![You know what grinds my gears? This Lindsey Lohan. You just get up there half-naked and what? Jiggling them little things about. What do you want? What do you, Lindsey? I\'ll tell you what you want: nothing! You want nothing that\'s what you want. And that\'s \"What grinds my gears.\"](http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/what-grinds-my-gears.jpg "You know what grinds my gears? This Lindsey Lohan. You just get up there half-naked and what? Jiggling them little things about. What do you want? What do you, Lindsey? I\'ll tell you what you want: nothing! You want nothing that\'s what you want. And that\'s \\"What grinds my gears.\\"")
Psychologists tell us it's important to vent, so every so often I have to clear the air and discuss what really grizzles my gristle. I can't take it anymore, and it's possible– even likely– that I'm not alone on this. So, without further ado, you know what really grinds my gears?
For starters: Edmunds' Inside Line. While all the rest of us in the internet-car world (by which I mean all of us– TTAC, WorldCarFans, Jalopnik, Autoblog, whoever) are busy posting pictures of some car released at 12:01 AM, EIL already has a review of that car up. I mean, for heaven's sake, even Pulitzer Prize-winner Dan Neil is often stuck waiting behind them in the queue. Just yesterday, for example, InsideLine posted a drive of a Camaro mule and reviews of the Cadillac CTS-V and the new European Ford Fiesta. They can go straight to hell.
The upshot, however, is when Edmunds described the 2008 Lancer: "This weightiness similarly describes the car's ride quality and chassis reactions, but in a good way." I more candidly reported that "Mitsu has fitted the base car with a suspension made out of Twinkies." I'll always take free market capitalism over a well funded command economy.
You know what else really grinds my gears? The lack of good seat coverings in cars. If you're buying a regular car, you can choose between cloth and plasticky over-treated leather. On the other hand, in nearly all luxury cars you're limited to Dow Chemical leather– or the occasional cheap-ass vinyl posing as leather. Where is the nice cloth in a luxury car? Especially the cushy cars that deserve cushy cloth seats. You wouldn't wrap yourself up in a leather blanket when you're cold, and I'm not sure that leather chairs in the car are much different. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, they seem to be frequently uncomfortable. What they do have going for them is that they're pretty stain resistant and take longer to show wear. But can't they do something about the hide? If they have to use leather, at least use quality leather. I'd pay more money for a car with leather seats if they felt like my girlfriend's Coach purse.
The next issue that's been grinding my gear this week is crummy car websites. It seems like the manufacturers have no interest in leveraging the benefits of the internet at all. The web interface on so many manufacturers' sites appears to have been designed by a ninth-grade kid. Bandwidth is apparently so expensive that we are limited to only 6 photos, including an obligatory picture of the plastic shroud that covered the engine.
This last one is even more useless than when the dealer tries to show you the engine, as if it means anything at all to see "Honda V6" under the hood. The "estimate payment" functions tend to be so useless that it's better to leave them off entirely. What I want in a manufacturer's website: easily accessible stats (which aren't buried in sub menus), tons of photos, and a functional inventory locater.
Special tuner-edition German cars also grind my gears. Every day we learn about yet another ABC Tuninghaus that has a new version of the Audi A6/Mercedes SL/BMW 5-Series that has 904 horsepower and a tragically ugly bodykit. And, it's only $100,000 more than the original version of the car, which the manufacturer spent billions developing. But hey, a few guys say they can crank your new German sports saloon up to methamphetamine levels.
You know what I want to see them tune? My Volkswagen GTI. I want it to drive exactly the same, but to get 80 miles per gallon on regular 87 octane (on the tow truck on the way to the mechanic doesn't count).
I close by giving a nod to all the "midsize" luxury SUVs out there– the Mercedes ML, BMW X5, Audi Q7, Acura MDX, and all their cohorts. They all grind my gears. I don't care how carlike their are to drive, or how decently they handle, or that when equipped with the optional $10,000 V8 (sorry Acura), they can out-accelerate a Honda Accord, ten year old Porsche or attack helicopter.
I don't care because they are ugly. They are not as good to drive as sedans and wagons. They are not ideal off-roaders (in spite of gadgets) because the bodywork costs trillions to repair, and because they all weigh 15,000 lbs. And they are all chasing some holy grail of the most sports car-like SUV. I like sports cars too, which is why if I wanted one, I'd buy one. I wouldn't buy Pringles Pizza Flavor chips because they taste "just like pizza"; I'd buy a pizza.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what grinds my gears. For now, at least.
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Excellent post. I have a really long rant forming just like this… it’s really long now. I have to edit it.
Err, that second sentence of mine doesn’t really make sense. The Edit function is not showing up, either.
Bravo! The last two paragraphs alone are worth the price of admission….wait…there was no price….thanks for the freebie!
I totally agree with you, especially about the leather. In fact cars with leather no longer have that leather smell. I think the leather being used these days is actually a synthetic. It feels more like vinyl than real leather.
Driving lights…and the idiots that use them in traffic… on a busy interstate… in excellent visability.
Also ever notice how every 3rd or 4th GM truck/suv regardless of make has one of its indicator lights out??…same vendor for the last 3 generations of units and no one at GM has caught on to the quality issue??
Seats that do not have enough rear travel…why can’t they go back further and if needed I will move them up. Since most people ride alone who the hell are they worried about in the back seat.
Radios w/ far too many buttons that are by extension too small to adjust tooling down the road.
Horns that need to be struck with a sledge to go off and/or have a sweet spot the size of a stamp. oh and the noise level of the horn….Vespa’s have a horn that makes more noise than do many oem horns.
Mirrors with more info than the dashboard.
Cheap sideview mirrow adjustment buttons that go south w/i 6 months of vehicle purchase.
gloveboxes that could not hold Barbies gloves.
Short lug nut whenches that afford no leverage.
Your seat rant really struck a chord with me. Apparently, vinyl is the new leather for $30k to $60k Eurocars. Even Caddy has jumped on the plastic bandwagon. Another thing that grinds my gears is the marketing of Alcantara fabric as some kind of exotic material, like it was Amur tiger pelts. Get over yourself Alcantara, you’re FAKE SUEDE! Or how about real exotic wood that’s so plastic-coated that it looks like, well, fake plastic wood (Lexus, anyone?). What’s the point? So somebody can brag that that’s real 1/16″ thick bubinga wood underneath that 3/4″ of polyurethane? Then there’s the fake carbon fiber. It’s cheap plastic masquerading as expensive plastic. Yippee!!
Another thing that grinds my gears is all the newer cars out that are ‘retro’. PT Cruiser, HHR, Charger, Challenger, Mustang, Camaro, New Beetle, Thunderbird, Mini. The list seems to grow every year. It’s getting old. Again. And it shows an abject lack of artistic creativity. Especially when the carmakers take ’styling cues’ from the craptastic interiors of the originals. Move on, already…
Give ‘em hell, Justin! Yeah!
The Internet really is getting to the point where some of the larger sites (car sites and news sites especially) feel like a gigantic retail store.
An example is necessary to explain – do you ever go on vacation and, for some reason, need to go to a Walmart, Target, or some other retail giant? If so, I don’t know about the rest of you, but there is always a point of vertigo for me, where for a second, I feel like I’m in the Target back home – usually because the store layout is so similar, the products are similar, and often in the same exact places.
THAT is how some of these websites feel. I’ve long given up on one of them trying to break the mold and making a site without Flash.
Until then, the result is just that I go elsewhere for the details I seek.
The Audi & Lexus “build a model” websites are really poor and lack functionality.
What grinds my gears on this site is the lingo among the best & brightest, or should I say, the me too comments from all the people that don’t have the imagination to be original.
The Big 2.8, Toyondasan, Rabid Rick, the creative Lutz-bashing, not poking a domestic with a ten foot pole, Dumbler, Chryslerberus, and so on and so forth. It may be funny the first time, and perhaps a second and a third, but not for the umptieth time, in a futile attempt to jump the bandwagon. I mean, come on… How hard is it to spell out Toyota, Honda and Nissan? Or to find some new creative expressions? Call 'em the Big 3 Japs or whatever. But not another portmanteau, or I will throw up. In Your lap. TTAC is a funny place to be, and there's a really big amount of creative writing on this place. But repeating a joke ad infinitum doesn't make it any funnier. Unless Bob Lutz tells it.
I could never understand the appeal of the luxury SUV.
I understand the need for an SUV. I understand the desire for luxury. But why combine the two? Buy a bare bones truck or SUV for the rough stuff and a proper luxury sedan. Probably cheaper in the long run.
The seat thing is crazy too. Just try and order a new car with heated seats but no leather. Nigh impossible.
How about the mere existence of those plastic engine covers? WTF? And the double-WTF of the clear plastic window in the (plastic) hood of the Corvette that shows… a plastic engine cover? Why put a window in plastic just to show you a fake plastic representation of what is hiding under the plastic? WTF?? WTF!!??
Donut-sized spares, or even worse, “Run flat” tires. Jeesuz H Krist… a flat tire in the old days would cost you 10 minutes and a couple of bucks… now, because people are too damn lazy to operate a jack and a lug wrench, a tire problem now costs thousands of dollars. WTF!? Just give me a gawdamn full-size spare tire and let me change it myself. I am a grown-up.
Conestoga wheels and rubber band tires… WTF? Sidewall is an integral part of a car’s suspension. I’ve never seen any race car with this looney combo, yet the street car scene seems to think this is some sort of “performance mod”… WTF?! Just give up and admit it, this is purely a fashion statement.
Speaking of goofy tire/wheel combos, why is it that EVERY “concept sketch” of a car these days looks like a cartoon-superhero caricature? You know, impossibly wide shoulders become impossibly low rooflines, while impossiblly narrow and ab-filled wasp waists become outrageously huge wheels completely filling up wheel wells with a molecule’s width of rubber visible, offering no possibility of suspension travel. Such a car is impossible to actually create and use, so why bother selling EVERY DAMN CONCEPT this way? WTF??
I could go on like this for days, even on just SUVs… for days, but I’d wear out two keys on my top row, and one in the center row really fast.
–chuck
“Driving lights…and the idiots that use them in traffic… on a busy interstate… in excellent visability.”
Umm… it does make a difference. a few fractions of a second is worth it too me, why do you think motorcycles have had this feature for years? I have drivin with my head lights on since i got my first car and I for one can say it makes a difference for how quick i see a car. So…
It doesn’t matter if you can see me with my headlights off if i hit you cause you’rs were off and i didn’t see you! (its my fault.. but you still got hit)
How about the mere existence of those plastic engine covers?
I’m no fan of those either, but isn’t the function of those plastic engine covers to supress noise from under the hood at idle and when you start the car?
Although why would you want that in a Corvette?
Justin and Chuck, you made me laugh so hard, my spouse wants to know what I’m up to. I’m glad I’m not the only who feels this way.
I soo agree with Chuck about the concepts, especially the sketches they make. They should make the wow me sketch and then the base model rental fleet looking one so I can have an idea of what it will be like in a practical sense. Who thought of this selling people on something they will never be able to buy, oh yeah the marketing geniouses.
I can’t put down all my gear grinding comments or I will break the comment window.
Spot-on about the leather thing.
The day the first investor gave up on his herd of Corinthians is the same day that marked the beginning of the flogging of the luxury vehicle customers. My attitude is that if they can’t do leather right anymore then the least they can do is offer a rich velour cloth, which they refuse to do, so I refuse to buy luxury.
And also, race car pilots row through 7 gears when they move from zero to 200 mph, so why do I need to row through six gears if I move from zero to 70? Three is not enough, five is
tootwo many, and four is the sweet spot.People who drive a 100 mile daily commute in a Prius and still think they are “conserving”
It’s how much you burn that counts, not what you drive.
Gee Justin, if that cranky guy at the end of 60 Minutes ever croaks, you’re in!
+1 on crappy leather seats.
And why the f$@##!! haven’t Volvo’s T-Tech seats been copied?!?
Yo Mulally!! Need cash? How about a license agreement or ten on T-Tech seats???
SherbornSean…
Now that’s funny.
jim: Also ever notice how every 3rd or 4th GM truck/suv regardless of make has one of its indicator lights out??…same vendor for the last 3 generations of units and no one at GM has caught on to the quality issue??
One of my pet peeves. You mean the DTRLs I think.
They look like white parking lights in the grilles of Chevy full size utes and pickups. One of them is out about 80% of the time, you are right. The owners don’t check them, and the dealers don’t either, apparently.
Vis a vis the leather vs cloth thing, no furniture manufacturer charges extra for leather, why should the car makers? Because of the McDonaldization of the world (and the concommitant increase in cattle killed for burgers,) the world is awash in leather and has been for years.
I wouldn’t mind if it was quality leather being offered, but it isn’t. Looks like vinyl, but doesn’t even wear as well.
And the Germans charging extra for metallic paint. Are we to believe that a pound of fish-flakes is worth $500 plus??
The new Camaro is insanely overweight. Pump up the power and give it traction. All that weight is extremely hard on axles, clutches, and transmissions.
They aren’t given all that weight away for free(free steel?).
Lighter weight would mean less cost?
Curb weight for a 1982 Toyota Tercel is 1900 lbs.
I’d like to take a new Camaro, strip out everything I don’t want, and then re weigh it and re price it based on whats left. The price would be impressive.
Heh heh, my old 88 528e had leather seats. Cold in the winter , sticky in the summer. The new 88 528es both came with cloth seats. More betterer in hot and cold weather. So far, they are wearing well too. I may never have to switch to the leather interiors I have waiting for them to wear out.
I am surprised that highway MPGs isn’t listed here. Nothing grinds me gears more than when on a commercial, a car company promotes their gas guzzling, environment destroying SUV as “green” because it gets 20 highway MPG.
The “estimate payment” functions tend to be so useless that it’s better to leave them off entirely.
That bugs me. Toyota Canada is the only manufacturer that’s totally up-front with this information throughout the process.
Go try it, seriously. It’s by far the best configurator. It may be ugly, but at least it works and works well.
Absolutely agree on highway MPGs. Yeah I can get better than that in my car on those rare long distance trips, but in my real life driving, city is what I get. Don’t tell me 30 when you mean 19 :)
I am with you on the leather. While I prefer leather myself, and am a big fan of alcantara, I want some high quality stuff. Even leather within a certain manufacturer can vary wildly. Open up the door of a leather trimmed Ford Escape on a hot day and you get a plasticky smell, and the leather itself lacks the texture that leather should have. Do the same thing on a Lincoln MKS and you get a rich leather smell, and the leather feels like real honest to god leather. Why can’t they use the good leather in the whole lineup?
I remember my parents old Grand Marquis with soft red velour interior fabric, not only does no one do velour anymore, outside of a few ultra-lux brands and rare special packages the only interior color options are grey, black, and beige. What ever happened to the reds, greens, blues, etc? I saw some photos of a Euro-spec VW GTi with plaid seating, and I would love it see something like that over here. Give us some new materials _and_ some new color options.
Also, it bugs me that people automatically assume anything made by Toyota is super-reliable and well made, and anything made by Detroit/Dearborn/Wherever-the-hell-Dodge-is-from-now is crap. The new Toyota Tundra has had more recalls than the F-150 or Silverado, it has a frame that is much more prone to bending and twisting, and has cut out rails that actually catch road salt and will rapidly accelerate rusting, but because it has that Toyota badge everyone assumes it is built better and more reliable than anything else.
Finally, I miss cool car names. The alphanumeric thing was OK back when it meant something (like a 330i was a 3.0 liter gasoline 4 door small sedan and a 330d was the same thing in a diesel, or an S500 was a 5.0 liter big sedan, an S55 AMD a 5.5 liter hi-po version) but now the numbers don’t match displacement anymore, and other manufacturers are tossing out numbers and letters that have nothing to do with anything. Give us back the Marauders, Country Squires, hell, even the Probe gave you a mental picture. I want to sit behind the wheel of a rumbling rip-roaring Pontiac Penetrator, slide through the night in a practically silent PHEV Saturn Stalker, or melt into the seat of a gentle tourer by day canyon carver by night Lincoln Lycanthrope, give us some imagination people.
And finally, if you have an amazingly cool design in a concept car actually carry out some of the coolest bits (especially the interior stuff) into the finished product. While Chrysler did a lot wrong, they were for a period very good about seeing concepts through to the showroom floor without loosing too much in the process (Prowler, PT Cruiser, etc).
I agree with the Toyota/Detroit delusion. If I’m in the market for a truck — you know, to actually use it for its intended purpose — I’m going to buy the best truck: The F-150. Those things are beastly.
Auto shots on homesites of auto manufacturers is completely ridiculous. I love the Cadillac closeups of the headlights, a door handle, and some door crease reflection shit. Oh yeah, most of this stuff is photo-realistic; meaning a very talented artist in photoshop re-created this stuff so that it appears in the amazing pristine condition you see in the photos (both online and on billboards, magazines, etc).
Then you can go the Jaguar route and have blury photos of the car driving down the city, partial shots of it parked somewhere in a far-away 3rd world town, or just plain missing from the photo altogether (can’t find that one now, must have been a previous model. Photo was a picture of a woman coming out of a fancy house in the city).
And I agree on the ridiculous amount of coverage on yet-another tuner. Do people with that kind of money even look at these sites to begin with?
I disagree on the leather seats however. I love leather seats. Seatwarmers and Seat airconditioners (or just the regular airconditioner) do just fine with the temperature of them. I hate cloth as much as I hate carbon fiber on the dash.
Camry XLE has nice cloth treated with fraichair which is soft, smooth, unlike the LE’s fuzzness. Too bad the price difference between the two is 5k. :/
ES has cloth standard, too, but I’ve yet to see one on the road with cloth.
@NulloModo:
Lincoln Lycanthrope! that made me LOL.
NulloModo:
Some roadsters, and maybe other sporty cars, have colored interiors, such as the S2000 & Z3 & Z4 (to an extent).
I should remember to leave the rants to professional writers. You do it so well.
OTOH, it feels good to rant, even if it pains the rest of you.
Special tuner-edition German cars also grind my gears. Every day we learn about yet another ABC Tuninghaus that has a new version of the Audi A6/Mercedes SL/BMW 5-Series that has 904 horsepower and a tragically ugly bodykit.
Yes!! I totally agree. I am so TIRED of seeing headlines about these. I want to read about everyman’s cars (and the occasional Corvette or Ferrari).
Those one-eyed DRLs on GM trucks and SUVs — how is it that this had gone on so long unsolved?
Alphanumeric names — may they burn in Hell! Lincoln’s now the worst, with every new model starting with “MK.” Cadillac is almost as bad. Why when such glorious names as Continental, Fleetwood, Seville, Deville, and Eldorado could easily still be used? I don’t think these names have been “tarnished.”
The last sentence in this wiki article answers the question of there being no decent leather in cars:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connolly_Leather
Just when I was beginning to think that I was the only one that disliked leather interiors. I am convinced that black leather, is in fact, the Devil’s plaything. The last high quality fabric seat I sat in was a ‘98 vw beetle (though the grey stained too easily).
This one may well be just me, but where are the fuel efficient sporty cars? In the days of $4 dollar a gallon gas, surely somebody can great a fun to drive car that doesn’t look like a minivan or just plain ugly besides MINI. Where the hell is the Suzuki Swift Sport? Is there are chance the interior of the new fiesta will cost more than 12 cents?
Which brings me to my next point…why are so many 4 cylinder cars getting such terrible gas mileage (less than 30 mpg) ?
Justin, I’m with you on seating material.
If the world is awash with dead cow skin, it makes great dog chews.
Otherwise, animal remains inside a car are about as appealing as tree remains.
I think you people need anger management counseling.
And here I thought I was hallucinating with the GM running lights. I always thought it was funny that I have never seen a GM truck or SUV with TWO working ones. Even ones with temp plates straight off the lot. I had just about convinced myself that they were only supposed to have one light since it always seems like the left one (looking from the front of car) is the only one that ever works. Glad I’m not crazy.
Here goes mine: You read this breathless byline about first photos of the new Appolo 12 SUV, only to be led to a collage of 10 pictues of a perfectly shrouded by a padded cover vehicle with only it’s headlights and windshield sticking out. Then many comments about it’s new looks good or bad. In years gone by, a sketch artist would take the picture and flesh it in with a charcoal rendering that gave you some idea what you were looking at. Can we do that again please?
I saw a 1971 Lincoln at a car show that was all original and meticulously maintained, the leather was fantastic. Exactly like a Coach product only covering about 3 acres of seating area.
What grinds my gears is repeating the common lingo.
The Big 2.8, Toyondasan, Rabid Rick, the creative Lutz-bashing, not poking a domestic with a ten foot pole, Dumbler, Chryslerberus, and so on and so forth.
Not specific to TTAC, I’m getting really tired of automotive news articles using the terms “fuel sipper” and “gas guzzler”. Regardless of whether they are applicable to the vehicle in question, find a new way to say that a car gets good/bad gas mileage!
Another vote against the leather seats. Are your seats too cold in the winter? No problem, we have seat heaters for you. Are they too hot in the summer? No problem, we installed a cooling system.
So you wind up with a huge, heavy seat that doesn’t really keep you any more comfortable than a cloth seat.
Count me in on the anti-crap leather seat bandwagon.
I drove a BMW 750 Li last weekend, and at $80+k I was expecting a comfortable seat, but no! I felt like I was at the dentist. Tough, petrochemically-derived ‘leather’ on hard seats.
At least the wood trim was real.
I hate how BMW is always looked upon like some sort of gold standard for luxury sports sedans. They’re not that great.
I hate how Toyota is somehow a “green” company because of the Prius while they have a whole mess of fuel guzzling trucks & SUV’s.
I hate how a car with horrid reliability gets a pass on TTAC because “it’s fun to drive.” I’ll take all the boringness of a reliable Camry over being stuck in the shop every other week with a “fun” car.
I hate how TTAC’s Ten Best poll has several winners that the people voting have probably never driven and 99.9% chance they never will – I’m looking at you Audi R8, Nissan GT-R, maybe even Corvette. A readers poll should have cars that readers drive, things like Accord, Camry, Silverado, etc.
What grinds my gears is the assumption that using less gas and emitting less pollution is only worth doing if you also save money in the process. People trip all over themselves calculating the number of miles you need to drive to “pay for” a hybrid or diesel.
Why isn’t less consumption a worthwhile goal in and of itself, like better performance or more comfort/convenience? I never see anyone trying to figure out how many miles you’ll need to drive to pay for your optional V-8 or (crappy) leather seats, yet people gladly pay for them (and aren’t snickered at for their lack of financial acumen).
Are automotive features only worth paying for if they benefit you and no one else?
The “Build and Price ” functions of the GM web site. The price of most options is along with most the configurations is missing. Just some very basic prices with the “see your dealer for full details message”.
I want to be able to go to my local dealership with the information at hand and not have to hope that a sleezy-slimy salesman to provide the correct information.
Some things that chap my ass:
Every time a new car comes out, everybody is suddenly a professional automotive aesthetician, and big fat surprise, “Oh God, this car looks like these two other cars.” Everything is SO derivative, and people love to bla bla bla about how there’s no originality in any auto design and the new Forte is trying to be a Civic (ZING! Brilliant!) and even though Aston Martins look just like Jag XK8s, those are beautiful and unique and perfect.
People that say, “OH MAN MY 1983 Caprice rusted out I will never buy a Chevy again they are all garbage,” or a similar assessment of any brand, folks really can’t get past the fact that Big 3 cars built in 2008 are significantly better than those built 20-30 years ago when Detroit wasn’t feeling the competition from overseas.
My dad thinks German cars are well-engineered even though Volkswagens and BMWs are known all over for their complete lack of reliability. Making a powerful car isn’t hard; making a reliable powerful car is. These performance brands take the easy route and get all the glossy mag-covers for it.
Cars are this status symbol so idiots can parade around impressing other idiots with the fact that they spent $60,000+ on a depreciating asset that serves the same purpose and performs, in actual function, barely better than a $10,000 Aveo. This status crap makes me feel like I’m living in some idiot tribe where we all stick feathers in our hair to attract mates. The only people honestly impressed by wealth and status symbols are A) The Stupid and B) The Rich.*
Scion keeps trying to be so cool, it’s the saddest, most desperate thing I’ve witnessed in a long time. Really, it’s pretty embarrassing; the only thing more embarrassing is that there are some people who buy this new image and think it’s so cool. Barfo.
There’s all these great cars coming (Cruze, Euro Focus, Volt, etc.) but not for 2 years. 2 YEARS! That’s a damn lifetime! Also, the transmission on my Lumina will probably go out before then and I’ll be stuck buying something in 2009 knowing that the car I really want won’t be sold until mid 2010.
“OH MY GAWD I WOULD NEVER BE CAUGHT DEAD IN A MINIVAN!” Really? Shut up. Minivans are super-functional, 1000x more useful than some weenie SUV or cute-ute and they get decent gas mileage. The minivan is a glory of functionality and should be respected as such. Oh, so moms drive them? Well, never mind then! I hate moms and the very idea of being a suburban homeowner with children! I am more of a mountain-climber and astronaut/racecar driver. BULL. Minivans FTW.
Ethanol. I’m not even going to start.
Fanboyism of any sort. No company likes you and it is foolish to love them; I maintain that every company, if it were not illegal and were somehow profitable, would kill you and your family in an instant, without a second thought, to make money. To say otherwise is PR bullshit.
I’m sure there’s plenty more, but I shouldn’t go on…
*But only if they are also stupid
My biggest automotive pet peeve are red turn signals on the back of cars (North American only, I believe). You can’t tell if the guy in the next lane wants to change lanes or is tapping his toes to a Britney tune. Things get even worse when the turn light and the brake light are the same bulb, and like most 1990 era Fords the bulb on one side has blown so there is only one remaining light to signify all manner of different situations. Would it really kill manufacturers to have two lights; orange means “Warning, I’m about to do something”, red means “Danger, I’m slowing so if you’re behind me you’d better too” and the instance I see orange or red I know what’s happening, and don’t have to look at the other side or wait for it to flash to interpret it.
This is all on the presumption that the driver actually uses turn signals, I’m not sure if Corvettes have turn signals at all because I’ve never actually ever seen one of them try to indicate.
Justin, I have to say that a fantastic rant makes the ranter feel a damn site better for it; and yours is such a great rant I feel better just for reading it.
Thank you.