What is the most impressive thing about cars

What is the most impressive thing about cars

Poll: What is the most impressive thing about cars

Total Members Polled: 71

Body design: 20%
Engine: 48%
Gearbox: 3%
Brakes: 1%
Suspension: 7%
Induction noise: 7%
Exhaust noise: 14%
Author
Discussion

Welshbeef

Original Poster:

49,633 posts

198 months

Tuesday 27th January 2015
quotequote all
An interesting poll for PH - if you had to choose one of the above reframing factors about a car which would it be? And why?


For me its a tough call I love the way some cars look but also the sound (exhaust) and if driving suspension.

jonnM

1,102 posts

139 months

Tuesday 27th January 2015
quotequote all
Looks and sound would be top of my list.

sebhaque

6,404 posts

181 months

Tuesday 27th January 2015
quotequote all
Sound above all. As long as the car can do 70mph, I put sound over performance. Give me a Daihatsu Charade's performance with an M3 CSL's soundtrack, or vice versa, and I'll pick the noisy slow car smile

Krikkit

26,527 posts

181 months

Tuesday 27th January 2015
quotequote all
Impressive? Engines.

A symphony of explosions, harnessed by clever machining and materials mastery, to turn it into something that actually produces useful energy.

killerferret666

462 posts

188 months

Tuesday 27th January 2015
quotequote all
Going to sound boring but over the last decade the safety improvement has really impressed me. People are having 100mpg crashes and walking away.

When you watch the slow mo videos of a car crumpling in a test, it amazes me how they design it so well to take all that energy.


g3org3y

20,627 posts

191 months

Tuesday 27th January 2015
quotequote all
IMO - the ability to sit in a (comfy leather) seat in an air-conditioned environment with the music you like and in 10 hours get out hundreds of miles away (perhaps in a different country) without having to share any personal space with scumbags/peasants. Lovely smile

B17NNS

18,506 posts

247 months

Tuesday 27th January 2015
quotequote all
killerferret666 said:
People are having 100mpg crashes and walking away.
Cars that are capable of 100mpg aren't really going to ever be going that fast when they crash though are they.

TooMany2cvs

29,008 posts

126 months

Wednesday 28th January 2015
quotequote all
killerferret666 said:
When you watch the slow mo videos of a car crumpling in a test, it amazes me how they design it so well to take all that energy.
Practice.

Magic919

14,126 posts

201 months

Wednesday 28th January 2015
quotequote all
Welshbeef said:
reframing factors
What on earth are reframing factors?

berlintaxi

8,535 posts

173 months

Wednesday 28th January 2015
quotequote all
Surely it is the fact it gets you from A to B quickly in the warmth and dry.

jamieduff1981

8,025 posts

140 months

Wednesday 28th January 2015
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I can't vote. It's a balance of all of those things. I've dismissed mingers than sound good and drive well (BMW M6 V10) and I've dismissed cars that look and sound good but drive crap (Alfa Brera).

A car needs to appeal on all levels to some degree to get my money - it's just the weightings that shift around a little depending on the budget and functional requirement.

ka90

159 posts

123 months

Wednesday 28th January 2015
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I think your missing one; reliability/durability.

I think it's incredible that a car can drive the equivalent of around the world without even a service or parts change. It's essentially a repetitive controlled explosion moving over a ton of metal and it can do this for many 100,000 miles with little maintenance. Amazing.

RobM77

35,349 posts

234 months

Wednesday 28th January 2015
quotequote all
I'm not sure about the question, but I love driving and so for me it's the suspension that contributes most to my enjoyment of a car. If you took a great handling car, like a Caterham, and put a dull engine in it that sounded bad and made the car look really awful, I'd still enjoy it. If however you took that Caterham and made it handle badly, but sound great and look great, I wouldn't be interested in the car at all.

swisstoni

16,997 posts

279 months

Wednesday 28th January 2015
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Body design - if it's beautiful enough I'll live with the shortcomings.

Pan Pan Pan

9,902 posts

111 months

Wednesday 28th January 2015
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Possibly the best thing about cars, is in fact cars. Even cheap cars now
have generally good standards of comfort and reliability. With exception of a few Asian models they all seem to look reasonable too.
I am just impressed by their ability to let people go almost anywhere, anytime, they want to. They really are the magic seven league boots, that magicians from history promised ordinary folk centuries ago. In my book, cars are the finest form of general transport that has so far been devised.
When someone invents something which is truly better, people will switch to it in their millions. To date no one has done this. Perhaps the next thing in transport will be Star Trek style transporters, but I don't see them coming to the ordinary person anytime soon.

Troubleatmill

10,210 posts

159 months

Wednesday 28th January 2015
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Reliability.


MrHorsepower

2,438 posts

138 months

Wednesday 28th January 2015
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Having been obsessed and impassioned with beautiful and interesting cars since the days before I had any understanding of mechanicals, I can only go with body design

Caruso

7,436 posts

256 months

Wednesday 28th January 2015
quotequote all
The engine - turning dead plants into flames, noise and acceleration.