Quote Originally Posted by dukegrad98 View Post
We've wandered, but it's your thread, so I don't feel so bad about it!



Yes, I hate that crap -- we have a couple that do that stuff, too. It serves as little more than an irritation. I follow the rules when I drive. But when I'm doing hundreds of miles through BFE without seeing another car for miles and miles at a time, let me tell you how cranky I get at the wheel from jiggling and the car trying to steer just because I didn't signal a lane change to avoid some road kill or something like that!



I respectfully disagree. We don't need more aids -- we need fewer distractions. If the car's "features" themselves are a distraction, that's no excuse for the maker. Before long, Elon Musk will have you believing that it's a good idea to watch a movie on the 60-inch OLED screen that used to be a windshield, while his magical taxpayer-subsidized tragedy of styling drives itself along. When it winds up underneath a semi trailer, I promise you that I am going to laugh.

I think I told this story on the old forum once, years ago. A wealthy friend of mine (also a genuine car nut, with an exceptional collection) bought his 15-year-old a Volvo P1800 as his first car. At first, this was a real head-scratcher to me. It's old, it's used, it has basically nothing modern at all, including safety devices like airbags, etc. We were talking about this over lunch one day, and he gave me a counterargument that I understand more and more these days: "It's a manual shift, and doesn't have power steering, so there's no opportunity for him to play with his phone. There's no nav or screen in the car, nothing to look at -- just basic gauges. And it's slow as crap, so he's not going to be doing any stoplight racing." Turns out...the choice was not too crazy at all!

I think there's probably more demand out there for cars like this than manufacturers suspect. For example, how many of us would not prefer really good tactile controls and ergonomic layout -- think top-notch switchgear, dials, knobs -- over yet another cluttered menu-driven touchscreen device, replete with slow response times and "haptic feedback" to make us believe our fingers are touching something more than a computer screen. Blech. (This is precisely the tip-top #1 reason I haven't replaced my ten-year-old daily driver truck, or a similarly-aged SUV we use to haul the kids around. I don't want the new iPad-operated models! Everything else about the newer model is improved, but the whole UX renders the entire product undesirable to me.) One of the reasons I find FFR products so interesting and enticing is that they are a bit of a throwback to my preferred approach. They're surely not slow and underpowered like the old Volvo, mind you! But even nicely-appointed FFR cars by and large are built pretty bare-bones when compared to new cars on a showroom floor. I've had more than one long brainstorm session about the idea of the forthcoming F9 as a solution to my automotive boredom: stylish, fast, well-engineered...but still something which can be built without navigation, heads-up display, lane change assist/warning, alertness monitoring, the list goes on -- all the unnecessary frills that are standard even in many base-model cars these days.

Thanks for the diversion. Someday my friends and kids will be able to trace my decline into curmudgeonhood through posts such as this one.

Cheers, John
John,

I can relate to your Volvo story. When I was 15, my dad and I bought a 1968 Buick Riviera that was to be my first car. I worked after school and through the summer to strip the car to bare metal and my dad did all the body work and painted the car white. I tirelessly cleaned and restored the interior (black) to like new condition. A few month before my 16th birthday, my dad had second thoughts about putting me into a car with a 430 c.i. big block and he bought my grandfathers 1965 VW Bug that would ne my actual first car. Very basic car with no radio, manual brakes and steering, manual transmission and a whopping 40hp that achieved speeds in excess of 60 mph if the hill I was driving down was long enough and the wind was to my back.

Dave