Five most useless features in a car
Discussion
300bhp/ton said:
ok it's going to be one of those.....
Bright lights will glare more off of wet roads and cause greater distraction. A bright light also means it's much harder to see past the light, want proof hold a torch infront of your face (at arms length) and then try and see objects 10 feet in front of you.
Judging speed and distance is harder when what you are looking at is a bright light, rather than an object.
During WW2 bright lights where used to "hide" ships at sea and reduce the visual signature of aircraft, during certain ambient lighting conditions. These same things happen with cars also.
A less intense light will just as easily 'mark' a car in gloomy or dusk lighting. But without any of the negative affective of brighter lights.
Your last comment "DRLs make cars far more visible at a distance". Exactly how far away do you need to see a car?
Seriously, seeing a car at 2 miles away instead of 1500 yards away offers what realtime advantage?
Never quite understood the anti-sidelight rants on here. Surely they're there to help others see your car when it's slightly dull/dusk etc, and they do that very well. Headlights are for when you need light to see the road by.
Electric rear windows are great, I'll often crack the rear windows open a bit to got some air around the car without getting a lot of noise of a draft
Electric adjusted right hand mirror always seems a little pointless to me, my old ZX had an electric left one and a manual right one, which was a great idea as you can easily reach the right hand adjuster and it's the side that's more likely to get hit so is a lot cheaper to replace.
Single wiper blade, what's the point? It sweeps all the water down to the bottom of the windscreen and then goes and parks on the other side so all the water you've cleared gets blown back up the screen.
My Octavia has a little cubby hole on the top of the dash in the centre. I've never found anything that fits in it and as far as I can tell the only purpose of it is to annoy me when I accidentally open it every bloody time that I fit the satnag to the screen.
Electric adjusted right hand mirror always seems a little pointless to me, my old ZX had an electric left one and a manual right one, which was a great idea as you can easily reach the right hand adjuster and it's the side that's more likely to get hit so is a lot cheaper to replace.
Single wiper blade, what's the point? It sweeps all the water down to the bottom of the windscreen and then goes and parks on the other side so all the water you've cleared gets blown back up the screen.
My Octavia has a little cubby hole on the top of the dash in the centre. I've never found anything that fits in it and as far as I can tell the only purpose of it is to annoy me when I accidentally open it every bloody time that I fit the satnag to the screen.
RizzoTheRat said:
My Octavia has a little cubby hole on the top of the dash in the centre. I've never found anything that fits in it and as far as I can tell the only purpose of it is to annoy me when I accidentally open it every bloody time that I fit the satnag to the screen.
Where do they fit the factory sat nav on that model? Seems to be the new "blank buttons" at the moment - useless storage where the factory nav would be!Probably the soft close doors on mine (they saw me coming)
Yes, it's kind of cool for a bit but anyone that doesn't know the car has it assumes they've not closed the door properly and then reopens and slam it again.
Also voice activation, it's clearly not geared around a gruff northern accent as it never does anything I bloody want it to, somebody at BMW must have a sense of humour though as it manages to translate f
k off as 'cancel' perfectly every time.
Yes, it's kind of cool for a bit but anyone that doesn't know the car has it assumes they've not closed the door properly and then reopens and slam it again.
Also voice activation, it's clearly not geared around a gruff northern accent as it never does anything I bloody want it to, somebody at BMW must have a sense of humour though as it manages to translate f
k off as 'cancel' perfectly every time.petrolsniffer said:
Fastdruid said:
I'd agree, I liked the Puma intermittent wipers which (as a previous poster notes) can be set to any intermittency you want but even then I find if the rain is itself intermittent you still end up playing with it all the time.
How do you do this???? I've done it by accident a couple of times but never known how to set the delayAFAIR: Turn it on, then back off. Wait until you want another wipe and then turn it on and leave it. It'll then continue to do intermittent wipes at the same frequency.
I believe it wasn't on all though, wasn't on the early ones (we had a 2000/W which had it by my sister had an earlier one which didn't) and from a quick google appears wasn't on the later ones either.
It varies from person to person; although my present car is the first that I've had with electric seats, sunroof and cruise control, I miss them all when I'm driving my wife's car. On the other hand I've had it for just over three years and I've no idea whether the CD player works or not, and I don't even know if it's got cupholders!
Crosswise said:
As an aside, I'm fascinated to know what car you have purchased which doesn't have electric rear windows? The wording leads me to believe it's modern in which case I'm amazed that anyting other than a lightweight track car or a Tata Nano come without electric windows, or your car is a Mk1 Ford Cortina in which case it would make sense. My XJ6 has electric windows front and back and that's nearly 40 years old, I'm shocked that it hasn't caught on.
3 year old Passat R-line (one up from bog-standard). I understand "Ze Germans" are notorious tightwads when it comes to extra features. Although I have heard that in South Africa even a radio is an optional extra.Toaster Pilot said:
RizzoTheRat said:
My Octavia has a little cubby hole on the top of the dash in the centre. I've never found anything that fits in it and as far as I can tell the only purpose of it is to annoy me when I accidentally open it every bloody time that I fit the satnag to the screen.
Where do they fit the factory sat nav on that model? Seems to be the new "blank buttons" at the moment - useless storage where the factory nav would be!Electric Seats - these are useful, except when I "recall memory 2" and smush myself into the windscreen!
Sunroofs - Don't get this, I had one on a terrible 306 I had, it was the only electric item never to break, open up/slanted not much noise nice breeze, fully open was quite noisey but not buffety as it had a flap at the front to direct the airflow over the hole.
EPB's - only got one in my current car and seeing as it has a "hill-hold" system I don't see the issue, if you didn't then I can see the problem.
DRL - agree with other points, too bright for what they need to do, old Volvo's with their DRL's were totally fine imo
My worst is SMG gearbox's - I'm sorry but what fool decided that these were worth creating? I have a normal slushbox/autobox, and I cannot fail to be amazed at how smoothly the gearchanges happen, both up and down the box. Wasn't it VW who did them first? Maybe if they were less concerned with profit margins, attaching fairy lights, removing driver enjoyment, and creating something that can be "slammed" and more concerned with sourcing the best parts we wouldn't have this useless bit of tosh...
Sunroofs - Don't get this, I had one on a terrible 306 I had, it was the only electric item never to break, open up/slanted not much noise nice breeze, fully open was quite noisey but not buffety as it had a flap at the front to direct the airflow over the hole.
EPB's - only got one in my current car and seeing as it has a "hill-hold" system I don't see the issue, if you didn't then I can see the problem.
DRL - agree with other points, too bright for what they need to do, old Volvo's with their DRL's were totally fine imo
My worst is SMG gearbox's - I'm sorry but what fool decided that these were worth creating? I have a normal slushbox/autobox, and I cannot fail to be amazed at how smoothly the gearchanges happen, both up and down the box. Wasn't it VW who did them first? Maybe if they were less concerned with profit margins, attaching fairy lights, removing driver enjoyment, and creating something that can be "slammed" and more concerned with sourcing the best parts we wouldn't have this useless bit of tosh...
Halmyre said:
Crosswise said:
As an aside, I'm fascinated to know what car you have purchased which doesn't have electric rear windows? The wording leads me to believe it's modern in which case I'm amazed that anyting other than a lightweight track car or a Tata Nano come without electric windows, or your car is a Mk1 Ford Cortina in which case it would make sense. My XJ6 has electric windows front and back and that's nearly 40 years old, I'm shocked that it hasn't caught on.
3 year old Passat R-line (one up from bog-standard). I understand "Ze Germans" are notorious tightwads when it comes to extra features. Although I have heard that in South Africa even a radio is an optional extra.Halmyre said:
ELECTRIC SEAT ADJUSTMENT
In my experience this is only useful in combination with memory seats. I'm 6'1 and my wife is 5'0 - we swap cars fairly often - sometimes a number of times a day depending on who's on child taxi duty. Normally I can't actually get in the car after she's driven it so I have to reach in to adjust the seat back, squeeze in and then drop it. In the e46 the seats are coded to my key, so by the time I've opened the door, the seat has already moved to where I want it.In contrast, the wife's Galaxy has electric height adjustment on the drivers seat. It's less effort than a ratchet system, but slower.
Halmyre said:
SUN ROOF
Never had one leak yet, and I've owned French cars with them 
Halmyre said:
ELECTRIC REAR WINDOWS
Great when you've got you kids. Rear window switch in the family bus is permanently set to locked. If they want the windows open they ask me. It means that when locking the car I can roll all windows up from the drivers seat rather than having to open each door and wind them up by hand.Enjoyed the comments. For me the prize goes to the Golf bottle opener (WTF?) but my pet hate is cup holders. Never a practical size for anything I want to drink and always in a very awkward position forcing you to take your eyes off the road to find the drink. I use my wife to hold my drink! I just hold my hand out with eyes firmly fixed on the road and the beverage of choice is delivered smoothly into my hand (and it works in reverse!)
As a Rolls-Royce man, I have to say the absence of the push-button door closing in the front of the Phantom is unbelievable. Introduced for the rear passengers as the suicide doors prevent one from reaching the door once in necessitating the need for a button. But, have they not sat in the front and realised that the doors, which are huge, are a long way out to reach so if one is even average hieght you practically have to get out of the car to pull the door in!
As a Rolls-Royce man, I have to say the absence of the push-button door closing in the front of the Phantom is unbelievable. Introduced for the rear passengers as the suicide doors prevent one from reaching the door once in necessitating the need for a button. But, have they not sat in the front and realised that the doors, which are huge, are a long way out to reach so if one is even average hieght you practically have to get out of the car to pull the door in!
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