Tag: Cars

I am a lifelong VW fan.  While VW isn’t the only brand I’ve ever driven (mostly due to circumstance and timing), over the years I’ve owned nine, starting with a humble panel van like this one (I played in a band so duh):

Note the extreme simplicity:  divided flat windshield, swing-open doors, hard bumper over-riders, manually-adjusted rearview mirrors and single-beam headlights (the ones pictured are far sexier than mine were).  And that’s just the exterior.  The interior was equally spartan:

(This must have been a deluxe version — it had a radio.  Mine didn’t even have seatbelts.)

The only things I ever replaced were the headlights because the originals were so weak that a car coming up from behind would cast my shadow into my beams), and  a clutch plate (at about 80,000 miles).  The engine was the mighty air-cooled 1600cc, which made uphill travel with a full load an exercise in patience (for the cars behind me).

I owned “Fred” (as the band nicknamed it) for eight years.  Then I moved on, over the years driving a Beetle (original model), Golf, Passat wagon, three Jettas (!) and two Tiguans.

Imagine my surprise when (thanks to Insty) I read a review of the 2019 VW Jetta, which contained gems such as these:

Both Jettas we tested were top-of-the-line ($26,945 [WTF? — Kim]) SEL versions, so they came with all the bells and whistles. As an illustration of how interconnected all these various subsystems are, consider the following: switching among Eco, Normal, and Sport modes remaps the throttle, changes the transmission shift points, and can even tighten the steering. But it will also tweak how the adaptive cruise control behaves, changes the climate-control settings, and even changes the interior ambient lighting.

…and:

The interior tech might well be the Jetta’s strongest card. SEL Jettas come with the 10.25-inch “Digital Cockpit” display, a VW version of Audi’s “Virtual Cockpit” that I’ve raved about in the past. You can configure it to a great degree, from austere minimalism to information overload, and together with the MIB II infotainment system, the overall experience is slick. (Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, and MirrorLink are included.)

I should point out that my panel van had a new-car sticker price of about $4,000 in today’s currency, and my second (top of the line) Jetta had a sticker of $14,000 (also in today’s dollars), thus making the 2019 model nearly double the price, for nowhere close to double the utility.

I’m not saying that VW should return to the austerity of the panel van;  hell, my old Fred made Fred Flintstone’s car look like a Cadillac — it was absolute hell on a cold or hot day, let me tell you, plus it was about as safe to drive as a mobility scooter on the Long Island Expressway.  And no doubt some marketing genius at VW will tell you that this unheard-of luxury is what the market wants (while a VW accountant won’t tell you that all the doodads add thousands of dollars of profit per car, but they do).  I have no problem with many of the safety features demanded of today’s cars, but I absolutely have to question the need for “Eco, Normal, and Sport” gearbox modes in a small passenger saloon car with a farty little 1400cc four-banger engine.  (The next model year will feature VW’s superb 2.0-liter turbo engine — the same one used in my Tiguan — which will cause the 1400cc model’s sales to tank (you heard it here first) because given a choice between needless but anemic luxury and performance, only Alan Alda / Greenpeace types prefer the former.)

I also know that today’s “luxury” becomes tomorrow’s “indispensable”, such is the insidious upward creep of progress.  But as VW cars have become more luxurious, the “People’s Car” has transformed itself into the “rich people’s” car, and VW has opened a gap at the bottom of the market (which they used to own) for car manufacturers from other countries to fill.

I’m going to quit now, because I’m sick of pissing into this particular wind.  And my next  Tiguan will have the “parking assist” software because of all the automotive luxuries ever designed, this is one of the few which actually makes sense.  Yeah, I’m selling out.

It would appear that you won’t be seeing any of these cars after the end of the year (not in new-car showrooms, that is).

None of the deletions are particularly shocking — they’re either dated or else never caught on, for whatever reason.

The only one I feel sorry about is the SmartForTwo, and that only for sentimental reasons:  had I continued to live in downtown Chicago, there is absolutely no question that I would have bought one, for its parking advantages if no other.

I know that a couple of you will pine for the Dodge Viper — Jeremy Clarkson, for one, will no doubt go into mourning — but while a lot of people may have liked the Viper, it was never enough for them to actually buy one.  Ditto the Chevy (Holden) SS.  Hence their passing.

As for the other 14 cars on the list… [shrug].  Ugly, dated, boring and superfluous:  it’s frankly amazing that they lasted as long as they did.  And the less said about the execrable Mercedes B-class (“no-class”, actually), the better.

As Longtime Readers know well, I absolutely hate the modern (circa 1980?) trend of using wind tunnels to design cars.  Because aerodynamics have unbreakable rules, it stands to reason that if wind tunnels are the sine qua non of car design, then eventually all cars will look the same.

And so it is:

It’s not incredible that so many cars look so similar. It’s incredible that cars look different at all.

Well, they don’t  look different, not at all.

And it gets up my nose, because it’s all part of the Great Global Homogeneity Conspiracy.  (Okay, there is no conspiracy;  people form naturally into herds of one kind or another, so no conspiracy is really needed.)

All you need is for Government (the ultimate homogenizer) to mandate that all an auto manufacturer’s car models combined can only do x, and the rest is history.  In the case of the above, x is emissions, where Gummint has imposed its nonsensical CAFE restrictions (To Save Our Planet And Make The World A Better Place For Our Childrennnn!!!), so the manufacturers have to make cars as sleek as possible, lower wind resistance / drag, and because it’s therefore easier to lower fuel consumption by making cars teardrop-shaped, bring in the Almighty Wind Tunnel.

Here’s the part of the linked article which really gets up my nose:

Suzy Cody, GM’s head of vehicle performance for aerodynamics, says this technology is the bridge between design and engineering. “Look,” she says, “it doesn’t matter how great your aerodynamics are if only ten people buy the car. Design matters. And active aero helps enable design.” But what if, I posit, there’s a propulsion breakthrough? Right now, aerodynamics are tied to miles per gallon and electric range. What if we had batteries that were good for 600 miles of range and charged in ten minutes? Could we stop worrying about every crease in the bodywork? Could we just give those designers the flared fenders and not sweat it? In other words, would aero cease to be such a big deal? Cody, unsurprisingly, seemed aghast that I would suggest such a thing. “Even if you had a battery like that, good aero gives you other options. You could have a smaller battery, make the car cheaper, give it more passenger space, make it quieter. Aero will always be important.”

Silly me.  And here I was, thinking that for any manufacturer, what the customer wants would be more important, but no.  We have to let the Dilberts create the products — and when Engineering controls Marketing, you get bullshit statements like the above, and stupid shit like this:

“We can affect aero maybe 10 percent one way or the other—if the coefficient of drag is .30, maybe we can get it down to .27,” Karbon says. “And that might represent three-tenths of a mile per gallon in fuel economy, depending on the vehicle.”

Only an engineer (or a total dork, some overlap) can get excited by this.  It’s the same as the wankers who get rigid erections because their supercar beats a competitor to 60mph by 0.1 seconds, paying little heed that this means nothing, absolute nada in the real world (as does that breathtaking 0.3mpg saving in fuel consumption).

This obsession with aerodynamic perfection means that instead of getting great-looking cars like this:

…we get homo-cars [sic]  that look like this:

I know, I know;  y’all are going to mock me for loving old stuff more than the new stuff — Mr. Free Market in particular is going to be snorting into his whisky glass when he reads this — but the problem with the New Stuff (as manifested by the Toyota Prius above) is that it all looks the same.  Note, from the same manufacturer, the Yaris:

Or, changing brands from Toyota to Nissan, this:

…or even VW, once the owner of the most iconic of car shapes:

No.  Just… no.  It’s small wonder that if you said to me: “Kim, you have to buy a small car, and you could have any car you like,” there would be no doubt what I’d get:

Not aerodynamic, too small, completely pointless and with absolutely no safety features whatsoever.  It’s my (over-) reaction to enforced homogenization.  (And most annoyingly to the enviro-weenies, the Moke gets close to 50mpg.  So there.)

But here’s the thing:  I bet I could pull more chicks with the Mini-Moke than with any of the above-pictured sleek and efficient econoboxes.

And I’m not even interested in pulling chicks.  But you know what kind of chicks would prefer the Moke?  This  kind:

…while everyone knows what kind of chick gets pulled by a Prius:

Screw conformity, the hell with efficiency, and fuck aerodynamics:  I want a car that’s FUN and looks either splendid (like the Morgan Plus 4 at the top), eclectic (like the Moke), impressive (1954 Mercedes 300 SC), or flat-out gorgeous (hello, E-type).  No doubt I’ll soon be marked as an undesirable and hauled off to the gulag  for re-education just because when it comes to cars, I choose character and beauty over efficiency.

Just wait till they hear my opinion of those “efficient” automatic transmissions…

As threatened promised yesterday, here’s a look at 1954’s passenger saloon cars, starting with the Mercedes 300 S:

An astonishing number of 300 models are still running today, because when the chairman of M-B laid out the criteria for the 300 (W188) model, his brief was that the car should be capable of running all day (12 hours, to be specific) at top (not cruising) speed, without ever breaking down.  So that’s how they made them.

Other European countries in 1954 were still making passenger saloons according to the older, pre-war styles, such as the French with their Citroen Traction Avant:

…and  Britain, with their crop of  Rolls-Royce Phantom IV and Silver Dawn models (in order):

By way of contrast, in 1954 the Italians were still making tiny family cars like the Lancia Aurelia B20:

…but to be fair, all the European manufacturers’ offerings outside the limousine-type were just as small.  Here’s BMW’s 502:

And the Mercedes 220a C:

Note too the British offerings in this segment of the market in 1954, like the Vauxhall Velox:

Rover’s P40:

…and the Wolseley 4-44 (4 cylinders, 44 horsepower — I yeah, I know)

But while Alfa Romeo’s 1900 Sprint was small, it was, as the saying goes, outrageously sexy (unlike the blimps above):

…but that’s Alfa Romeo all over, isn’t it?

France’s Renault Fregate was, well, regrettable:

And Renault’s 4CV wasn’t any better.

Which brings us across The Pond to the United States, where our idea of “compact” was, let’s say, a little more generous than that of the Europeans.  Here’s the Hudson Hornet (Hollywood) model, whose style was surprisingly dated in 1954 (and Hudson would disappear from the market soon after this):

…as was the Nash Metropolitan (likewise about to disappear from the scene):

The Oldsmobile 88 was more like the mid-Fifties U.S. ideal:

…and of course there’s the Chevy Bel-Air:

…and the Chrysler New Yorker:

Longtime Readers will of course know that the American Behemoth-style of car leaves me quite cold, and indeed if someone were to offer me a large car from my birth year in decent running order and in good shape, I’d go for this one ahead of all others.  It’s the 1954 Bentley R-model Continental:

For a smaller car, there’s only one option, the Fiat 8v Berlinetta (assuming I could actually fit into one, that is):

Vroom, vroom.  Vroom.