You're not the only one. And I'm still 20+ years away from getting my free bus pass and am seemingly already in 'old geezer' mode! ..........................................

Just wait until your 55th birthday is a vague memory............... it only gets worse, (grumpy old men and all that).

On a completely different matter, I was queuing at the bar in Brussels Airport last week. After a couple of minutes, one of the barmen told me I had to queue on the opposite side............ When I had walked around, I noticed there were no pumps or prices on this side of the bar. When he served the people in front of me, he struggled to bring three or four drinks from the other side. It transpired that the till was out of action where the pumps were, but he seemed to think it was easier to carry every drink around the bar, rather than a few notes and coins!!!! Priceless.

Particularly regarding heating and ventilation, I think the time has come to simplify things as much as possible, maybe allowing for a maximum of SIX preset positions (which could easily go on a rotary dialler located somewhere intelligent), e.g. "I'm cold; warm me up"; "I'm all misted up, please de-fog". And the almost obsolete "cool air to my face, warm to my feet please" option, once championed by a handful of British and Swedish carmakers.
The controls on my Auris,which are thankfully separate from the pretty good touchscreen, aren't bad, but I think the 0.5 degree temperature increments are verging on the OCD (I rarely have to transport unpasteurised cheese.)
Voice control likewise needs to be limited to six options tops and no silly submenus; we're meant to be driving a car, not share trading on Wall Street over the phone.

If it's not already too late to take control of car specifications (I'm not overtly linking this rant to Brexit, by the way, although some will undoubtedly construe it thus!) I suspect there would be a groundswell of support for changing some features of modern cars back to "the way they used to be"; e.g.
Opening quarterlights and sunroofs for all (with AirCon as an option) for infinitely customisable ventilation;
Indicator on the right, wipers on the left (as they still have in Japan, Australia and NZ!)
Panel light illumination OFF until lights are switched ON.
Nice chunky knobs on the dashboard to adjust the fan, radio channel and volume.
A nice big centrally mounted ashtray, plus smaller ones on all the passenger doors, to stuff sweet wrappers in.
And a pull up handbrake with a button on the end.

Edited by Bilboman on 30/10/2018 at 11:56

Panel light illumination OFF until lights are switched ON.

+1, I always wonder if that is why you see so many cars with no lights on (when it's dark) in built-up areas?

That and I notice it's more prevalent in areas that have switched over from the older yellow-orange sodium street lights to white LEDs. I live on a non-adopted development and we use metal halide lamps which also give off a white light (higher light level than both the other two as well) and often I see people (especially visitors) driving away at night with no lights on as a result.

And the almost obsolete "cool air to my face, warm to my feet please" option, once championed by a handful of British and Swedish carmakers.

Still an option on BMW's and Mercedes, but sadly disappeared on most cars. The human body hasn't changed (yet), so why should ventilation options? Although at the rate we're going, I expect the species to transform into a kind of pot bellied being with virtually non functioning limbs and bulbous, watery eyes specialised for staring at screens all day. The designers are certainly speeding things up.

I think that modern A/C and fan systems are better at keeping the intire interior of the car at one temperature by automatically adjusting where the air comes out and how much/what temperature to achieve the desired temperature.

As someone who has design A/C and ventilation sytems in buildings for nearly two decades, the 'dual zone' climate control facility is a bit similar to what these older cars had, but IMHO is a gimmic, as the car doesn't have a phyiscal divide so that the LHS is at one temperature and the RHS at another - all that happens is that the system fights itself and nobody is happy, as the air just mixes - the greater the disparity in desired temperature, the worse it gets.

No problem in directing more of the heat at your feet and hands when its cold to quickly warm them up, but the sensors should know when that is appropriate and when keeping the front windscreen demisted is more important. One of the problems with using modern cars (or separate sat-navs/mobile phones as satnavs) is that you cannot use the touch screen easily or at all if you are wearing driving gloves (still usefull when it's cold), because the units don't recognise the gloves (leather type ones) the same as fingers. Or at least they don't when I use them (maybe it's just me).