One afternoon, while watching a radar-controlled German ubersedan drive itself, the fading sun struck my eyes. Surrounded by microprocessors, solenoids, relays, pumps, controllers, fans, sensors, circuit boards and endlessly coursing electrons, I did what every driver must do: I reached up for a vinyl-covered board and pivoted it down to cover a small patch of windshield through which I now could no longer see. Excuse me? The $105k four-door was crowded with technology, all of it entertaining, much of it only occasionally useful. Yet no one had thought to correct, improve, replace, redesign or reconceptualize a device as primitive as the Budweiser Clydesdales’ blinders. What’s that all about?
In an era when even ordinary sunglasses readily change their opacity, and upmarket carmakers play pointless electroluminescent tricks with sunroofs, we still lower plastic panels in front of our face to block the sun on the windshield. You can't see through sunvisors. They cover only limited areas of the windshield. And because they pivot on a mechanical device as sophisticated as a drawer-pull, you can move them through, at best, two axes. In short, the sunvisor is a low-tech nightmare that needs immediate attention. In this it is not alone.
My first car was a 1936 Ford Phaeton. The vehicle had rubber strips on metal sticks that flapped back and forth to sort of clear the water off the windshield. The aforementioned 2007 supersedan has rubber strips on metal sticks that flap back and forth to sort of clear the water off the windshield glass. I've piloted Learjets that didn't have windshield wipers; they use artfully directed hot air. On final approach in the rain– the only time you're bothering to clear the windshield in a jet– the Lear wasn't going any faster than any big Mercedes, BMW or Audi.
How about jacks? Aren’t they the work of a genius? Actually they are. If you have to change a tire, you use a mechanical screw device invented during the Renaissance by Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, only da Vinci would still bother trying to use one. The rest of us call Roadside Assistance, since tires and wheels are too heavy to lift anyway. No, don’t bother telling me how much you and Pat Robertson can bench-press. The point is that the whole tire-changing ritual– jack, lug wrench, multiple nuts and studs– is still performed exactly as it was for a 1932 DeSoto.
Fuelling our cars also hasn’t changed since the Hoover administration. You unscrew a cap and stick a crude spigot into a filler pipe. Of course, this assumes you can find the artfully hidden switch that unlocks the little door covering the cap. I almost abandoned [an owner’s manual-less] Ferrari when it proved virtually impossible to locate the damn gas-flap toggle. The only part of refueling that’s improved since World War I is the gas pump itself, which now requires credit card activation.
True, there are ancient devices on/in cars that work wonderfully. A $1.29 hardware-store ignition key springs to mind. So how is it that car keys have grown in both complexity and size– to the point where I keep expecting the women in my life to ask, “Is that a luxury car key fob transponder in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” Heaven help you if you lose your lump in Mae’s couch; a new key now sets you back $400.
Consider hood latches. How many times have you fished around in that damn one-inch gap between hood and fan shroud, tearing gouges in your knuckles in the fruitless search for a latch release designed by a moron hewing to 100 years of tradition established by idiots? Who wrote the law that hood latches have to be accessible only by the flattened fingers of a concert pianist? Why do we need to go through the same hood-latch exercise our grandfathers did when everything else in the world can be made to answer to a remote? (The key!)
Understand that it’s the latch that pisses me off, not the opening system. To wit: Porsche has long since abandoned its perfectly good mechanical-cable hood-popping system for an electric release. So when you run the battery dead in a Porsche Boxster– easy enough to do when you raise the roof and forget to turn the ignition off– there’s no way to reach the battery. It sits quite happily underneath the electrically operated, now-immobile front hood. You have to get on your knees outside the driver's door, reach under the dashboard and use jumper cables to pop the switch that opens the front hood. Needless to say, you then have to repeat the exercise to jump the battery.
I guess we should be careful what we wish for.
My father owned several Daimlers and Lanchesters from the 40’s and 50’s several of which featured an on board jacking system.
A hatch in the passenger’s footwell gave access to a central manual hydraulic pump, a handle attached, one cranked away and the heavy machine was easily lifted from the ground by four “feet”.
Presumably an electrically powered system would be simple enough to design and install.
Funny, and true. Especially the latch on the hood. I am a freaking mechanical engineer, perhaps I should actually use what I went to school for (and have $25,000 in student loans) and design something useful in life. I have fits in my old (1989) rust-bucket Chevy truck because half the time the hood does not even pop up to try to get at the latch. The mechanism is so crudded up, that unless I have soaked it in degreaser and WD-40 every month, I have to sort of squeeze a little of my fingertips in the gap down the length of the hood to try to shift the hood to the right a tad, and then it will pop up, and then I can try to find the latch. If I design one, so what, the ???plates??? would not buy it. Maybe ebay?
Stephan Wilkinson must not be an engineer. There is a beauty in simplicity. True engineering is performing a complex task through simplistic design. Now, I am not saying that wiping water off a windshield, jacking a car or block the sun from the driver’s eyes is a complex task, but all of the methods used to accomplish these tasks are simple in nature and do their job.
Saying that, out of all your rants, I do agree with your hood latch sentiment. Audi (at least on the B5 series) has a great solution for this problem: when you pop the hood, a little tongue sticks out from the grill.
Hot air blowing on a windshield during cold, wintery days won’t work that well and may even lead to cracked windshields. Rain-x is a good product for keeping your windshields clear in the rain, maybe the application of a hydrophobic polymer maybe the solution.
Besides, this article flies in the face of the Garage Life piece, which bemoans the loss of ‘simplistic’ automobiles. Throw us garage junkies a bone.
Wow, that was just wild on so many levels. Unfortunately, I was not the one that posted on the ‘simplicity vs not complicated enough’ topic. Well, I was talking about needing to invent a better hood latch, but some other guy was talking about why write one editorial on needing more fancy stuff, when another is saying we need more simplicity.
As far as the comment earlier about engineers, we are notorious for making things far more complicated than they need to be. The professors in school drum that KISS law into our heads, yet you should hav seen my ideas on a wheelchair that could be operated like a bench press instead of the traditional way….hehe.
Whoa, looks like someone ate a few too many Pixie Stix.
Anyhoo, I have been a long time reader ever since someone pointed me to this site a while back. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Robert Farago’s GM Deathwatch series. As a matter of fact, Fortunes February (I believe) issue substantiated many of Robert Farago’s assertions/observations.
I like the comment section on the editorials. It gives the readers a chance to provide feedback and hold meaningful discussions.
I was the one that talked about simplistic design and also referred to the Garage Life editorial that talks about the death of DIY’ers due to the complexity of modern cars.
My dad’s car got a flat tire the other day, and I helped him change it. It took about 35 minutes, since I am obsessive about checking the directions before doing anything. Now that I think about it, it would have been a lot more convenient if his car (a 2004 family sedan) had run-flat tires. That way, we could have driven straight to the dealer/tire store to have a new tire mounted, rather than having to change the tire, drive home, check the spare tire’s air pressure, drive around on a spare for a few days, then go get a new tire, all the while having the heavy, dirty wheel with the flat tire flopping around in the trunk.
As for the jack, it was fine, if covered in grease which of course comes off easily in your hands. I didn’t care about that since I didn’t have anything else to do that day, but what if I had opera tickets? Also, the lugnut wrench had some sort of hole in it, which I assume could be placed on the corresponding nub in the jack, to help pull it around faster, though there was another tool in the spare kit for doing just that.
All in all, the rest of the process was quite simple, but then again the flat was changed in a quiet parking lot, well off the main road, in the middle of the afternoon, in broad daylight. What if it had been just off the interstate, at night, in the middle of a thunderstorm? Just waiting for a tow-truck or other assistance in those conditions is dangerous on its own. As it were, we had called for roadside assistance before attempting to change the tire, and were told a truck would be there in an hour and a half. I cancelled the call after changing the tire.
It’s the year 2006, not 1906. Why are we still driving on the same rubber so easily punctured, and so clumsily replaced? How can economy cars have heated seats, but family sedans not have run-flat tires? I wonder…if I had enough money to buy a car worth more than the average home, why shouldn’t I be able to demand every feature and comfort available to even the most plebian of automobiles?
You’re absolutely right, KTM, I’m not an engineer. But then neither are you, if you suggest that hot air on a cold day will crack the windshield. (I use a glass coffeepot every morning that will take superheated water after coming out of the reefer, if I so chose.) Buick already heats the windshield-washer fluid in the Lucerne and it hasn’t cracked any windshields. In any case, the air doesn’t have to be that hot and in fact the hotness is irrelevant; the air blast does the job in a Lear, it’s just that their source of that air is bleed air from the engines, and it happens to be hot.
But my point was not that the solution is an air blast, it’s that it’s possible to think past the slapping-wiper-blades concept, which not a single automaker seems to have done. Feed ju-ju through the glass. Coat it with anti-matter. Build a water-repelling beam into the hood badge, I don’t care. It’s not my job. There are engineers out there whose job it is, but they don’t seem to have bothered, instead concentrating on the easy stuff, all of which involves microprocessors.
Ever see a Korean microwave oven? It’ll plan and cook your meals for a year, because there’s a microprocessor that has so much capability it’s a wonder they don’t write code for it to find you a date every night. Which, of course, is antithetical to the fact that the purpose of a microwave oven is to thaw your Regurgitrite dinner and reheat your coffee.
So we have all-singing-all-dancing cars with Magic Fingers seats and iDrive, but the stupid stuff is ignored. You say sunvisors work fine. They don’t. They’re dumb. They are inelegant, which to me is the worst thing you can say about an engineering solution.
Oh, and yes, I know about the Audi hood-latch solution, since we have an Audi, and yes, it is an elegant solution. I applaud it. Last week I tried to find the hood latch in a Maserati GranSport Spyder, however, and came away with bloody knuckles. That, by the way, is a $100,000 car.
Go to amazon.com and read about my book “The Gold-Plated Porsche” and you’ll find that my credentials as a garage guy are in good shape. When was the last time you removed the entire fuel-injection system from your Porsche and reverted to carburetors because they’re simpler (and better, for a track car)?
But thank you for your thoughtful comments. I appreciate them, and I think we’re all having fun. At least I hope so.
Best regards,
Stephan
I am not familiar with your credentials, so thank you for the lesson.
I must ask, have you ever thrown **hot** water on a very cold windshield? Try it next winter. As for the Lucerne’s heated washer fluid, all they need to do is keep it above freezing…..we are debating about the definition of hot now.
Still, as you said, engineers can design solutions are any problem (and yes, I am an engineer). Wipers work, they work well if maintained. Kudos to the original designer who developed the idea.
I was not ‘bashing’ you for not being an engineer. I commenting on your call for making the simple more complex. Granted, I love modern automobiles and all of the amenities that they offer. I am willing to sacrifice my ability to work on these cars for the reliability, comfort and performance they offer. However, making something more complex just because you can is not a good solution.
Complexity is not always the always the answer.
You went from an EFI to carburetors in your Porsche….was it a 914?
See you on the road.
The largest problem I have found with fuel injection, at least from the people I ‘hang out with on the net’, is that it cannot be easily upgraded. I do not know why you went from EFI to a carb on your Porsche. Was it because you were souping it up and EFI cannot be easily tuned like a carb? Or was it something else? Personally, I like being able to count my flashes on my OBD-I TBI system on my crusty chevy. With a handful of sensors, the TBI system is very simplistic, and with knowledge, can be modified for higher performance. It provided much greater fuel efficiency, if that can be said without chuckling in a Chevy. With current EFI, is it very complicated, and the code controlling it is even more complicated. I would be hesitant to try to upgrade that. With the bulletin boards on the net, it is easy enough to find people in the know, for me to learn. Now all it takes is money, which I do not have.
On a second thought here, I want to point out how, uh, eloquent Robert and Stehpan’s comments are. It is almost like I am sitting in a room with you guys debating this over cognac. Usually, posting is this abbreviated drivel, like i am doing, but you guys are really doing this justice. Thanks for the opportunity to chat!
Is that Hebrew or something?
You must mean the Sabra.
Mr. KTM — you are missing Wilkinson’s point — don’t get bogged down with the hot water junk — why not a giant umbrella? Or a reverse gravity doo-hicky?
The specifics don’t matter — what matters is that 100 years ago they removed water from windshields exactly like we do now.
Also, as far as his credentials… I think he used to edit a little magazine… what was it called? Fish and Tackle? Booze and Bottle? Hmm… Oh, right — Car & Driver.
The reason that hoods pop open only an inch is the federal regulation about secondary hood latches.
The reason windshields are not self dimming is, again, the federal regyulations about the light transmissability of glass. Ditto for the sizeof the sunvisors.
This essay should have been targeted to your congressman.
Incidetnally, the heated washer fluid inthe Lucerne is about 140 deg F. That’s sucha neat feature that it almost swayed my wife from the Mustang GT, butnot quite.
That’s as useful as saying, “The reason that cars have incandescent sealed-beam headlights is the Federal regulation about…”
Stephan Wilkinson