I can’t wrap my head around why manufacturers are throwing paddle shifters into family sedans nowadays. They are completely, 100% useless and all they do is add to the cost of the car. Has anyone ever actually used paddle shifters on a fucking Malibu? I guess they are there to make old family guys feel speedy or something? I don’t know but it’s fucking dumb.
Same goes for mandatory OnStar hardware. I dont want it. I don’t need it. Save me the $50 or whatever it costs the factory to throw the thing in there.
And individual climate controls for seats within a foot of each other. Particularly the ones you can set to “Auto” and they monitor the temperature with a thermostat and adjust automatically (supposedly). All they do when I’ve used the auto feature is crank the fan up to 150% without regard to the temperature I set the unit at.
Worst is the stupid fucking paddle shifter craze. Mega stupid.
If they replace a huge, heavy, clunky gear selector, they probably cost less and save a few pounds of weight. Modern automatic transmissions could use a small row of pushbuttons for gear selection (remember the Edsel?) but people are just not comfortable unless they shove a big, heavy-feeling steel lever around.
So while the notion of paddle shifters as used in supercars is a little silly in a Malibu, the idea of light, simple gear selectors is a pretty good move forward. As for manually overriding the automatic - I do it all the time in two different cars, mostly to keep the engine from trying to run at idle while going up hills with absolutely no acceleration capability. But I think more people push the gearbox around, even in a Malibu, than you might think.
If they are a useless gimmick along WITH a heavy metal shifter… never mind.
What they don’t add to cars pisses me off more - I don’t understand why the windows have to have such terrible visibility for shoulder-checking and looking out the rear window (like for parallel parking).
I also want a bumper that can actually bump things and not cost me $1500, but I don’t see that changing any time soon.
It will stay that way until people demand differently. And don’t hold your breath - we live in a country with a very short memory. In the 70s we had gas rationing, and we have experienced several large price spikes. Our response? We keep buying SUVs while mpg has mostly stagnated, and we permit the manufacturers to continue resisting raising standards.
I absolutely love the 2009 Pontiac Vibe I bought in February (don’t be fooled by the label; the '09 version is a Toyota Matrix with a split grille and AWD)…except for two particular “features”.
The first of these endearing facets is the inability to turn off the headlights. I’d experienced this once before when renting a car in Canada, but I’d never once expected it in the US, and didn’t even think to check it before I bought the car. When driving at night, it is quite literally impossible to turn your lights off, meaning my downstairs apartment neighbors get the joy of being wakened at three in the morning, and I get the adulation naturally due the asshole who shines his lights in your window at zero dark thirty.
The second is the passenger safety belt indicator, a series of intermittent beeps triggered by the detection of a certain weight in the passenger’s seat. A wise idea for the safety-conscious passenger unaware of the existence of seat belts, to be sure, but for the bachelor(ette)s among us, this function spends the vast majority of its time dutifully protecting the wherewithal of our milk jugs and roasted half-chickens. I’m sure those things appreciate the effort, but still, somewhere around the 50th consecutive beep the system ought to become convinced that the vehicle’s occupants have either gotten the message or never will.
Anyway, it’s a lovely car, I’d sincerely recommend it, and if I ever meet its engineers, I’m going to greet them with a roundhouse kick to the face.
My 2010 Insight hybrid has a continuously variable transmission (an automatic transmission with no discrete gears). It has the typical pndr type stick shifter like most automatics. It also has the paddle shifters on the wheel. You can put the stick into ‘S’ (as opposed to ‘D’, ‘R’, ‘N’, etc.) and then use the paddles to drive it like a manual transmission - the computer simulates discreet gears.
Have I ever used the paddles since I bought it back in 2010? No. Why would I? Why would discrete gears controlled by a human be more efficient than continuous gearing controlled by a computer?
Nobody buys an Insight because they’re looking for some high performance muscle car. Nobody buys one for the thrill of shifting gears - nudging little paddles is sooo exciting!
BMW iDrive and all other touchscreen interfaces.
HATE 'em.
Last winter I rented a car, some American sedan I don’t remember the model and make of but you had to use the touchscreen in the center of the dash to turn on the damn heated seats. It was 3 levels deep in the menu and I nearly crashed trying to turn it on or off. Eventually I decided to live without it or pull over to mess with it.
How the hell is this supposed to be better than a simple set of buttons?
I don’t like the looks of those thin tires - the ones that look like this. I suppose it’s just what I’m used to, but they look flimsy to me. I want a tire that looks substantial, like this.
I bought a new VW last fall that has the dual zone AC/heat which works well for me and my husband. I like the AC on full blast ice box when it’s hot and he doesn’t. So now there’s no more having to open and close vents or constantly turning the air temp up and down on road trips.
I definitely don’t like the cars that have a touch screen to control things in the car. It’s easier to blindly memorize where a button or knob is than to fish through multiple “levels” of screen menus. Seems really unsafe to me. Paddle shifters seem really pointless in a Family Truckster.
The on all the time daytime running lights can get annoying and it’d be nice if there was an option to turn them off. But I did find on both my 4Runner and VW that of you’re parked if you set the parking break the lights will go off. Unfortunately, that won’t help from shining headlights into someone’s garden level apartment in the middle of the night as your pulling in a parking spot.
Both my cars have low tire pressure indicator lights; which I thought was cool. But what is not cool is that they don’t tell you which tire is low. They already have the sensors installed. How hard would it be to program it to tell you which sensor is complaining?
