QOTD: Unlikely Complaints?

Sitting in a new, unfamiliar vehicle can breed a nearly limitless range of emotions and observations. Excitement, lust, desire … and annoyance.

Just as one design flourish or interior feature can turn interest into a buy, another can turn off prospective customers to such a degree that a sale becomes impossible. Sure, to the experienced observer, these minor complaints might appear frivolous, but the customer is always right. Or are they?

Again, the list is endless, but I can provide two examples of minor feature love/hate from my own family.

My mother purchased her first car based partly on price, but also on the deep-rooted appeal of the ’76 Plymouth Volare’s fender-mounted turn signals. Those small lenses were a huge factor in the decision to purchase a car that ultimately turned out to be a disastrous lemon. A rusty lemon, too.

Reversing the situation, I took my sister for a spin last summer in a vehicle I figured she’d adore. As a parent of two kids and owner of a dog, it seemed likely that her aging, domestic two-row crossover might lose some of its lustre, at least in her mind, after sitting in what I felt was a right-sized, three-row domestic crossover. (I spent a considerable amount of time driving two GMC Acadias last summer; this one was the too-pricey Denali version.)

As I wrote at the time, the Acadia is a vehicle that tries its hardest not to annoy the driver. Xanax oozes from the model’s completely unremarkable yet unobjectionable steering and suspension and transmission. Power isn’t an issue. And the extra rear cargo area (with the third row folded flat) might be just the ticket for a normal-sized family used to squeezing all of their stuff into a slightly smaller vehicle.

My sister’s chief complaint about the Acadia amounted to the windshield being too steeply raked (in her view, the trailing edge of the windshield was too far aft in relation to the driver). This observation threw me off guard, as it wasn’t something I ever considered could annoy a driver. True, her older vehicle’s front glass rested in a more upright fashion, but headroom and visibility wasn’t a problem, so it’s not like the windshield was impeding the operation of the vehicle or intruding into a driver’s personal space. And yet this might have been something that took a buyer forever out of the Acadia camp.

Yes, there’s limitless ways in which a vehicle can turn someone on or off. In your travels, what’s the most minor complaint you’ve heard someone give as reason for not buying a car?

[Image: Steph Willems/TTAC]