In addition to more and more horsepower, automobile manufacturers are seemingly locked in a desperate struggle to load their vehicles up with more and more, well, stuff. Supposedly to help you drive better. After all, modern supercars are essentially porky Le Mans racers with power windows. But which feature is the most oversold, the most useless? Which does nothing but fill promotional material and empty your wallet? Is it AWD used mostly in dry conditions? The empty promise of 50/50 weight distribution? Manumatic gearboxes (or dare I say it… DSG?). Ceramic brakes that catch on fire and cost more than other cars? Nav systems that point out the nearest casino? Carbon fiber door inserts? Massaging seats? What? You tell us: what is the most oversold and useless car feature/characteristic currently on the market?
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tiptronic/sport shift transmissions
long tread life (read noisy slippery) tires
drive by wire
Oh hands down it’s navigation systems. If you’re too dumb to use a map you’re too dumb to drive, let alone use a navigation system.
After that, perhaps AC cause chilled cup holders would be better ;) heh
Fog lights for BMW owners.
I agree with Noah on the Nav,But I think the built in cooler in the butt ugly Aztec was good for cruzin and boozin road trips,not that I would endorse such behavior
I think Nav Systems are great for people like me — journalists. Why? Well, I jumped into that GL 450 with a friend and we just started driving to somewhere out in the desert — no plans, his wife wanted him home by 8:00 pm.
“How about Palm Springs?”
“Cool — hey, I know this great diner called ‘Rick’s’ — though I don’t know exactly where it is.”
“Try the Nav system.”
Then, after lunch
“Dude — it’s 110 degress out — this sucks”
“Lets go up to Idyllwild — it is bound to be cooler 6,000 feet up”
“OK… how do you spell Idyllwild?”
But, for day to day driving… not so useful.
I vote for AWD as being essentially useless, unless you’re Colin MacRae or live in the snowbelt. (And even in the snowbelt, we’ve all seen the SUV-moron phenomenon, “I can drive faster in the snow because I have four-wheel drive.)
Think about it: AWD only helps under positive torque. Coast or decelerate and it’s only along for the ride, burning extra gas, adding unsprung weight and extra complexity, and muddying up the steering. You need to be into the throttle for AWD to help.
So there you are, in the rain, in your Subaru, the corner’s tighter than you thought it’d be, oh jeez there goes the rear end and why can’t I steer? A huge wash of hot adrenaline and what do you do? Apply power? You wish. You probably go for the brakes, if it’s scary enough, thus compounding your misery. Yet Subaru advertises that its AWD “helps prevent accidents.”
Nah. It does a wonderful job of getting you to the ski resort in mid-February, but on a rain-slick Florida road with a non-competition-trained and skilled driver at the wheel–somebody way better than me, for example–it won’t do scheiss.
(Confession: we own an Audi A4 Avant quattro but have a steeply uphill, quarter-mile-long driveway in Upstate New York. We’re in the mountains, small as they may be, and it snows here.)
Lane departure warning systems, and backup/reverse sonar & cameras!
I have just three words to sum up how I’d feel if ever I came to need them:
“Just shoot me”
in no particular order:
abs
traction control
nav systems
power windows
drive by wire
it’s not that these things are available, it’s that i’m forced to get most of them when i get a new car. i want a stripped down fun go machine, i don’t need abs (i hate abs), i don’t want the handling nanny to take my fun away, i don’t need a gps to tell me where i am (and tell the cops how fast i’m going), i can roll down the windows my self, and i hate it when the computer thinks it knows better than me what the throtte should be doing. i wish we could order cars how we wanted them! of course, that’s why i haven’t bought a new car in many many years – my daily driver is an ‘89 toyota 4runner with over 250K miles.
there are ton of other things that i hate and complain about on a daily basis to anyone who will listen, but i can’t think of them right now.
Radar- or sonar-controlled cruise control. I mean… come on. If you’re paying so little attention to your driving you can’t tell you’re getting too close to the car ahead you need to pull it over and park it!
Followed closely by multifunction control systems like iDrive and MMI.
Where to begin?
1. Navigation system for reasons already stated. For $2000 can buy many road maps and a Zagat’s guide.
2. Rain sensing windshield wipers. Am I that stupid that I won’t know when to turn them on?
3. Leather seating surfaces. Too slick for spirited driving and wearing shorts in the summer leads to legs cooked longer than a McD’s burger. I’ll take good cloth seats any day.
4. Electric adjustable seats with 2 or more driver memory. Let’s see, I get in the car and adjust is ONCE and I am the only driver.
5. Dual zone climate control. Unless you drive a gigantic SUV and need a separate a/c unit for the back county the kids sit in. I set mine for 65, the wife 75 and the car ends up 70. Hmmmmm.
That is all I can think of for now but I’m sure there are many more. Give me a simple, reliable, practical and fun to drive car with out all of the crap.
Fog lights that people use in clear weather and refer to as “driving lights”. Of course, that is just people being idiots.
Most useless…vanity mirrors (also one of the most dangerous) or the “gold package”. People shouldn’t need to do makeup in the car…
Most oversold…”high end” factory sound systems (exceptions do exist). I find that most are no good and you could do better for less than half the money.
Most dangerous…huge rims with spinners (too much unsprung weight and additional rotating mass without brake and suspension upgrades.)
Third. Row. Seats. I’m not saying nobody needs them. I’m just a bit perplexed by the race to cram a third row into absolutely EVERYTHING.
miked –
you have obviously never been in a situation where you need ABS/Traction Control.
They will save your life. They saved mine.
I had a huge chunk of tire rip out of a tail-wagging 997 during a very hard corner. The steering input told me that I had lost control of the vehicle. I blinked, trying to think of what my last thought should be, and then the computer saved me.
Luckily, it was 110 degrees out and the AC was useless and it was the end of a long day and i was beat, so I switched the Traction Control (Er… PSM in this case) on for the last few laps.
nutbags, I agree with leather for the reasons you stated, but for kids, it is wonderful. We had an incident with a very dirty diaper that would have been a disaster on cloth.
Also, I think rain sensing wipers are nice when the rain varies, so you don’t have to constantly adjust the speed. Having said that, I wouldn’t pay much for the feature.
I think a seat with two memory positions is good. My wife and I may drive either vehicle depending what we need.
As a single dude, me and only me drives my car.
However, I was thinking how silly more than two memory positions are, when it hit me — they don’t have to be used for two people.
I would actually love to have memory seats so I could have a “comfort” and “sport” mode.
Seat back and low for highway cruising, and foreward and up for carving asphalt.
Jonny, once you have another person in the car with you, why would you even need nav? They hold the map, you drive. I suppose if you’re alone, nav would be handy, and possibly less distracting than a map, but nav systems tend to make pretty stupid errors and can be far from accurate.
I think sat nav is way too expensive for what you’re getting, especially if you don’t travel much, or know your city well. What else gets to me… headlights that turn around corners. Mirrors that swoop out and check your blind spot for you. Spoilers on minivans (or worse, trucks). Those are the worst. All those expensive little toys that sound good on paper, but are useless once you put them in real driving situations. Or the purely cosmetic toys that make Mr. Minivan feel just a little better about trading in his testicles for a waaaahhh-mbulance.
I won’t say AWD is useless though, unless you live in the south. AWD is mostly useless in snowier parts of the country, but when you need it, you’re glad you have it. Of course, i’m moving from Omaha to Atlanta soon, and our snow tires will rot away in some storage facility (AWD doesn’t do a damn bit of good when your performance tires suck on ice).
I’m going to agree on the traction control systems. However, I think it should be there, just not on as a default. Most cars are ’smart’ enough at this point to have outside thermometers, so why not have the traction control come on automatically only when it hits 40F or below? If you need it when it’s above that, then you should be able to turn it on with a button press. Driving in a horrid downpour? If your rain sensing wipers are flying all over the place, the traction control should be smart enough to turn on.
But Nav systems are the most oversold…most of the members of the Acura TSX forum I belong to are all “oh, the nav is a must blah blah”, where I’d rather spend the $2k extra it costs on things that mattered (well, somewhat…but more than a nav) like tint to get that temp down on the Ebony interior, and 3M clearbra on the front end to keep those western PA rocks from chipping my paint. The rest went to…paying for the damn vehicle. $2k nav? try google maps and print it out first…for free.
zerogeek:
I already explained — we were going to a restaurant in Palm Springs that I had never been to, and that he had been to once and couldn’t remember where it was.
That would not be on a map. Yes, we could have called and gotten the street address. Assuming the street would be on a map. We could have asked for directions.
Still — for things like that, Nav Systems are pretty useful.
Another example — in BMWs, the sat Nav will give you two or more possible routes. Again, prety useful.
I agree that Nav systems are very useful, but I also agree that they are way overpriced.
I think that stability and traction control are good things, but should always be FULLY defeatable.
No way — they should develop AI so the car can determine if the driver is skilled enough to justify turning all stability and traction programs off.
jonny – my dislike of abs and traction control comes only from a few limited experiences, and in those cases i would have been better without them. i’m sure if i was manhandling a porsche around corners then i’d want traction control because i’m not that great of a driver, but in my every day situations i want to tell the car what to do. e.g.: last winter i was heading down a short but steep hill. the roads were dry except for a 2foot long patch of ice spanning the width of the road (most likely broken city water line). at the bottom of the hill just after the ice, i need to stop to make a turn into a parking lot. so i go down the hill in my trusty old 4runner, i see the ice, but since it’s not too long i don’t worry about it. my front wheels hit the ice and lock up (i fully expected that), but i maintain control because the back wheels are still on dry pavement and keep me going slow. likewise when the back wheels are on the ice, the front wheels are doing the braking for me. after the ice i stop and make my turn, all is well. the next day, the conditions are the same but i have my subaru with me. guess what happens when the front wheels lock up on the ice? abs says “hey, the wheels are locked up, time to reduce braking pressure” so i lose brakes on ALL 4 wheels!. the same thing happens when the rears lock up! it was not a disaster because i had enough room to stop and turn around and come back up to my turnoff, but in a situation when i had to stop sooner, it would have been a problem. i don’t own a car with traction control, but i did test drive a vw gti with esp and i was very disappointed. i know if i owned one, i would have the switch off all the time.
my major gripe is i want choice in the ability to purchase or not purchase the accessory. and if i do have it, i was the ability to turn it off. i’m sure abs is great for panic stops dry roads, but the only time it comes on for me is when i would rather do a (more) controlled skid in the snow. i’d just pull the fuse for abs, but i know if i ever got in an accident, insurance wouldn’t pay.
1. Power windows, because they will fail at the worst possible times.
2. Front wheel drive on large cars (i.e., anything bigger than a Camry). What has the big front-drive car done for anybody besides run up maintenance costs?
3. Expensive high-powered stereos in cheap cars with almost no sound insulation. They’re great, so long as you never drive over 25 MPH.
Let me be clear — I don’t think ABS by itself is all that useful or safe.
But, coupled with a traction/stability control system, it will save lives. And, traction control systems all work off the fact that ABS can brake and release, brake and release.
$4000 rims on a $500 car. Why bother?
The most over hyped in my opnion? EPA fuel economy ratings. They are un-realistic at this time, and they are used in a never ending pissing match when in fact they never live up to real world testing.
ooh, ABS is also a good one. I took the ABS fuse out of my RSX in the winter, because it drove me up a farking wall.
More cars are including four-channel ABS now which would NOT reduce braking force on other tires with traction. I’m not sure about your Subaru, but the new Imprezas even come with four-channel, four-sensor ABS which would not do what you described.
Low profile tires. Especially on generic sedans. (I happen to think they look stupid, but that’s just my taste.) On crappy, crater-filled Midwestern roads they’re unreservedly awful. If you’re on a track or an immaculate German road, ok, maybe. Otherwise, stick to real tires, not rubber bands on rims.
Day. Time. Runninglights.
Should have been “we’re too cheap to change the lighting harness from our Canadian models to something else, so we’ll just tout it as a safety feature.”
That, or air conditioned glove boxes. you know who you are.
I bought a VW Passat GLX a few years ago and it has power everything. My goodness. I thought I was getting married and am now single. Have realized that I do not need nor want a lot of this stuff:
1. Climate control – the car is continually trying to adjust the inside temperature. I open the windows and it goes crazy trying to get it right. Have realized plain old heat/AC controls work just fine instead of the computer continually trying to adjust it. Very annoying when you want a manual mode.
2. Power seats – I adjust it and am done. In all the time I have had the car I think have played with it 2 times. Adds unneccasary weight.
3. Seats with memory – my Passat has 3. I am the only driver. Who cares.
4. Power mirrors – adjusted it once, never touched it again.
5. Rain sensing wipers – 1/2 the time it is confused whether it is raining hard or whatever.
Have not made up my mind about leather yet. Am debating trading the Passat in for a GTI…
I have to say the use of carbon fiber in any car not used for competition. It may be useful in an Audi R10, but there is no passenger car that benefits from the alleged weight savings that come from using carbon fiber for decoration. I find it particularly ludicrous when used in luxury cars that already weigh 4000-5000 lbs.
The comments so far sound more like “Features I like.” As far as navigation systems, they do seem useless at first but they really do help a lot if one does a lot of driving. It gives you the freedom to drive anywhere without worrying about having to pull out a map or pull over and ask for directions. As for power windows, I read that downgrading to hand-crank windows in a Lotus Elise actually adds a few pounds. People who don’t beleive in air conditioning haven’t gotten stuck at a light for 15 minutes on a 110 degree day in Palm Springs.
Hyped up features are things like:
- Keyless start (not to be confused with keyless entry)
- Automatically activating headlights
- Casette tape players
- 2 or more temperature zones (I’d like it if you could control the direction of the air in each zone though)
- Massaging seats
- Auto dimming mirrors (My Broadway mirror add-on doesn’t glare and my friend’s subaru’s ‘auto dimming’ mirror doesn’t do anything)
- Audio systems with more speakers and watts than a rap concert.
- Seats that can adjust in more directions than the audio system has speakers. (I stopped counting after 12
- Automatically latching door hinges
- Adjustable power rear seats
- Cylinder deactivation for anything smaller than a V12
- Ginormous rims on trucks and SUVs
- E85
- Infrared vision (since when did people who own expensive cars drive through the middle of nowhere at breakneck speeds?)
Some people consider TCS and stability control detrimental to their driving experience. I feel that it depenends entirely on the tolerances set by that particular car manufacturer. Compare the overbearing Lexus VDIM to GM’s three-setting system.
Those people who don’t like nav obviously don’t live in the Boston metro area. I’m good with a map, and never had any trouble in the DC area, where things are laid out with a little more logic (if much less soul).
I also have avoided accidents twice in my old Saturn, because of ABS. Unfortunately, my current car, which was far too good a deal to pass up (about $3,000 under bluebook for a ‘99 Accord at the end of 2004), doesn’t have ABS. When you lock the wheels, you stall, and you lose your power steering and power brakes.
Regarding AWD, it’s amazing how well it goes in the snow even without snow tires. But my Accord does almost as well with the snows.
Stuff I hate:
1. shallow but extensive windshields that make it hard to see when they get the slightest bit wet or dirty and that function as solar collectors when you least need it.
2. big turning circles. Why??? My late parents’ Dodge Caravan had a much smaller turning circle than my old ‘93 Saturn. If the Minivan could have the small turning circle, why not the Saturn?
3. sonar warnings for backing up
4. any nanny stuff.
5. Any kind of transmission that doesn’t have a stick and a clutch (am reserving judgment on DSG–haven’t tried it yet, but I’m skeptical). However, I wouldn’t want to see automatics disappear. My mother had MS and was able to drive probably 10 years longer than she would have without the automatic. One friend of mine needs the automatic because she has only one arm. etc.
Let’s get back on track a bit here — not to pick on Mr. Holzman, but a terrible turning radius is not a “selling point.”
We’re talking steering wheel faux-flappy paddle shifters for 5,000lbs SUVs (I’m looking at you, Mr. Mercedes GL450). Or seven and eight speed transmissions.
And for the record, the GL450 is so friggin powerful, that the I used the hell out of the thumb shifters while passing people on a windy two-laner. However, it’s 7-Speed tranny is so good, that I really didn’t need to.
this may be the opposite, but what about things that should be there no matter what? Why the hell is any car sold anymore without ABS? We shouldn’t still be calling it ABS, they should just be “Brakes” and non ABS Brakes should be called “Sucky Brakes”
You have to answer this question in different scenarios. If you are going to pay 90 grand for a BMW, you are going to want so many bells and whistles that they would have your average slack jawed yokle in a stunned state of shock. If you are going to pay 35K for a Evo or STI, the last thing you desire is any weight whatsoever.
We need to pick a middle of the road car and then debate it. I’d recommend one but I’m a masochist that doesn’t even use his radio.
I nominate Camrys and Accords
MG — I don’t know.
Is 50/50 weight distribution in a RWD car ever actually a good thing, at any price point?
Let's get back on track a bit here, not to pick on Mr. Holzman, but a terrible turning radius is not a "selling point." Sorry, I've just been dying to complain about turning circles for years. I forgot to mention drive by wire under stuff I hate. That GM skateboard thing is my nightmare for that and other reasons.
Drive by wire is a great idea. The problem is that car buyers are being dragged through the mud as engineers figure out how to make it better.
Look, the computer really can “drive better than you” ok, It can always react faster.
example: Fuel injection/Direct injection over Carburetors.
Uh oh…
Most useless feature in a car? Based on my experience driving in Massachusetts, I would say that it’s the lever mounted on the steering column that makes a clicking sound when you press it down or up. It also causes a light to blink on and off. No one ever uses it.
RenaissanceGuy, that’s not carbon fiber any more than shelf paper is marble. Those decorations you see, no matter whether it’s an Audi or a Mercedes, are phony.
It’s interesting what I’m reading here, though. I’ve just come back from testing the 2007 Lexus LS 460, in Austria (yeah, I don’t know why Austria either…). Fabulous car, though still short of a Benz S550 in a few key areas, but one thing it made apparent to me is that the Germans are absolutely right in their pursuit of some kind of iDrive/Comand/MMI system. They haven’t gotten it right yet, but they will, while the Japanese have a cockpit full of buttons–everywhere, literally everywhere–reading ASC off, DPI on, QRI cycle, PDQ choose, EMI fire, APTD select, ROFLMAO on, POS you choose, etc. etc. Believe me, one day we will look back on the first-generation iDrive as a glimpse of the future, at least for necessariuly features-laden luxury sedans.
No, you won’t need on in your Elise or S2000.
Fog lights and daytime running lights. To be honest, I use my fog lights in poor weather conditions, but not to see (it does nothing to improve my visibility) but rather to let others see me. As for DRL, I know where the light switch is and if I want my lights on, I’ll turn them on.
I’d prefer a rear fog light, like some European cars have. Certainly it would save more lives than front-mounted fog lights, but it wouldn’t look as cool, I guess.
I have to say… and maybe it is because I’m failry young, I found iDrive easy to use the first time I tried it. In fact.. it made a lot of sense to me. Intuitive, even.
However, my friend owns a 545i — I recently asked him if he ever touches his iDrive. “No” was his response. “Never?” “No, never.”
And then I picked up Davy G from Jalopnik and it him almost 2-minutes to tune to 107.9.
I’m not kidding, either, as I timed him.
Carbon fiber trim is so mornic on so many levels.
Second place goes to everything else mentioned except ABS which is, in the real world, a good (if imperfect) thing.
The speed alarm on the iDrive. You can set this function to alert you whenever you exceed an entered speed. Of course, hooligans like me like to set it to 10 mph after we drive a BMW with iDrive to annoy the drivers who drive the car afterwards, particularly friends. An absolutely worthless function.
E85, ’cause is a CAFE scam passed off as patriotism.
Apparently none of the sat-nav bashers travel much, for business or otherwise. Few things are more frustrating to me than trying to navigate an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar rental car without sat-nav, mere minutes (or hours, depending on the airport) after stepping off an aerial rollercoaster ride thanks to yet another terrible early-morning
biplaneturboprop flight. Garmin International, Inc., I love you.Hey, as a biplane (and turboprop) pilot, I take exceptional exception. But never mind…if you’ve ever driven in a city like Munich, laid out in the 12th century, you’ll realize how helpful a nav system can be. Maybe not in Des Moines, where you go north 12 blocks, west two and south five, but trying to follow a network of streets that follow 900-year-old goat tracks and you’ll bless the thing, particularly if you have a two-p.m. appointment at BMW’s engineering sub-offices and you know the Germans prize timeliness.
Oh, and try Tokyo, where there ARE no addresses. Which is why the Japanese invented car nav systems, originally for delivery vans.