{This thread is closed. Biggest car design bloopers. Volume 2 continues here:-}
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=27542
Following on from the thread about Renault Espaces taking in water through bumper-level air intakes, what other monumental car desigm mistakes can anyone think of?
I read recently about a problem with one of the new coupe-cabriolet models with a folding steel roof - not sure which one. It has a facility whereby, if it's not locked, if someone touches a door handle the elecric windows lower a few cm. automatically. This is to prevent pressure build up inside the car when shutting the doors. Someone took one of these cars to a car wash. As soon as the bristles of the spinning brushes touched the door handles....... you can guess the rest!
Cheers, Sofa Spud
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I nominate the wheels on my 330d SE, which stick out proud of the tyre. Any slight nudging of the kerb scrapes the alloy.
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I had that on my first IS200. It was fitted with Michelins and I managed to scuff all four wheels despite being as careful as I could.
The new one has got Bridgestones on which have a rim protector (ring of rubber protruding proud of the wheel. I doubt it would save the wheel if I hit something hard, but for light scuffs it does help.
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I once had a Rover 220 Coupe. Would have been a great car if BL had bothered to design it properly. Main bloopers were:
1. Poorly fitting, fiddly to use glass targa roof. Badly designed, made and fitted, so loads of wind noise.
2. Ridiculouly low 5th gear ruined all chances of reasonably smooth motorway driving - 80mph meant over 4000 rpm, as I recall. A big torquey 2 litre didn't need this.
3. The boot was fine if you wanted to post letters into it. Apparently BL didn't have the money to design the car with a proper hatch, so gave it a bootlid through which you struggle to pass a week's shopping.
Great car otherwise, mind you...
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IIRC, was it not the Austin Allegro, where if you jacked up one rear wheel, the rear window was liable to pop out?
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Sorry, Austin Rover products should be banned from here or the thread will be huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge
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'Quartic' steering wheel. QED.
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Perhaps anything Austin-Rover should be confined to the Motoring Jokes thread? LOL.
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IIRC, was it not the Austin Allegro, where if you jacked up one rear wheel, the rear window was liable to pop out?
Could be? I can confirm that if you park it with one wheel on the kerb, you can open the door, get out but cannot close the door again due to body flex. This was on a 2 door model, so I guess the 4 door would be worse?
I regard it as a safety feature, to make sure you don't park carelessly...
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Yep - my astra has a delightfully 'slippy' design with no gutters etc. However, this means that any water (rain/mist or wiper fluid) coming off the screen, rather than blow away in the windstream, gathers on the door window frame, from where it drips precisely onto the electric mirror switches and/or the electric window openers ...
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Are comments on BL products not allowed?
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The big problem with including BL products is that most people thought they were rubbish (which they were) but a minority who post on this board will regard this as unpatriotic and a general slanging match will ensue.
Same for current Rover products and anyone who suggests that Towers and Co are asset stripping the company.
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I just thought that if you included Austin Rover or BL products on a car design bloopers thread then
a: it would be too easy,
b: There are too many to contemplate
c: The thread would become too big and we would end up with volume 1 through 19,
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Thin spare wheels must qualify as a design disaster. Apart from being potentially dangerous, what happens when you puncture after having taken advantage of the extra load carrying capacity by forcing everything including the kitchen sink into the car for your holiday jaunt? The punctured wheel won't fit in the spare bay and I bet SWMBO would be thrilled having to carry it on her lap for a few hours.
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How about instrument dials on white backgrounds?
Honda used to do some of the best speedos, with a big dial on
a matt black background (which doesn't relect light), and large easy to-read white or orange numerals.
Now, instead of following Honda' example, the style brigade are making cluttered instrument panels on highly reflective white backgrounds ... and even Honda is starting to lose the plot. The Jazz's dial are smaller and hidden down tunnels, and the Civic's have caught the fashion bug and adopted reflective chrome decoration.
Meanwhile, drivers compain that it's too much hassle watching the speedo, but shy away from the most useable solution of all: the windscreen-level digital speedo in the Toyota Prius.
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Never shy of controversy.... Wide sticky tyres. Something which encourages you to go fast without fear because you can easily brake / steer around it. Until you can't and it all goes horribly wrong at high speed.
ABS is fine and safe for control, but if we all had half as much grip as we do now, we'd all be a bit more circumspect in the way we drive!
Plus, a set of tyres would no longer be several hundred pounds!
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"SWMBO would be thrilled having to carry it on her lap for a few hours"
The Porsche 928 used to include a plastic apron for just that eventuality! Say what you like about the Germans, but they are thorough...
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VW Bora - open the boot in heavy rain and the bootlid moves rearwards as you do so, depositing all the rainwater on the contents of the boot....
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;-) Someone had to say it....
The entire current BMW range..
;-) *ducks back down behind sandbag wall*
JaB
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Quote: - "The entire current BMW range.."
Yes! The Z4 looks like a Z3 that's been involved in a front end shunt AND a rollover!
The new 1-series looks like a semi-abstract collage of an Allegro estate made by cutting up photos of a 7 series, a Z4 and the new Vauxhall Astra.
Sorry Mr. Bangle! Who's he working for now???
cheer, SS
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What about a Mercedes handbreak. A conventional one is fine. It is simple, vitually failproof, easy to adjust, and sensitive. Don't change it....it works.
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Honda CRV (Mk1) front foglight switch and integral light cannot be seen unless you duck down under the dash. So you have no idea if your front fogs are on, until a plod tell you off.
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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The Peugeot 405 front foglamp switch is simarly postioned out of sight at the bottom of the dash and has to be found by feel unless you fancy taking your eyes off the road for two or three seconds.
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But the warning light on the 405s instrument panel lets you know the front fogs are switched on.
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But the warning light on the 405s instrument panel lets you know the front fogs are switched on.
Not on the 1994 model my dad owned!
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The warning light is great (1996 model) but if you've found the switch you know they are on: it's turning them on in a hurry that's difficult.
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"What about a Mercedes handbreak"
Beat me to it. Awful, simply awful. Possibly OK on an automatic, but on a manual, I once had to back off a main road up a steep drive with a car already parked on it.
Into reverse, up the drive, hit the brake and clutch, out of gear, declutch, then hit the parking brake, release footbrake. No wonder my wife refused to drive when we visited those friends. It's just not the order you're used to, so is totally counterintuitive.
V
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The Mercedes handbrake is shocking on an automatic too, if you're used to a manual. Nothing makes your trousers turn brown more than stomping on the handbrake when approaching a junction, whilst absent-mindedly going for the clutch. Crazy.
I also remember my friend's Rover 200 had the window switches under the handbrake lever. What are they doing there? Saving a couple of quid by eliminating the requirement for a passenger-side switch... that's all.
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What about a Mercedes handbreak.
Yes, terrible. They couldn't even spell it correctly ;o)
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The Merc handbrake is fine ,the americans use the same type on many cars. It really is simple to operate.
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Hi
How about the Ford Pinto. Ford, in their wizdom, thaught that the best place to hold 15 gallons of two star would be directly behind your rear bumper! So, in a rear end shunt, the car turned into a massive fireball. And whats worse, Ford did nothing aboiut it, deciding that it would be cheaper to pay the lawsuits for dead and injured people, than it would be to actually move the tanks forward. Or so the story goes.
Roberson
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"Or so the story goes"
It's absolutely true.
www.me.utexas.edu/~me179/topics/lessons/case3.html
amongst others. Horrible.
V
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"Or so the story goes" It's absolutely true.
Or is it????
The following is shamelessly stolen from a post on AlfaOwner by the excellent and informative member, Toronto Spider:
Yes the Pinto/Bobcat got slammed by 60 Minutes for blowing up on a rear end collision, but their journalism practices are more than suspect. That program was the same one that tried to prove many years later that Audis suddenly and inexplicably accelerated and caused accidents. When that happened, however there were enough real media outlets that took a look at how they rigged their tests and exposed the TV program for fraudulent practices -- namely for deliberately rigging the test.
"ABC News has analyzed a great many of Ford's secret rear-end crash tests," confided correspondent Sylvia Chase. And they showed that if you owned a Ford--not just a Pinto, but many other models--what happened to the car in the film could happen to you. The tone was unrelentingly damning, and by the show's end popular anchorman Hugh Downs felt constrained to add his own personal confession. "You know, I've advertised Ford products a few years back, Sylvia, and at the time, of course, I didn't know and I don't think that anybody else did that this kind of ruckus was going to unfold." You got the idea that he would certainly think twice before repeating a mistake like that.
"If ABC really analyzed those UCLA test reports, it had every reason to know why the Ford in the crash film burst into flame: there was an incendiary device under it. The UCLA testers explained their methods in a 1968 report published by the Society of Automotive Engineers, fully ten years before the 20/20 episode. As they explained, one of their goals was to study how a crash fire affected the passenger compartment of a car, and to do that they needed a crash fire. But crash fires occur very seldom; in fact, the testers had tried to produce a fire in an earlier test run without an igniter but had failed. Hence their use of the incendiary device (which they clearly and fully described in their write-up) in the only test run that produced a fire. [source: ]walterolson.com/articles/crashtests.html]
For what it's worth I've seen a lot of Bobcats and Mustangs after they had been in rear end collisions, and they certainly weren't fire victims. Actually Pinto rear axels and suspensions gave junk yards a huge chunk of their business for years and years. Those components along with Mustang II rear end parts (which shared the same suspension pieces with the Pinto) are still finding their way into hotrod and muscle car rebuilds -- and not just on Ford-based rebuilds.
At the time all of the big three offered vehicles with gastanks located in almost exactly the same place. It was standard industry practice.
"On the Ford Pinto case, the best resource is unfortunately not online, but is well worth a trip to the local law library: the late Gary Schwartz's 1991 Rutgers Law Review article "The Myth of the Ford Pinto Case" (43 Rutgers L. Rev. 1013-1068). Schwartz, a law professor at UCLA and prominent expert on product liability, showed that (as our editor summed up his findings in 1993): "everyone's received ideas about the fabled 'smoking gun' memo are false. The actual memo did not pertain to Pintos, or even Ford products, but to American cars in general; it dealt with rollovers, not rear-end collisions; it did not contemplate the matter of tort liability at all, let alone accept it as cheaper than a design change; it assigned a value to human life because federal regulators, for whose eyes it was meant, themselves employed that concept in their deliberations; and the value it used was one that they, the regulators, had set forth in documents. In retrospect, Schwartz writes, the Pinto's safety record appears to have been very typical of its time and class." [source: overlawyered.com]
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2003 Volvo S40 (saloon thing) - no internal handle or any means of shutting the boot lid without getting your hands dirty.
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Sorry? Internal handle? Are you in the habit of shutting yourself in the boot?
I don't think I've ever seen a saloon car with an internal boot handle.
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I think you know what I mean. A recession or handle which makes it possible to shut the boot without having to put your hand on the dirty top of the bootlid.
Most estate cars have one built into the tailgate.
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...as do hatchbacks but no saloon (including mine) has one. Not much of a problem as it get's washed every week although the novelty will soon wear off...
Adam
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Lol - sorry. To backpedal, that should have read "no saloon I have ever seen"
Honest!
Adam
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Ford Mondeo Mark 2
Unecessary rubber strip on plasic undershield which absorbs water then rots the air conditioning condenser and stops the aircon working.
Dreadfully sited hazard flasher switch. Have you ever tried to use them to acknowledge someone who's just been kind enough to let you out from a road junction whilst you're still turning the steering wheel ??!!
Rubber seals on rear light clusters which rot after about 18 months and allow hatchback area to fill with water.
Bushes on lower wishbones that go after just a couple of years. Oh, and a bolt that's near impossible to get out, and has to be modified to put back in.
That'll do for a start!
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Ford Mondeo Mark 2 Unecessary rubber strip on plasic undershield which absorbs water then rots the air conditioning condenser and stops the aircon working.
>>
Thanks for that. Just got a Mondeo will explore said.
Dreadfully sited hazard flasher switch. Have you ever tried to use them to acknowledge someone who's just been kind enough to let you out from a road junction whilst you're still turning
the steering wheel ??!!
Same as on the old Sierra.
Far worse, when the hazard flasher is needed in emergency you may be too busy with steering and the passenger cannot reach it.
IMO the only place for the switch should be in the middle of the dash.
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It's a long time ago and I can't remember all the details. I had a Renault 16 (otherwise a lovely car) and you couldn't change the plug on the No 4 cylinder without taking off the inlet manifold.
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It's a long time ago and I can't remember all the details. I had a Renault 16 (otherwise a lovely car) and you couldn't change the plug on the No 4 cylinder without taking off the inlet manifold.
[anorak mode on]A pushrod OHV engine with the exhaust manifold on one side and the inlet manifold on the other and the spark plugs down tubes in the rocker cover. No such problem on my 16TX and not mentioned in my Haynes manual of the period [anorak mode off]
Hawkeye
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Stranger in a strange land
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Hawkeye, not doubting what you say, it was a long time ago. There was definitely something difficult about getting the plug out of Number 4 though!
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Ford Mondeo Mark 2 Dreadfully sited hazard flasher switch. Have you ever tried to use them to acknowledge someone who's just been kind enough to let you out from a road junction whilst you're still turning the steering wheel ??!!
Thats not mentioned in the Highway code as an official signal. It would be better to raise your hand once travelling in a straight line. Not to mention safer.
It always amazes me the number of people who try to acknowledge/thank the person letting them out while still in the middle of a manoeuvre. Just wait 2 seconds then thank them.
Going back on topic, the BMW 5 series (the last shape) has a handle inside the boot lid. No matter how hard you pull the handle you cannot shut the boot in one move.
I was at the motorshow 2 years ago and noted that the Saab 9-5 required the same pull down and then press the paintwork to shut the boot. The 9-3 could be done in one move. The salesman said that many people had complained about having to get their hands dirty.
The Pug 405 had some cut outs in the boot lid, ok, it was still sharpish metal, but you could pull the boot shut without getting your hands dirty.
My C5 dumps water in the boot, a known fault but the rectification seems to have worn off.
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Ford Mondeo Mark 2 Unecessary rubber strip on plasic undershield which absorbs water then rots the air conditioning condenser and stops the aircon working. Dreadfully sited hazard flasher switch. Have you ever tried to use them to acknowledge someone who's just been kind enough to let you out from a road junction whilst you're still turning the steering wheel ??!! Rubber seals on rear light clusters which rot after about 18 months and allow hatchback area to fill with water. Bushes on lower wishbones that go after just a couple of years. Oh, and a bolt that's near impossible to get out, and has to be modified to put back in. That'll do for a start!
Don't forget the clutch that needs the subframe removed and engine dropped out to change it.
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Interesting read, Bazza. WRT "crash fires occur very seldom" I guess someone should tell Hollywood. No car crashes there without a mad panic to free the occupants in the few seconds before it explodes!
IIRC, Ford were the first American car company to promote safety, but were then pressured not to, as it was deemed an unfair advantage! The reason they (and now we) have air-bags is that it was not politically expedient to make seat-belt wearing compulsory. And they still have double the mortality rate...
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Peugeot 405 saloon boot lid.
On a windy day, open the boot and the corners are pushed into the edges of the rear screen, which goes pop!
Mind you they used to keep us busy, not so many around now.
(Glass-Tech)
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Speaking of Peugeot saloons... why is it that only Peugeot seem to have ever been able to put a rear wash-wipe on a saloon car (306 sedan). Is it really that difficult? I really could do with one on my 5, I used to have one on my old Nissan.
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Speaking of Peugeot saloons... why is it that only Peugeot seem to have ever been able to put a rear wash-wipe on a saloon car (306 sedan). Is it really that difficult? I really could do with one on my 5, I used to have one on my old Nissan.
And on the 406 saloon (some of them).
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What about the single wiper that seemed to be a design fad a few years back. Moving at the speed of light and jerking all over the screen to try and cover the same area twin wipers are able to do at leisure, it looked like a drugged up flamingo dancer.
Don't know what it was like to sit behind, but it used to frighten me at a distance.
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What about the single wiper that seemed to be a design fad a few years back. Moving at the speed of light and jerking all over the screen to try and cover the same area twin wipers are able to do at leisure, it looked like a drugged up flamingo dancer. Don't know what it was like to sit behind, but it used to frighten me at a distance.
I had a Citroen ZX about 10 years ago and don't remember the single wiper being a problem. The advantage was that there was only one blade to replace.
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"...flamingo dancer" - that's pink power for you.
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Speaking of Peugeot saloons... why is it that only Peugeot seem to have ever been able to put a rear wash-wipe on a saloon car (306 sedan). Is it really that difficult?
Ford managed it with the Orion.
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Peugeot 405 saloon boot lid. On a windy day, open the boot and the corners are pushed into the edges of the rear screen, which goes pop! Mind you they used to keep us busy, not so many around now. (Glass-Tech)
So this was a common problem? This happened to my Dad's 405 in the late 80's - myself (then aged about 9) and my younger brother were showered in fragments of glass when the screen popped out whilst stopped at Charnock Richard Services on the M6.
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The rear seatbelts on my 5-series run the other way. In other words, the reels are in the middle and the clasps are by the wheel-arches. Not sure why, but I've had people do entire journeys unbelted because they haven't thought to look on their other side. These days I tell people as they get in.
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The rear seatbelts on my 5-series run the other way.
Not a blooper, IMHO. It makes it so much easier to help the elderly and the young do their seatbelts, and those doing it themselves can do so without fumbling under someone else's backside if you have three across.
It's just that every other car is wrong.....
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OK, not a car. But the biggest design bloop must have been the square windows on the Comet aeroplane. The stress concentration at the corner of the windows caused cracking & the planes fell out of the sky - running the risk of crashing into a car*.
That's why modern aeroplanes have rounded windows.
* tenuous motoring link
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Boot on a Vauxhall VX220 is a reasonable size for that type of car, but the boot lid itself is tiny. Packing your luggage for a weekend away is a bit like building a ship in a bottle!
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the square windows on the Comet aeroplane.
To be fair, they didn't understand that could happen. Metallurgical knowledge at the time did not extend to fatigue processes, in which the crack extends under stresses that are well below the nominal failure stress.
In fact, it was the Comet crashes that started the research programmes which discovered fatigue.
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Actually the fault with Comets was the thickness and Quality of the aluminium alloy used. It was thin to keep weight down, and the square windows were just a convenient place for fatique to start.
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Actually, you're right. I like them that way.
It just confuses all my passengers.
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Sorry to mention Austin Rover here!!! The fuel filler on Metros was juat ahead of the O/S rear wheel. If you filled the tank, (like filling a fuel tank is what lots of people do on lots of cars) and the weather got hotter, the expanding fuel would force its way out through the filler cap seal. I had this happen on my Metro when it was in the drive once. Apparently there were several bad accidents attributable to Metros leaking petrol over the O/S/R tyre and drivers losing control on bends.
Cheers, SS
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Also it was next to impossible to brim a Metro tank without it blurping a load out over your shoes and legs.
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Ah!
The De Lorean. A car that had so many shortcomings I wouldn't know where to begin!
cheers, Sofa Spud
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The De Lorean. A car that had so many shortcomings I wouldn't know where to begin!
Heh - yeah. Have you ever tried ordering a flux capacitor from Partco. You just can't seem to get them anywhere.
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E34 - tell me about it! I got the plutonium but Maplin don't stock the flux capacitors and DMC dealers are...well...there aren't any!
Adam
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Any car that needs the engine/gearbox removed to change the clutch.
£1000 to change the clutch sir?
Sorry, mate I didn't know this was a Porsche!
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All cars with small horn buttons on the steering wheel.
On a roundabout, someone drifts into your lane and, hey presto, after only two seconds of looking away from the road you work out where your horn is to warn them, by which time it's too late.
V
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All cars that require the towing eye to be screwed in and do not have it stored conveniently for instant access.
NOT under the spare wheel like the MK II Mondeo.
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How about cars with the number plate on the rear bumper, so that it's obscured if you fit a towhook?
cheers, SS
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AMC Pacer? Almost as bad as the DeLorean in concept. A 'compact runabout 2 seater' the size of a Mondeo with a big 6 cylinder engine. It was what the Pacer was claimed to be that was even more laughable than the car itself.
Cheers, Sofa Spud
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IIRC the Alfa 166 has the boot opening lever in the glovebox? The original Alfasud had the lever on the floor between the passenger seat and the door - you could not open the boot any other way.
--
Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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Totally agree with the miniscule horn buttons!! My Jazz has got a horn that you activate by slamming your hand into the air bag part of the steering wheel....I managed to find that ok the other day when I was cut up on a roundabout. Mums Galaxy however has two of the smallest buttons on the steering wheel sited just where your thumbs are if you're going in a straight line....turning a corner and beeping the horn is virtually impossible. Completely stupid idea.
Dad drove a Mercedes A Class that had the automatically folding wing mirrors....great in theory but as soon as you opened the door they popped out (not sure whether it was a fault with this particular car or a design fault on the range)
--
If at first you do succeed, try not to look astonished
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Mx5 - SURPRISE!!!
Noticed on Mrs Vansboys new (year old now) that inside the engine compartment, infront of the nearside wheelarch are a bank of relays/electrical gubbins. This is regularly ccovered in filth & road spray, due to the lack of a plastic blanking panel not there.Not missing - just not there!!
VB
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1 - Early 1990's Nissan 200SX - knock on the rear foglights with your knee as you got in.
2 - Spare wheels underneath the car - ah, i hear you cry, but you don't have to empty the boot to extract the tyre. Except of course you have to empty the boot to undo the nut.....
3 - Ford Fiesta 83 - 89 - unequal driveshaft lengths. Went round left hand bends fine, wobbled all over the place on right handers.
In fact the whole 83 - 89 Fiesta thing was disgraceful, but from a cynical penny pinching point of view rather than design. Horrid little car. What galls me the most is that as it was a company car, i had to pay tax for the "BENEFIT" in kind. Don't the inland revenue know how to rub it in...
4 - and lastly - "dual zone" climate control - his and her heating if you will. great, except they left out the partition between you to stop the hot and cold air mixing. Methinks a gimmick.
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3 - Ford Fiesta 83 - 89 - unequal driveshaft lengths. Went round left hand bends fine, wobbled all over the place on right handers. In fact the whole 83 - 89 Fiesta thing was disgraceful, but from a cynical penny pinching point of view rather than design. Horrid little car. What galls me the most is that as it was a company car, i had to pay tax for the "BENEFIT" in kind. Don't the inland revenue know how to rub it in...
As punishment for things I had done to my previous 2 company cars I was presented with a 1.8DL Fiesta in 1993. If you think the 83-89 one was bad, try the later model with a diesel engine. Horrid little pile of nails.
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Got to agree about the undercar spare. The most ridiculous design ever - reinforced by me losing mine over a roundabout on the way home from work....unimpressed....VERY unimpressed
Adam
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Land Rover Defenders and Discos had an output shaft between the main gearbox and transfer box that had inadequate lubrication which could lead to wear and failure at around 70,000 miles. This simple component with its design oversight is in the most inaccessible part of the vehicle. Replacement requires complete removal and dismantling of the complex transmission. Newer vehicles have a revised output shaft with an oilway drilled in it, apparently.
Cheers, SS
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Going back to the Pug 405, remember the rear boot lid that could be unlocked with a sharp slap of the hand.
Never did so many company reps' golf club bags appear at boot sales.
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Fiat UNO dangerous lights.
When you stopped at night with your lights on, as soon as you switched off the ignition, ALL light were switched off.
There was a facility to then press a button, turn the ignition key, in the opposite direction, and switch on side lights, For parking? but if so why put the dash lights on?
It was not a happy prospect coasting to a halt on the hard shoulder on a motorway. I guess the idea, in normal circumstances, was to avoid flattening the battery.
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As punishment for things I had done to my previous 2 company cars I was presented with a 1.8DL Fiesta in 1993. If you think the 83-89 one was bad, try the later model with a diesel engine. Horrid little pile of nails.
Without moaning too much (look forwards not backwards), the F reg heap was replaced with a K reg 1.1 LX. All of 55bhp, tilt only sunroof, and the volume control on the stereo just out of reach. And a 120 mile commute back in 1995. I think the Lx gave you extra shiny bits.
Oh, and the hatch didn't have an internal recess or handle to close it.
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Unless I've missed it, I'm surprised no-one's yet mentioned the appalling blind spot that stylists, given their head, create at the back end of a lot of new cars.
New Megane - love or loathe the bustle-back looks, the rear window is like a letter-box.
Peugeot 206 - my wife had one but not for too long! Terrible blind spot behind the rear doors, which have 'reversed' edges with the rear window at the normal angle. Rather reminiscent of the late 50's Hillman Minx or the 70's Datsun Cherry - thouigh the Hillman in fairness had a wrap-round rear window.
VW Golf - one reason to have the Golf estate as I did was to avoid the opaque C-pillars.
I'm sure there are others. Maybe I'm being fussy but I think blind spots like that could be potentially dangerous.
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How about the electrically operated spoiler on the 911?
Extends at higher speeds, i.e. only when needed. This is set to 75 mph, but it only drops at 45 or below to (I assume) stop it oscillating if you're exactly at 75.
So until you drop below 45, you drive along with a big advert on the back that you've been over 75. Oh hello officer.
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Surely the whole idea of putting the engine in the rear overhang is a bigger design flaw on the 911. It's taken them decades to sort out the handling on that one. A sports car that has to have lead in the front to keep the nose-down should never have made it to the market.
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Maybe.
But it gives the car its signature low nose, which helps in other ways. And whilst early models may have been a handful, the current ones are tractable and lively.
Surely a bigger blooper would have been to omit the lead?
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Surely the whole idea of putting the engine in the rear overhang is a bigger design flaw on the 911. It's taken them decades to sort out the handling on that one.
Not exactly a design flaw - based on Porsche's winning more races than most with their 356, keeping the engine in the rear was a sound move. Also smart thinking when it comes to keeping their customers; note what happened when the 928 was going to replace the 911.
As for sorting out the handling, a skilled driver can probably go around a track faster in a Porsche than in most other similar sports cars. The 911 was amongst the best sports cars through the 60s and has always been developed to keep it near the top.
My £0.02!
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As for sorting out the handling, a skilled driver can probably go around a track faster in a Porsche than in most other similar sports cars.
A skilled driver probably can. Joe Public, on the other hand, can reverse into a tree at 160mph.
But yes, a sound design decision for racing. Caught out a few unlucky city boys on the open road though.
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Caught out a few unlucky city boys on the open road though.
Is that a good or a bad design feature?
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If it\'s not already been mentioned:-
Space saver spare wheels. In most cases you\'ve got no room to put the normal sized wheel/tyre when you swap them over.
However in my Vectra C there is space for a full sized wheel, but it begs the question why Vauxhall then decided to fill it with a space saver wheel and large spacer ring to take up the slack!! The full sized wheel will fit in the hole, but then you still have to accomodate the spacer ring somewhere.
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Cigar lighter socket or are they now labelled power sockets if you are a non smoker.
Is it not about time that a new "standardised" sensible sized socket or better still multiple sockets are installed in the front and back and also in the boot and the engine compartment.
There are so many things to plug in these days.
What a wonderful concept of often having no built in means of lighting up a cigar when in the rear seats but there are ashtrays.
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Unlike almost every other car you look at in the car park, the new Nissan Micra is not produced with strip bumpers along the side of the car. Considering it's bulbous shape (and perhaps my habit of scraping walls, posts - anything lower than my sight line on passenger side) I think this should be changed. I have had some fitted on mine (partly as a caution and partly to cover an enormous scrape oops) and they don't damage the style of the car. Cannot understand why they were omitted in the first place.
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I believe that the boot & fuel cap release on the Masserati 4200 is in the glove box!
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Citroen making the clutch cable to pedal securing clip on the Xantia out of plastic. Then making it right up under the dash board, where you can barely see it let alone remove it. Installing the bolt the wrong way round so that it cannot be removed without sawing its head off was just sheer vindictiveness though!
Also, Pugeot/Citroen deciding that it would be a good idea to a) use a pull clutch on later TD models and b) arranging it so that the cable OUTER transfers the motion. That must have been a good day in the design office!
--
RichardW
Is it illogical? It must be Citroen....
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Bendix ABS on my 89F 405SRi. When the unsurpressed relay welded its contacts together, the pump over pressurised the accumulator which then immediately de-pressurised via a slow closing pressure relief valve. Until the system pump cut in again the brakes stopped working - completely. No unassisted back up, just the feeble handbrake on to the rear discs. Of course, if the fuse also failed (which it did on an autobahn) the pump didn't cut in again. Surprisingly this system was 'only' in production for a couple of years.
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The Alfa GTV boot release mechanism...
You could open the boot by using a button inside the glove box but only while the engine wasn't running otherwise you had to use the key to open the boot.....
;-) think about it.
JaB
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Same system on the 145. It kind of makes sense, after all you don't want to be accidentally pressing the button and opening the boot while driving.
It is quite annoying when you just want to nip into the boot for something and realise there's no way to get it open without stopping the engine and restarting though.
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Same system on the 145. It kind of makes sense, after all you don't want to be accidentally pressing the button and opening the boot while driving.
Oh... it makes perfect sense thye just hadn't thought it through to the end :-(
Still if that and the quality of the plastic are our only complaints I reckon we're in front :-D
JaB
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My plastic is perfectly fine, thank you very much. The speaker covers are admittedly a bad design though. Almost impossible to remove without destroying them.
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BTW, can you imagine buying a car because of the quality of the plastics? :D
That's got to be about 10,563 on my list of important details to check when buying a car, right behind 'has it got a vanity mirror on the drivers side, in case I start wearing lippy'.
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BTW, can you imagine buying a car because of the quality of the plastics? :D
:-( I'm afraid to say a friend of mine when asked about his choice of a new cc replied (I am quoting verbatim here)
"... I loved the look and drive of the 156 but the quality of the interior palstics and the un-damped grab handles in the passenger compartment put me off"
I sincerely wish it wasn't true :-( he is one of my oldest friends :-(
He is currently enjoying the cossetting interior of an A3 while awaiting delivery of his 3 series.
JaB
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un-damped grab handles
Oh yes, forgot about them. They're 10,672.
On the other hand, have you seen the grab-handles fitted to the Alfa SZ passenger seat, because of the g's you can pull in it? They're pretty cool :D
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>> un-damped grab handles Oh yes, forgot about them. They're 10,672. On the other hand, have you seen the grab-handles fitted to the Alfa SZ passenger seat, because of the g's you can pull in it? They're pretty cool :D
very cool....
;) seen and used :D
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BTW, can you imagine buying a car because of the quality of the plastics? :D
The interior is important - possible even more so than the exterior. After all, you the owner spend your time staring at it.
The plastics are part of that interior ambience. A smaller partm I grant you, but still part. So it's not no.1, but it's well before 10,563.
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I the owner actually spend very little time staring at the plastics of my car. I spend the vast majority of time looking out through the window, some looking at the dashboard, but I can't remember being too involved with the plastics recently.
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The radio in my Scorpio. Lights up like a jukebox when it's on, but no lights at all otherwise, so you can spend ages fumbling for the on button on an unlit road.
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'salright, Patently drives a Beemer and doesn't have to look out the window for hazards; that's a job for the driver in front. If they brake, he'll be so close that the speed differential will be in metres per hour by the time he impacts their rear bumper, meaning that they get to do all the braking for him.
Patently old chap, you do know that was TiC, don't you?
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Sounds like a very good idea actually. All that wear & tear on the brake discs gone. Just need some bull bars to prevent bodywork damage (to the car that matters, anyway....)
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I dont know if its a flaw but I watched a guy in a bright yellow tuscan spend 15 minutes looking for the fuel filler yesterday. Eventually I drove off at which point he had made three phone calls and seemed to be trying to lever off the badge on the back.
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How about the Honda Civic V-Tec,where the spacesaver doesn't fit on the front....
(AMC Pacer? Almost as bad as the DeLorean in concept. A 'compact runabout 2 seater' the size of a Mondeo with a big 6 cylinder engine. It was what the Pacer was claimed to be that was even more laughable than the car itself.)
Also the passengers door was longer than the drivers one,to aid access to the rear seats,unfortunatly this didn't work so well in RHD versions........
(IIRC the Alfa 166 has the boot opening lever in the glovebox? The original Alfasud had the lever on the floor between the passenger seat and the door - you could not open the boot any other way.)
The Lancia Dedra also has this,along with the fuel cap release,actually a good idea,because you get a "valet" key,that only opens doors and ignition,so the boot/cap is still secure if you lock the glovebox...
The Fiat X1/9,where the boot/engine cover release is on the door jamb on the passengers side,so you have to run round the car about 3 times to check the oil
Jaguar XJ6 series 3 taillamp fuses,at the front of the boot,behind all the trim,
Ford Fiesta Mk3 steering collumn joint right next to the exhaust with no heat shield,so melts all the grease out..check this if your steering's heavy!
New Mondeo,rear crossmember bushes are not avaliable seperatly,so you gotta buy the whole thing...
Loads more,I'll just have to remember them all,someones already mentioned the old Mondeo,so that a big percentage away....
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The Fiat X1/9,where the boot/engine cover release is on the door jamb on the passengers side,so you have to run round the car about 3 times to check the oil
Coz they never changed the side of it when they made the RHD versions. Doh!
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The very first Renault 5s boasted a heated driver side footwell, only the driver had to be sitting on the LHS of the car at the time!
My Renault Trafic Van a T900D, is presicely 7ft 8inches long in the rear load space, I mean, did they not think of the building trade. They could have covered much more of the market with 8ft as many building materials are supplied in this size. Plasterboard etc has to go in diagonally.
Fiat Regata, self adjusting handbreak. What on earth was that all about? I ended up converting it to a manual adjusting one as it never worked.
Fiat regata, the passenger could apply the brake accidently by putting his foor out in front of him. The plastic panel was not enough tostop this.
Peugeot 309, number plate was obliterated by a tow hitch.
MK5 escorts, the first of the curvey ones C 1991, apparently the rear boot panel was too thin to take a towhitch!
Merc A class, Rollover during a Moose test - classic!
Hugo
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i think congratulations are in order to new backroomer sofa spud for starting a thread with over 100 replies! (more than i've ever managed)
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