Vehicle pet peeves

There seems to be a lot of things that can set people off into a endless rant about vehicles, how they are made and how they should be made. Below are a few pet peeves of my own.


-Torque Steer, there are front wheel drive cars on the market that have power and don't have torque steer thanks to advances in suspension geometry, and torque vectoring. It bothers me to know that there are still vehicles being sold that have the dangerous habit of turning into the vehicle on your right.

-Non-linear throttles. Now most vehicles on the road have non-linear throttle, I would actually prefer the opposite. Instead of 80% of your torque being available at 10% throttle throw, make the scale 1:1, where the difference between that last 20% of throttle position will give you that extra 20% more torque. This was tricky to do 50 years ago due to how butterfly valves work, but this is easy enough to achieve with the modern digital throttle cables, or even a tuned cam style.

-Seat belts not fully retracting, it's happened to many of us where we are getting out of the car and when we close the door you hear that crunch sound. Not that it really does much damage, but why did it have to happen in the first place? Is it really that hard to make a seat belt retract hard enough that it doesn't get in the way?

-Cheap plastic switches in "luxury" cars. Its always nice to see the ample quality materials that are both nice to the touch and visually appealing in many modern luxury cars. Generally speaking even in cheaper cars the most often touched surfaces will be a higher quality material. So now why is it that so many luxury cars are still being equipped with cheap plastic switches and buttons? If you roll down a window, a polished metal surface or even a simple ceramic surface will provide that extra nuance that a flimsy plastic switch can't compare to.

internationalmanofmystery - 9/1/2011 9:00:45 AM

+2 Boost

My pet peeve is: people writing about vehicle pet peeves!!! :)

Trick - 9/2/2011 5:59:36 PM

+1 Boost

You don't even know how to spell American u moron. Love the hair. :/

Joe_Limon - 9/1/2011 11:31:25 AM

-1 Boost

lol, I whenever I see those vehicles I wonder if they've given up on trying to fix them half way through.

internationalmanofmystery - 9/1/2011 12:13:59 PM

+3 Boost

"I am a backseat "driver", but in a different sense. ;)"

Nothing wrong with being gay!

internationalmanofmystery - 9/1/2011 12:15:27 PM

+2 Boost

(Stuff you learn about people on here)

motor1 - 9/2/2011 11:37:10 AM

+1 Boost

Steering wheel column shifters. I don't care if I lose a storage compartment in the centre console, but I want a big, proper shifter. Sadly, my last 4 cars (2 E65 Beemers and 2, nearly 3 W221s) are obsessed with the whole, flimsy stick on the steering wheel column. I'm taking delivery of a 2012 S63 in December and while I will love it, how on earth can AMG follow this same trend and not give me a shifter in the CENTRE CONSOLE!!!