So we all know as cars progress over the years they tend to come with more equipment as standard and manufacturers try to make them more clever than the previous version.

But has anyone seen any examples of new cars that do something just a bit stupid?

Lately I've seen a few of the new Fords going about with headlights on but no tail lights on. I can only assume it is Fords version of driving lights or automatic headlights. But why would anyone design a car to illuminate the headlights seperate to the tail lights? One thing for sure is its a fair danger coming up behind one of these late at night on a dark road.

I'm finding that a few new cars have indicators that are very hard to see over the DLRs

Kiran, I completely agree! At 5 when I leave work I have no idea who's turning where!

... and what's with the shift gear indicator on the dashboard?

Hired a brand new Fiat Panda in Italy - the shift indicator seemed reasonable around town for better economy keeping engine below 2400 rpm and economy around 5 to 6 l/100km , but driving up hills and winding mountain passes it had no clue what was going on with the gradients or that the car is just before a climbing hair pin bend.

I turned the DRL's off on my A5, look stupid without the rest of the lights on, plus I agree on the gear indicator thing, though the Audi one isn't as dimwitted

You know I'm not a fan of the electric handbrake.. I really don't see the point and in an emergency with brake failure I would prefer to be able to modulate how much handbrake I put on rather than on or off.

Those electric handbrakes do worry me as I assume their default state would be on. So if the battery went flat the handbrake would still hold the car.

But on the flip side what if the sensors the handbrake uses lose signal while you're doing 80mph on the outside lane of a motorway?

Continuing with the stupid handbrake! it means changing the rear pads you now need diagnostic kit to electrically retract the pistons

Also the handbrakes are still mechanical.. so all is happening is a servo is pulling the brake cable/leaver to activate it.

I do worry that all these aids are just making drivers dumber and less aware..

brake assists for hill starts. basically it holds the car on the brake for a second giving you time to get the bite point but if you don't get it in time it releases the brake so you roll backwards. And because there is no normal handbrake you have to quickly put your foot on the brake again. madness

All electronic parking brakes have a manual release inside the car, depending on manufacture depends how you release it. Peugeots for example you get a strange looking rod in the boot with the tool kit, depending on model you insert it into the control unit and unlock it to release the brake.

However once releasee you need computer to re configure it so I wouldn't recommend going and trying it unless you have spare monies to pay for it to be turned back on.

None of our models except the new 308 need diag computer to release the calipers as mark says it's just controlling the handbrake cables.

Presume he more models we bring out the more will need computer to be wound back.

And on a course straight from the horses mouth they design them like this to try to make people have to bring the car to the dealer for work rather then yourself or some back street garage.

Or you can't end up in the situation like some poor Young girl who came into us. Her clutch had gone on her 107 auto, it is a manual gearbox with robotic controls. So her mate was like yeah I'll change that no problem. So he charged her a few hundred. Still no clutch.

Comes to us, needs computer to tell robotics its in "replacement clutch mode". But all in all as he forced it all off she had to have another clutch kit, full new robotics and drive shafts but that's because he cross threaded them.

Moral of my really boring story is they are just trying to make it so dealers get the work to do making the company more monies

Matt,

I bet that guy is a "mechanic" as in a college spanned monkey, people like these are the reason I learned to do the work myself. Poor girl though, hugely out of pocket for things that didn't need doing.

this

"I do worry that all these aids are just making drivers dumber and less aware.."

is the very foundation for why i hate new cars

Yeah I think it was near on 2k we charged her so she should have come to us in the first place!!

Her boyfriend did make me laugh though when they came in to pay as he asked for the old driveshafts back so he could "beat the guy to death" with them

The one that worrys me is the auto braking thing, I know it only works up to a certain speed but if that went wrong and just anchors on whilst your driving... Lol. Although I'm sure there's many safeguards in place to stop it happening... Maybe

theres no harm in charging back the damage to the guy who did it

how much would the clutch have been in the first place?

I do find the indicator problem to be quite dangerous, but then are some of the large or sloped 'A' pillars some cars have that block you from their view when pulling out

Octavia vrs. Two plastic fake exhausts with only one housing a real pipe. And it plays a synthesised engine noise through the stereo. Get a life.

Sticking with skoda. They built a car called the superb, and it was. Then they built one called the rapid. Fuck knows why, because they aren't in the slightest.

We've had a new Rav4 in at work lately with an automatic tailgate.....that you cant stop once it's going, so it hits things quite often when you misjudge the space!

also when it's piddling down with rain and all you wanna do is chuck a bag in the boot you have to wait 30 secs for the bugger to open!

I do find the indicator problem to be quite dangerous, but then are some of the large or sloped 'A' pillars some cars have that block you from their view when pulling out

Along with the indicator thing, not quite so dangerous but it does look silly, the single fog light that lights up depending on which direction you are turning. When you see cars going round corners or roundabouts it just looks like they have a foglight out. And I'm sure I've seen kits available to add this to older cars!

The small cars with the large sloped 'A' pillars are just silly and useless. For one as said you can't see when giving way at a junction or whatever and also due to the angle of the slope and the height of the roof the dashboard has to be 3.5 miles long. Think about all the interior space that is lost with that. No wonder a new Corsa is about the same size as an old Vectra but still has no space inside.

I agree with Mark on the driving aids making people lazy. If you buy a spec'ed up automatic BMW you are just there to steer it in generally the right direction. Everything else is pretty much done for you.

Half the fun of driving for me is having to work the car.

Just wait till all these new cars become old cars with multiplex wiring systems and electric everything and large repair bills the scrappies should do well ?

Just wait till all these new cars become old cars with multiplex wiring systems and electric everything and large repair bills the scrappies should do well ?

I think this is already starting. I've seen alot of sub 10 year old cars in the scrappy that look like they have nothing wrong. So more than likely they are in there for an electrical fault that the dealer has quoted them hundreds or thousands to fix.

I have been effected by a similar issue also. I bought a cheap BMW E46 323 not too long ago. Mechanically there was nothing wrong, but I spent hours and loads of money chasing sensor faults and in the end I scrapped the car. If the sensors weren't there, the car would have ran fine and I'd still be running it now as a daily.

Clutch would be about £500-600 for us to do at a guess.

Peugeot have been using multiplex wiring since 2000.

Such as a common problem on 406 estates used to be, car would come in for non start. You waste hours/days on it (before this was a known problem to us) got spark/fuel/air... Everything.

Turned out water leaks through the passenger rear light unit into the CD changer and causes non start.

You heard right water in s cd changer causing non start, this is the kind of bullshit I have to deal with on a daily basis with multiplex systems

Yeah crap isn't it mind you I remember pug 205's suffered from rubbish wiring back on 1990 models the copper strands used to corrode and go black and that was under the insulation as well as sidelight terminals rotting away to nothing !!!!

Edited 31 October, 201411 yr by ian131

You know I'm not a fan of the electric handbrake.. I really don't see the point and in an emergency with brake failure I would prefer to be able to modulate how much handbrake I put on rather than on or off.

Those electric handbrakes do worry me as I assume their default state would be on. So if the battery went flat the handbrake would still hold the car.

But on the flip side what if the sensors the handbrake uses lose signal while you're doing 80mph on the outside lane of a motorway?

Continuing with the stupid handbrake! it means changing the rear pads you now need diagnostic kit to electrically retract the pistons

Also the handbrakes are still mechanical.. so all is happening is a servo is pulling the brake cable/leaver to activate it.

I do worry that all these aids are just making drivers dumber and less aware..

brake assists for hill starts. basically it holds the car on the brake for a second giving you time to get the bite point but if you don't get it in time it releases the brake so you roll backwards. And because there is no normal handbrake you have to quickly put your foot on the brake again. madness

I completely agree on the electro handbrake thing, tbh if I could swap it off my A5 I would, swap it for the adaptive cruise control for a start

Anyhoo, I really don't see the point in the hill assist controls that you get as they are mostly coupled with E-handbrakes, which release as soon as you raise the clutch to bite point (though I suppose if you've got stupid flappy paddles mind)

Merc Sprinter. Consistantly, for years, they've managed to line the quarter light pillar and the wing mirror up so if you're a normal height , the pillar goes straight through your view of the mirror.

I do find the indicator problem to be quite dangerous, but then are some of the large or sloped 'A' pillars some cars have that block you from their view when pulling out

Along with the indicator thing, not quite so dangerous but it does look silly, the single fog light that lights up depending on which direction you are turning. When you see cars going round corners or roundabouts it just looks like they have a foglight out. And I'm sure I've seen kits available to add this to older cars!

My Seat Ibiza has this. Most of the time you don't notice any difference, but there is one corner I use that it helps with. It's a sharp right with an island in the middle of the two lanes, it lights the island up so I can judge better in the dark. Past that, it's not really been much use.

I'm in and out of new cars all the time, there are few things that really grip my shit.

Electric handbrakes are top of the list, though. To the extent that it would be a reason why I'd choose one car over another, if it had a proper ratchet. Like the Golf and A3 have an electronic one, but the Octavia and Leon don't. I don't like them and they aren't standardised - it seems that cars where they replace a ratchet are push to turn off, whereas cars where it replaces a pedal are push to turn on. I've heard some horror stories too, about problems with the motors after a few years. All in the name of saving weight though, apparently.

A lot of driver aids are annoying too, especially blind spot warnings and lane keeping alarms. They're usually the first things I turn off when I get into a new car, and they're a close second after electronic handbrakes because they breed laziness. Yes it's good to have an extra pair of eyes on the road, and I understand why manufacturers are going for it. However, I think a lot of people will come to rely on it as a warning and will get into the habit of not checking their mirrors before pulling out. That's fine most of the time but if the sensor is acting up and the driver haven't realised it's a potential disaster.

Keyless entry is good when it works, but it quite often doesn't. The number of times where I've relied on that, then ended up having to get the key out and do it manually, is pretty surprising. If you get it, you want it to work every time or you'll either end up trying both or just doing it manually every time. It's only useful if you don't have to do anything with the key when you're inside though. Keyless start is the same. Honda used to have a system where you'd put a key in the ignition, turn the power on then press a button to start the engine. I'd rather turn it an extra click and do without the button, or go completely keyless.

DRLs I don't have a problem with but yes, I agree, they need to activate the tail lights as well. And those cornering lamps in foglights are actually really useful, so I don't give a cock what they look like to other people haha!

General gripes with new cars (and newish ones) also include automatic wipers, which never do what they're meant to. Also automatic headlight dipping, most of those don't work. I love a lot of what you get now though. Automatic cruise control (which adjusts based on traffic in front) is worth its weight in gold as long as it's the Bosch system not the jab-at-the-brakes Valeo one, so that's an extra I'd tick.

Oh yeah and infotainment systems. Cancelling a route and turning the voice commands on or off are basic functions which should take no more than two clicks on a screen. Once you're digging around in menus, they're a distraction.

I've yet to encounter an automatic tailgate you can't stop though. It's usually the opposite problem, where I'm trying to get it to close over a full boot and the anti-pinch mechanism can't figure it out. My problem with motorised tailgates is they're usually too slow to open and (more importantly) close. If it's raining you can't open it quickly, sling stuff inside, then close it again. What I do like (though they rarely work as they're supposed to) are kick-to-open boots. Where you wave your foot under the bumper and the boot opens. Sounds like a stupid novelty but they're really useful.

People like convenience though, as much as we might be knocking it, manufacturers know what they're doing...

Not all EPBs have a manual release anymore Matt, dunno how they get round it. Changing pads some cars you may need a dongle or something to do via OBD or a certain cycle of the switch and ignition etc.

I can't speak for many manufacturers but they're not too bad in my experience.

ACC can get on my tits in certain scenarios