthusiast are there, this website proves it, there's just not enough of us with the commitment or money to buy Sport Spiders
+1Enthusiast are there, this website proves it, there's just not enough of us with the commitment or money to buy Sport Spiders
I put ride quality and refinement very high in my list of attributes that I look for. Many modern cars have terrible road noise and a rock-hard ride. Maybe it's, as James May ranted, because they want to have a fast lap round the Nürburgring. Well, in my daily commute and weekend drive, not once do I have to negotiate the Nürburgring. I do, however, have to drive along a pot-holed duel-carriageway and many other roads with varying levels of poor road surface.
Furthermore, I think this Infotainment squit is being designed not only by people who aren't car enthusiasts but by people who have never driven a car at all.
Take BMW's iDrive for example. In the E39, to get fresh air in your face, you rotate a thumb wheel. Job done.
In the E60, you hvae to hold the iDrive to the left for about 2 seconds, then rotate the curser to "Colder" by 2 clicks, then hold the controller down for 2 secs to get back to the Audio menu. That's easily 6+ seconds when you're not concentrating as well as you could be.
Furthermore, I think this Infotainment squit is being designed not only by people who aren't car enthusiasts but by people who have never driven a car at all.
Take BMW's iDrive for example. In the E39, to get fresh air in your face, you rotate a thumb wheel. Job done.
In the E60, you hvae to hold the iDrive to the left for about 2 seconds, then rotate the curser to "Colder" by 2 clicks, then hold the controller down for 2 secs to get back to the Audio menu. That's easily 6+ seconds when you're not concentrating as well as you could be.
c_seven said:
Seeing as I am one of those 'berks' in a car company's marketing department I feel I should put our (MY) side of the story across!
What a marketing department does is try and meet consumer demand, and with sports cars, that 'demand' is generally a regurgitation of what they are told by the media. The average car publication will tell them what is good and not good about a car being driven around a track on it's lock-stops in a manner so far from what the average person is ever going to do with there car it's untrue (literally). To perform in these tests (and thus sell) a car has to be engineered to perform on track or being driven across Snowdonia at unimaginable speed and there in lies the problem. A car designed for a road test and not a person.
There seem to be more and more articles lamenting the loss of 'feel' and that as a petrolhead is a good thing, but a case in point is the Toyota GT86, a car designed to give you 'feel' in buckets and low and behold they get - "it's great...but can't it just be a bit faster", or "isn't it fun...but with some more torque it could perform big smoking drifts". So poor slightly baffled Toyota will undoubtedly be bringing out the supercharged TRD version on 18's soon and I would imagine every article will close with something along the line of it not quite having the 'feel' of the original... come on chaps, give us a chance!
[Goes to await P45 delivered by someone in PR!]
Well thank fWhat a marketing department does is try and meet consumer demand, and with sports cars, that 'demand' is generally a regurgitation of what they are told by the media. The average car publication will tell them what is good and not good about a car being driven around a track on it's lock-stops in a manner so far from what the average person is ever going to do with there car it's untrue (literally). To perform in these tests (and thus sell) a car has to be engineered to perform on track or being driven across Snowdonia at unimaginable speed and there in lies the problem. A car designed for a road test and not a person.
There seem to be more and more articles lamenting the loss of 'feel' and that as a petrolhead is a good thing, but a case in point is the Toyota GT86, a car designed to give you 'feel' in buckets and low and behold they get - "it's great...but can't it just be a bit faster", or "isn't it fun...but with some more torque it could perform big smoking drifts". So poor slightly baffled Toyota will undoubtedly be bringing out the supercharged TRD version on 18's soon and I would imagine every article will close with something along the line of it not quite having the 'feel' of the original... come on chaps, give us a chance!
[Goes to await P45 delivered by someone in PR!]
k someone has said it.Chris...the answer to your question is....You. Yes old son, thats right. You and your "Evo Triangle" mates delivering red meat hooning, smoking drift shots to the drooling masses. In short son...you hypocritical old sod. You and yours are actively responsible for helping to ruin cars over the last decade in precisely the ways in which you are now lamenting. Congratulations son and enjoy the whirlwind you have helped reap. Would you like to know the irony? Ten yrs ago, back around the millenium when you were a bit of a nobody, you used to write decent stuff about this. You talked about feel, feedback, ride quality and the inherent quality of a car with decent writing and not so much of the hooning. Fast forwards and with more smoke blown up your arse than a backfiring Nova...and here we are. During that time all you have done is gone from faster to faster more tech orientated missiles declaring them to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and in the cases of the 911s generally out-doing Stuttgart in the PR stakes for them.
And now you are saying...er, hold on chaps, what happened?
You and yours in the media is what happened Harris. You and yours.
Fortunately some of us remain glorious and happy red neck luddite refuseniks and stick to our old pieces of s
te when it comes to driving pleasure because we know the last decade of driving "progress" has been largely completely and utterly bks.Yours,
Ned Lud (and proud!)
I totally agree with Chris about the concept that many performance cars are losing the feel and involvement of old, but I'm not really sure how that's all being blamed on Marketing departments. Ultimately it's customers who have the final say and if they're being flogged products that they don't like then they won't buy them.
Marketing teams usually get given the details of what the latest model year updates (or new model features/improvements) are going to be, to then market them to the target audience. Surely it's the designers, engineers and product people who should be focusing on the driver in the first place. This would then help give the marketing teams a compelling story to tell those drivers - rather than the vanilla ads that we see now focusing on product details, MPG, VAT, % offers plus a picture of the car on 19" rims in a fancy location.
Take the BRZ/GT86 as an example. The engineers and designers have focused on producing a fun car that feels good to drive and isn't numbed by electronics and ridiculously hard damping and huge fat tyres. To a marketing department that's an absolute dream to promote! Otherwise what's the product's point of difference?
Marketing teams usually get given the details of what the latest model year updates (or new model features/improvements) are going to be, to then market them to the target audience. Surely it's the designers, engineers and product people who should be focusing on the driver in the first place. This would then help give the marketing teams a compelling story to tell those drivers - rather than the vanilla ads that we see now focusing on product details, MPG, VAT, % offers plus a picture of the car on 19" rims in a fancy location.
Take the BRZ/GT86 as an example. The engineers and designers have focused on producing a fun car that feels good to drive and isn't numbed by electronics and ridiculously hard damping and huge fat tyres. To a marketing department that's an absolute dream to promote! Otherwise what's the product's point of difference?
dod said:
MagicalTrevor said:
So aside from the standard 'MX5' comment, is there anything else that is communicative, fun and able to get the tail out on demand?
Any TVR will easily do it on demand, and sometimes, when you don't even slightly request it 
DJRC said:
Well thank fk someone has said it.
Chris...the answer to your question is....You. Yes old son, thats right. You and your "Evo Triangle" mates delivering red meat hooning, smoking drift shots to the drooling masses. In short son...you hypocritical old sod. You and yours are actively responsible for helping to ruin cars over the last decade in precisely the ways in which you are now lamenting. Congratulations son and enjoy the whirlwind you have helped reap. Would you like to know the irony? Ten yrs ago, back around the millenium when you were a bit of a nobody, you used to write decent stuff about this. You talked about feel, feedback, ride quality and the inherent quality of a car with decent writing and not so much of the hooning. Fast forwards and with more smoke blown up your arse than a backfiring Nova...and here we are. During that time all you have done is gone from faster to faster more tech orientated missiles declaring them to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and in the cases of the 911s generally out-doing Stuttgart in the PR stakes for them.
And now you are saying...er, hold on chaps, what happened?
You and yours in the media is what happened Harris. You and yours.
Fortunately some of us remain glorious and happy red neck luddite refuseniks and stick to our old pieces of ste when it comes to driving pleasure because we know the last decade of driving "progress" has been largely completely and utterly bks.
Yours,
Ned Lud (and proud!)
Wouldn't want to intrude in a personal ding dong between you and Mr Harris but I isn't the point of a marketing department to take into account what the media and public say? The media has been saying the F40 is still one of the greatest supercars ever made, I don't see many pretenders coming to take it's throne? Also is it not just the greed of the manufacturers driving to make more models to try and eat up into some of the competitors sales?k someone has said it.Chris...the answer to your question is....You. Yes old son, thats right. You and your "Evo Triangle" mates delivering red meat hooning, smoking drift shots to the drooling masses. In short son...you hypocritical old sod. You and yours are actively responsible for helping to ruin cars over the last decade in precisely the ways in which you are now lamenting. Congratulations son and enjoy the whirlwind you have helped reap. Would you like to know the irony? Ten yrs ago, back around the millenium when you were a bit of a nobody, you used to write decent stuff about this. You talked about feel, feedback, ride quality and the inherent quality of a car with decent writing and not so much of the hooning. Fast forwards and with more smoke blown up your arse than a backfiring Nova...and here we are. During that time all you have done is gone from faster to faster more tech orientated missiles declaring them to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and in the cases of the 911s generally out-doing Stuttgart in the PR stakes for them.
And now you are saying...er, hold on chaps, what happened?
You and yours in the media is what happened Harris. You and yours.
Fortunately some of us remain glorious and happy red neck luddite refuseniks and stick to our old pieces of s
te when it comes to driving pleasure because we know the last decade of driving "progress" has been largely completely and utterly bks.Yours,
Ned Lud (and proud!)
10 years ago Audi made fast (safe) saloons/estates and BMW made decent mid size coupes? Now both make saloons, coupes, superminis, supercars, scooters and whatever else they can make a few quid on! I'm pretty sure this isn't due to the influence of the media but pure greed by manufacturers to monopolise the market.
LewisR said:
I put ride quality and refinement very high in my list of attributes that I look for. Many modern cars have terrible road noise and a rock-hard ride. Maybe it's, as James May ranted, because they want to have a fast lap round the Nürburgring. Well, in my daily commute and weekend drive, not once do I have to negotiate the Nürburgring. I do, however, have to drive along a pot-holed duel-carriageway and many other roads with varying levels of poor road surface.
BUT ITS HARRIS AND BLOODY CO WHO HAVE PROMPTED THE fkING 'RING LOVE IN OVER THE LAST DECADE OR SO!!!!!!!! You never used to hear about the Ring in terms of car Ring times until Evo, etc all started wanging on about it, heading over there on "test drives", putting down 'Ring times, etc, etc. Suddenly, every Tom, Dick and ahole with a Honda Civic thinks he has to go and down the 'Ring. Because apparently it was the ultimate test of a road car in all conditions. Well not it bloody wasnt, no it bloody isnt and no it bloody wont be in the future either!In fact we can time precisely when this f
k up with modern cars started...the first time someone used the initials BTG in conversation. And whoever it was should be shot.DJRC said:
Well thank fk someone has said it.
Chris...the answer to your question is....You. Yes old son, thats right. You and your "Evo Triangle" mates delivering red meat hooning, smoking drift shots to the drooling masses. In short son...you hypocritical old sod. You and yours are actively responsible for helping to ruin cars over the last decade in precisely the ways in which you are now lamenting. Congratulations son and enjoy the whirlwind you have helped reap. Would you like to know the irony? Ten yrs ago, back around the millenium when you were a bit of a nobody, you used to write decent stuff about this. You talked about feel, feedback, ride quality and the inherent quality of a car with decent writing and not so much of the hooning. Fast forwards and with more smoke blown up your arse than a backfiring Nova...and here we are. During that time all you have done is gone from faster to faster more tech orientated missiles declaring them to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and in the cases of the 911s generally out-doing Stuttgart in the PR stakes for them.
And now you are saying...er, hold on chaps, what happened?
You and yours in the media is what happened Harris. You and yours.
Fortunately some of us remain glorious and happy red neck luddite refuseniks and stick to our old pieces of ste when it comes to driving pleasure because we know the last decade of driving "progress" has been largely completely and utterly bks.
Yours,
Ned Lud (and proud!)
ha ha.. lot of truth here.k someone has said it.Chris...the answer to your question is....You. Yes old son, thats right. You and your "Evo Triangle" mates delivering red meat hooning, smoking drift shots to the drooling masses. In short son...you hypocritical old sod. You and yours are actively responsible for helping to ruin cars over the last decade in precisely the ways in which you are now lamenting. Congratulations son and enjoy the whirlwind you have helped reap. Would you like to know the irony? Ten yrs ago, back around the millenium when you were a bit of a nobody, you used to write decent stuff about this. You talked about feel, feedback, ride quality and the inherent quality of a car with decent writing and not so much of the hooning. Fast forwards and with more smoke blown up your arse than a backfiring Nova...and here we are. During that time all you have done is gone from faster to faster more tech orientated missiles declaring them to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and in the cases of the 911s generally out-doing Stuttgart in the PR stakes for them.
And now you are saying...er, hold on chaps, what happened?
You and yours in the media is what happened Harris. You and yours.
Fortunately some of us remain glorious and happy red neck luddite refuseniks and stick to our old pieces of s
te when it comes to driving pleasure because we know the last decade of driving "progress" has been largely completely and utterly bks.Yours,
Ned Lud (and proud!)
How many time have we had boggo shopping hatchbacks tested on the telly where the "test" involves a meaningless attempt to seeing how fast they go around a track? And you wonder why manufacturers make their cars stiffer?
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